4/29/2023 0 Comments Phantom brigade game consoles![]() ![]() I want to put some of that to rest by taking a closer look at where the Atari 2600 was at its most innovative, and how it set the direction for the console industry in ways that reverberate to this day. But there’s also a general sense among some folks that although the Atari 2600 may have been the first popular console, it wasn’t all that, and the real innovations came later. ![]() ![]() Sometimes it’s from the newer 8-bit fan crowd that started with Nintendo rather than Atari, which is understandable. Over the years, along with all the Atari Flashbacks, anthologies, and collections, and articles celebrating the system, there’s been some pushback. Although arcade games were first, and there was a distinct golden age of coin-op games in the late 1970s through the mid 1980s, what has endured is console gaming at home. The way it did so is all but inseparable from its hardware design and software. It essentially created the game industry we have today. You can draw a straight line from the Atari 2600 to the PS4, the Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch. In 2006, Wired magazine named it one of the top 10 gadgets that changed the world. The 2600 was groundbreaking in a way nothing before it had been, and, in many ways, nothing after it would be. But it wasn’t until early 1980, when the company released its port of Space Invaders, that the 2600’s place became cemented in industry lore. Atari launched the 2600 (then named the Video Computer System, or VCS) in the fall of 1977. It certainly was the best-selling one for many years, with some 30 million purchased during its 14-year run. Although the Atari 2600 wasn’t the first game console, or even the first that was cartridge-based, it’s the best-known game system in history-or at least the best-known among people of a certain age. And the game industry as we know it today began in earnest with a certain console, one with faux wood grain across the front, and that instantly loaded programs from durable plastic cartridges. If you get bored, you can flip between different games, and different worlds, just by pressing a few buttons on a wireless controller-all while sitting on your couch or on the floor, in the comfort of your own home. Often rendered in high-definition and now even 4K, with incredible real-time sound and adaptive music scores, they’re living, breathing empires.
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