Atari
For a time, the word was synonymous with “video games.” Nobody said,
“So you guys wanna go over to Brent’s and play video games?” No, it was
always, “You wanna go play Atari?” It wasn’t the first home video game
system (the Odyssey
predated it by five full years), but the Atari Video Computer System
(VCS) was the cultural turning point. With this one little box and a
library of hundreds of game cartridges, Atari turned home gaming into
the biggest fad of the early 80’s and helped make it the multi-billion
dollar entertainment industry it is today. And in the minds of many
youngsters at the time, it was the coolest invention ever in the entire
history of the world.
Atari had scored a hit in 1975 with a home version of Pong,
but cartridge-based gaming was clearly the wave of the future. A
prototype was developed in 1975, and with funding from parent company
Warner Bros., Atari unveiled its VCS in time for the 1977 holiday
season.
The first VCS had nearly all the standard features that would make
the system a mammoth hit: a woodgrain-finished console with a cartridge
slot and option switches (difficulty, game select,
black-and-white/color), a pair of one-button joysticks, and a set of
rotating paddle controls. Packed into this black beauty was the VCS’
original pride and joy: Combat, a head-to-head battle game that featured tanks, biplanes, jets, and options ranging from invisible tanks to bouncing walls.
The one-on-one contests of Combat were enough to keep
siblings and best friends awake until the late hours, but Atari also
included eight other games in its original lineup. A dozen more titles
arrived over the next two years, but the VCS hadn’t quite yet come into
its own. Consoles and games like the conversion of arcade Intellivision) were also creating headaches, but Atari was about to pull out the biggest ace in the deck.
The name was Space Invaders,
and by 1980, that name was well-known to anyone who’d even heard about
the video game phenomenon. Taito’s game of alien invasion had created a
100-Yen coin shortage in Japan, and its popularity in the U.S. nearly
matched that success. In a home game first, Atari purchased the license
to Space Invaders and had designer Rick Mauer convert it to the VCS.
With that one move, the Atari VCS went from “gee, that’s neat” to
“I’ll love you forever and clean my room every day and get straight A’s
if you buy me that!” Atari’s Space Invaders cartridge earned
the company over $100 million, and home video games had their new
official king. Within two years, more than 25 million consoles were
sold, earning more than $5 billion (more than half of Warner Bros.’
income at the time). New accessories were added, from the keyboard
control of Brain Games, Codebreaker and others to Indy 500’s driving control to assorted Trak-Balls, new joysticks, and cheating helps like the rapid-fire Blaster.
In the software department, the VCS (later renamed the 2600) had
more than its share of hits over its life span. Thanks to a group of
disgruntled Atari employees and an upstart company called Activision,
third-party game designers began adding new titles to the Atari
VCS/2600 lineup in 1980. Imagic, Coleco, M-Network, Parker Brothers and
several others contributed to a library that eventually included
several hundred games. Many were conversions of arcade smashes like Donkey Kong and others, but there were several original hits as well. Among them:
Adventure – A quest to find and recover a golden chalice, fighting dragons and avoiding a thieving bat along the way.
Haunted House – A pair of eyes searched a spooky lair for
the pieces of a treasure. Ghosts, spiders, and other nasties attacked,
and your tiny candle could blow out at any minute.
Kaboom! – A masked robber dropped bombs toward you. Catching them got harder and harder as the bombs dropped faster and faster.
Pitfall! – Pitfall Harry scampered through the jungle,
hunting treasure and jumping over crocodiles, rolling logs, pits,
scorpions and other threats (a sequel, Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns,
expanded the adventure into one of the most elaborate games created for
the 2600).
Raiders of the Lost Ark – A quest based on the movie of the same name, as Indy tried to locate and recover the Ark of the Covenant.
Superman – The Man of Steel flew around Metropolis, trying to round up Lex Luthor’s gang and put back together the bridge they sabotaged.
Video Olympics – 50 variations on the Pong formula, from Quadrapong to Foozpong to Soccer, Volleyball, Handball and Basketball.
Yar’s Revenge – Your heroic insect chewed away a shield, then fired a missile at the exposed enemy.
The console’s biggest cartridge success was no big surprise. Namco’s Pac-Man
had become a worldwide sensation in 1980, and Atari naturally wanted a
home version. The 2600 game arrived with great fanfare in 1982, and
based on name recognition alone, it quickly became the best-selling
title in the VCS/2600’s history. But even those who bought the game and
played it faithfully until the wee hours of the morning recognized that
it didn’t really quite exactly look like the arcade…y’know? A later
release of ColecoVision was starting to look better and better…
Regardless, 2600 Pac-Man
at home was all we needed to hear. The 2600 continued to score big
through 1982 and 1983, but ironically, it was about to become a victim
of its own success. Third-party cartridges flooded the market, hoping
to cash in on the video game craze. Many were both rushed and rough,
and interest in the machine waned. Atari was already hurting from
disappointing sales of its E.T.
game after spending an astronomical amount for the license, and when
gamers suddenly switched over from home game systems to home computers
(used, of course, to play games), the entire video game market crashed.
Atari’s video game division was sold in 1984, including the 2600,
its short-lived graphical improvement the 5200, and the unreleased
7800. With the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System
in the mid-80’s, the 7800 was finally released, and a handful of new
2600 games continued to be produced. The 2600 finally ended its
production run in 1991, after an amazing 14-year career (the longest of
any home video game system to date).
By the time it left the stage, the 2600 was a relic in the minds of
many, but not to those who were there. To them, it may not be the
coolest invention ever in the entire history of the world any more, but
it’s still probably Top 5, easy.
