Tuesday, May 13, 2008
The original king of the consoles is 24 years old, boasts clunky graphics and dinky sounds, yet is still doing quite nicely, thank you.
Jul 9, 2001 | It's the summer of 2001 and the video game industry is bigger and hotter than ever. In the feverishly contested hand-held market, Nintendo's GameBoy Advance and Atari's 2600-compatible VCSp are the must-have consoles. But fans are also eagerly awaiting new releases for popular consoles, like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for Sony's PlayStation 2 and Elevator Action for the Atari 2600.
Wait just a second. Elevator Action for the Atari 2600? In the 21st century? Isn't the Atari 2600 the archaic console that only plays those games with the rinky-dink graphics and sound and simplistic play, like Combat and that godawful version of Pac-Man? The one with the goofy pseudo wood-grain trim on its casing that started the whole video game console market 24 years ago?
Yep. The Atari 2600 ceased production in 1989. But practically speaking it never really went away. The abandoned system has been adopted by online fans, who nurture it with loving care. And they're doing more than just keeping it on life support; the Atari 2600 is actually growing -- new games are being written, and new hardware is being manufactured. Affection for the system and its classic games may be strongest among those who were kids or teenagers during its heyday, but even though the 2600's technology is Neolithic compared with present-day systems, it's still gaining new fans. Some are programmers who want to test their skills against the severe restrictions forced by primitive hardware. Some are attracted to games that emphasize playability over whiz-bang graphics. And some just think the system's hip.
The Atari 2600 certainly used to be the hippest console on the block. Long before the PlayStations and Dreamcasts and GameBoys ruled, the Atari 2600 (also known as the "VCS" for "video computer system") was king of the consoles. During the so-called golden age of console gaming, from 1977, the year when the 2600 first appeared, to 1983-84, when the gaming market crashed thanks to a glut of lousy games and bad marketing decisions, Atari was preeminent. Over its 11-year production life span the 2600 sold more than 30 million units, far surpassing its major competitors, Intellivision and Colecovision.
That dominance survives. "The 2600 is far and away the most popular classic system," says Alex Bilstein, a 29-year-old Web developer in Austin, Texas, who is one of the webmasters of a popular Web site dedicated to the Atari 2600. "Every system has its following, but I don't think any compare to the VCS, partly because it was popular in its lifetime and is therefore nostalgic for a lot of people. 'Atari' is retro-cool in certain youth groups today."
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