On September 11,
1977 the American video game and home computer company Atari, Inc.
released the first "Atari Video Computer System" (in 1982 renamed
as "Atari 2600"). It is considered as the first video game
console popularising the use of microprocessor-based hardware and ROM
data-cartridges containing game code. Atari, Inc. founders (1972)
Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney developed their gaming system in the
early 1970s originally named "Syzygy".
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| Atari Video Computer System (1977) |
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| Atari Video Computer System Launch (1977) |
The game console
was originally priced at US$199 (with inflation now US$804) or €160,1
(with inflation now €646). It had originally two joysticks and a
Combat cartridge. Eight extra games were available at launch and sold
separately. The first year (1977-1978) the console was produced at
Sunnyvale, California, USA, in 1978 production moved to Hong Kong. In
late 1979 the Atari VCS was the best-selling game console with 1
million units sold that year.
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| Atari Video Computer System advert (USA, 1982) |
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| Atari Video Computer System advert (USA, 1982) |
A total of 30
million units were sold (1977-1992). The CPU was 8-bits with 1.19 Mhz
speed and 128 byte RAM. The possible input controllers were
joysticks, paddles, driving Controller, track-ball and keypad . The
best-selling game was “Pac-Man” (7 million).
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| Atari Video Computer System advert (USA, 1982) |
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| Atari Video Computer System games |
Did you know...
Apple existed only
one year (1976)
Still 4 years to wait for the first DOS PC (1981)
Still 4 years to wait for the first DOS PC (1981)
Still 8 years to
wait for the first Windows PC (1985)
Still 18 years to
wait for the first efficient Web search engine AltaVista (1995)
Still 27 years to
wait before Facebook appeared (2004)
...
Atari VCS advert (USA, 1978)
Atari VCS advert (USA, 1980's)
Atari VCS advert (USA, 1980's)
Atari VCS advert (USA, 1980's)
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