Undeniably the world's most popular video game
during the 1908's. The
Atari 2600 Video Computer System has in one way or another been in just about
everyone's life. From original owners back in the late 70's and 80's, to new
owners just discovering their simple yet extremely addictive game play. The
Atari 2600 was technically superior to most of the other game systems when it
was released in 1977 such as the Bally Astrocade and Fairchild Channel F as well
as the later released Magnavox Odyssey 2 and took a far lead in first place. Systems such as
the Intellivision and Colecovision were
graphically better systems, however the Atari 2600 won the hearts and minds of
most video gamers and climbed to the top and stayed there for most of its
existence. In fact it was the Atari 2600's huge popularity that became its
downfall with too many cartridges being produced and too many of them were
lacking in game play and in graphics. This huge flood of games caused a
cartridge "glut" and added to huge fallout in the industry which saw almost all
small start ups disappear and brought company's like Mattel's Intellivision
division, Coleco and any others to their knees and into dusty memories. Atari
managed to remain but with a weak heart beat.
In late spring and early summer of 1983 Atari and Nintendo began a flurry of
talks about having Atari license and package the Nintendo prototype "FCS"
(Family Computer System) as an Atari video game product. This deal was nearly
completed when Atari's CEO Ray Kassar stepped down due to questionable Stock sale
activity in December of 1982 and Atari's top management was in disarray for
several months. Nintendo, lost its patience and walked away, allowing the
future NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) to become a Nintendo released product
in early 1985.
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On July 2,
1984 the Atari
Consumer & Home
Computer divisions were now in the possession of new owners previously with
Commodore who began restructuring the company. Plans were
immediately made to bring out a low cost 2600 (dubbed the 2600jr) which was
based around the Spring 1984 Wedge shaped 2600 VCS model that Atari Inc
developed going back to 1983. Also once the
legal issues between GCC, Atari and Warner were straightened out, the Atari 7800
console would be re-released as well. The company's
primary focus was the development of its "RBP" computer design and the redesign
of the XL computers but videogames and Atari presence in the field never stopped
at Atari under the Tramiels, finally after a 2 year absence from making video
game consoles, the Atari 2600jr and the Atari 7800 were re-introduced in
Januard 1986 as part of Atari's "Where the Action is" campaign.
In 1993 Atari once again tried its hand at the home video game market with its
Atari Jaguar 64 console, but quickly dropped the product in 1996 and the company
ceased to exist as Atari then fell into the hands of small hard disk company
called JTS who wanted nothing but the money from the reverse merger, the Atari
home console presence was dying a painful death. In March of
1998 the rights, licenses and technology of Atari's video game and
computer divisions were bought by Hasbro Interactive. Infogrames then
became the owner of the Atari rights and
licenses. Infogrames then officially changed their company name to Atari,
Inc. So Atari's name lives on once again even though it is no longer the
real Atari and is just a renamed French video games company.