2015 has been a crazy busy year for me, so I haven’t had much time to keep up with this blog.  It looks like things are going to slow down a little, so I hope I can post at least every couple of weeks.

When I decided to get back into gaming, I studied which system to buy and decided on the Atari 7800.  It was backwards compatible with the 2600 and 7800 games had near arcade quality graphics.   There was also a small, but active development community ensuring a steady supply of new games to come.

When I attended to Portland Retro Game Expo a couple of years ago, I was expecting to see all kinds of 7800 games, controllers, and systems.  To my surprise, there were hardly any, except for the AtariAge booth.  The dominant game system of the show was the NES, but the Atari 2600 was a close second

I didn’t really think about it at the time, but I have many times since.  Why was the 2600 the most popular Atari 8-bit game system?  The 5200 was short lived, had a small game library (constantly expanding now as 8-bit computer titles are converted), and controllers that broke easily.  The 7800 had a poor controller, but a 2600 controller could be used to play games that only require a single button and it really does have great graphics (for an 8-bit system).   I could see why 5200 wasn’t the top Atari system, but why the 2600?

Sheer numbers…

Over 30 million Atari 2600 game systems were sold from 1977 to 1992 and over 500 games have been developed for the 2600.  Let’s face it, anyone that grew up in the 80’s either had an Atari 2600 or knew someone who did.  So many classic games have been ported to the 2600 such as Berzerk, Missile Command, Space Invaders as well as original games like Kaboom, Pitfall, and Yars Revenge.  Combined with a still active homebrew community that cranks out several new games each year, the 2600 has continued to thrive.

New developments…

New circuit boards for carts and tools for development such as emulators and todays laptops and PC’s have allowed developers to do things that were not possible in the 80’s.  One of the 2600’s most recent releases ‘Space Rocks’ uses the ARM CPU on the ‘Melody Board’ to run code written in C.  The Atari CPU is used to ‘paint the screen’.  This has allowed for near arcade quality (80’s) games to be developed for the 2600.

Simplicity…

The other thing that the 2600 has going for it is simplicity.  2600 controllers only have one button and the unit only has six switches.  Most games are intuitive and can be played without even consulting the manual.  At the same time, there are some fairly complicated games like Solaris that can keep you playing for hours!

With all of this, it is no wonder that the 2600 remains the most popular Atari game system…

@Atarigameguy