Atari 2600 & Atari Jaguar Systems, Atari ST Computer Systems & Games

Atari are probally the oldest computer company in the world, and Nolan Bushnell – Atari’s founder – is credited to producing the world’s first mega selling game – Pong. Atari have produced a number of different systems over the years, some of them have particular value to retro gamers.

The Atari 2600 was the world’s first – and to this date only – wood finish console, and was a worldwide success. Released in 1977, the Atari 2600 was a wordlwide success, particularly in it’s home contry of the United States. The system cost a fairly reasonable $199 in the States, and came with a number of addons – the console, two joysticks, two paddles (used for games such as Pong) and the game “Combat”. Games also were tremendous value for money, as the games made usually came with a number of variations of the traditional game, often upto 60 in all!

Of course, there were some games that had only one game, and these were still popular. One of the earliest ones was a game called “Adventure”, the world’s first RPG. It also had some of the most infamous games in history – Custer’s Revenge and the diabolical E.T. being two of them.

In the end, Atari’s 2600 orchistrated it’s own downfall – by refusing to give credits to developers – a lot of the more talented ones left Atari to manufacture for other consoles. Nevertheless, the games kept going until 1992, when the console was officially unsupported.

The Atari ST was another popular computer system and Atari’s answer to the Commodore Amiga. Some ways it was a lot better – the MIDI chip included in the console meant it was and still is popular with music products. However, the early price & the fact that a number of games were Amiga exclusives meant that the Amiga did get a bit of a head start on Atari’s offering. Nevertheless, it was popular, and well worth acquiring. Not only for the “Little Green Desktop” which is well remembered by fans of the computer, but also because there were a number of great exclusives, such as Substation and Wyrd Ways – which used samples from the Monty Python series.

Finally, the Atari Jaguar was Atarti’s last foray into the console, and was the world’s first 64 bit proccessor console. However, despite this, the console struggled because it used cartridges, so it couldn’t do fancy things such as Full Motion Video or synthesized speech. Nevertheless, this is not a bad thing, but without many good games (Tempest 2000 and Alien vs. Predator being two of them), it struggled. However, now that the console is dirt cheap, retro game fans pick up this because of those two exclusive games, as well as games such as Doom and Cannon Fodder.

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