Atari's peak period.

[AtariDude]

The best period was in 1980 when Atari released Space Invaders for the Atari VCS. This was the first time that an actual arcade port was made available for the home.

 

At the end of 1979, the VCS and Odyssey2 system from Magnavox were neck and neck and this investment by Atari to nab the license rights from Taito for Space Invaders netted Atari $415 million in gross income. This was twice what they made in 1979. People were literally being the VCS for the sole purpose of playing Space Invaders in the home.

 

Everything seem to be going well until the end of 1982. In early 1983, the big video game crash would begin to surface. Just about every computer had a down year. Sine companies did so poorly that they went out of business.

 

To make matters worse, The Tramiel family purchased Atari from Warner Communications during the summer of 1984 and shelved the Atari 7800. The Atari 7800 system was all set to be delivered to stores and was housed at a warehouse. Instead the Tramiels decided to concentrate on computers and completely ignore the videogame market.

 

This allowed Nintendo to take over the videogame market beginning in 1985 and by the time Atari noticed and released the 7800 in 1986, it was too late. Nintendo had taken over the videogame market and Atari began to die a slow death from that point.

[AtariDude]

oops buying the VCS not being..sorry about the typo.

[AtariDude]

oops again. It should have read that just about every company had a down year. In addition, some companies did so poorly that they went out of business.

 

I miss my spell checker

[King Atari]

As we all know, the 2600 had a long lifespan, but was the best period of that span? For me, it's the silver label period and the red label period. Both had much improved graphics over the earlier text-picture label era. What was the best though?

[King Atari]

When "Space Invaders" was released, it was one of the best moments in the life of the 2600. It was a vast improvement over the late 70's releases. I always thought "Superman" was a good early game. Primitive graphics compared to later games, but fun anyways.

[Jess Ragan]

The Atari 2600 Renaissance, from 1986-1990. The best games were released around that time. I need to write an article about this for my website, because I still need an opener for The 26 Hunter and I think this would do nicely.

 

JR