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The Atari 2600
While technically not the first cartridge-based home console, that would be the Fairchild Channel F which I will be covering later, it was the console that made home video games popular. Released in October of 1977 the 2600 was originally called the VCS, short for Video Computer System, and featured 6 switches on the top. This model is from 1980 when two of the switches were moved to the back and are much smaller. This is also on loan to me from a friend for this post, many thanks! He found it in the attic of his new house. If only we all found housewarming presents like that. Note the continuing trend of fake wood grain, that never gets old.
There were many many many, I shall say it once more, many clones/ripoffs of the 2600 over the years. The only official clone of the console would be the Sears Tele-Games Video Arcade which was part of Sears and Atari’s agreement that began with the Pong Consoles. However ripoff consoles and homebrew games are still made today. The last official 2600 made was the Atari 2600jr which was simply a case re-design, as seen below, and it would cease production in 1992 making the 2600 the longest lasting video game console yet released.
The 2600 would not officially be labelled that until 1982 when the all black version, nicknamed the Darth Vader, would be released. On the back there are two controller ports which are standard 9 pin joystick ports. This means that you can use Sega Genesis, Master System, and likely many other controllers that use the same connector. Conversely the 2600 joystick can be used in place of the standard controllers on its competitor’s systems like the Colecovison and Intellivision (only the model 2 version). Consisting of a single button and a joystick it is one of the simplest controllers in existence only beat by a pong console. In fact Atari also released the “Paddle” controller that was a knob instead, in case the joystick was too futuristic for you.
On the back of the console you can see the power port, controller ports, difficulty switches for both players (one is broken on this one), and the channel switch. The numerous switches on the console are necessary for choosing your game mode. Since the 2600 is an incredibly low powered console, with graphics similar to a Pong console, there are no on screen menus. (With the exception of a select few games released towards the end of its life cycle) As such you would turn the console on and flip about with the switches to select the mode you wanted. The instructions would tell you which one did what but due to the simplicity of the games themselves it really isn’t too hard to figure out. Again, there are exceptions with a notable one being Raiders of the Lost Ark in which you have to actually use 2 controllers.
The games themselves are square-ish carts. The ones on the right are the official Atari releases, one being the dreaded E.T. game, whereas the ones on the left are released by a third party called Imagic which released the same games on other consoles of the time. It was the emergence of these 3rd party developers which would lead to the downfall of Atari’s dominance and the video game crash of 1983. Loads of rubbish games flooded the market and there was no real way to distinguish which were good or bad. This was long before video game magazines came about that would review games. Most of the time you were left staring at a box with little to no description of the game and box art that was literally that; art. Sometimes the box art was created without the artist ever seeing the game or even playing it.
So what do you do? Sticking to ports of arcade games you already know is a pretty good idea right? Unfortunately Pac-Man was one such port and while not bad by 2600 standards it was over-hyped and drastically worse than the arcade. Pac-Man and E.T. are usually the ones blamed for the crash of 1983 as both were very highly advertised and very sub standard games.
I have Demon Attack on Intellivision as well and it is much improved over the Atari version. Next week I’ll introduce the Intellivison and the week after I’ll play some games on both systems and have a comparison of the two.
Dusty Consoles 