Sketches of Atari 2200 Portable

[Albert]

http://www.atari-history.com/videogames/2200/index.htmlWith all the talk about creating portable Atari 2600 systems and using the Gameboy Advance as a platform to emulate the 2600, the Atari Historical Society decided it was time to create a page highlighting the Atari 2200 Portable VCS. That's right, Atari was considering at one time creating a portable version of its wildly popular 2600 console. Have a look at these sketches and be amazed that they were created twenty years ago by Atari Industrial Designer Regan Cheng.

[Fretwobbler]

Is that big grey box in the foreground the battery

 

Adam

[Scott Stilphen]

Another over-ambitious vaporware product. Guess it didn't take them too long to figure out the proposed built-in "flat-screen" was technically cost-prohibitive at the time

[Albert]

quote:

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Originally posted by Scott Stilphen:

Another over-ambitious vaporware product. Guess it didn't take them too long to figure out the proposed built-in "flat-screen" was technically cost-prohibitive at the time

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Yeah, I love that one (which is one of the reasons I stuck it on the front page). Some of those designs sure do look pretty modern, even by today's standards. I'd love to know how the hell they were going to pull off a flat screen when it'd be many years before laptops were affordable with such technology (and even then only in B&W)! Still, does look cool.

 

..Al

[Ze_ro]

Frankly, most of those sketches seem rather ill-conceived... they look about as portable as a Vectrex. Would this thing have come before or after the 2000? Some of the pictures seem so share a resemblance to it (The ones with built-in side controllers).

 

--Zero

[liveinabin]

yeah, this would have cost THOUSANDS of dollars to buy, it would have made more sense to buy a Kray 6 to play Tron on

[+-^CrossBow^-]

hehe...a Kray 6....LOL...Priceless!

[weaselbrains]

But does anybody know exactly what the purpose of these drawings was.

 

These may have been only preliminary drawings - and looking at the number of totally different designs I'd say that they were very preliminary.

 

So just because somebody drew an Atari with a flat screen doesn't mean Atari ever looked seriously at producing it. It would have been very damn cool if they did though.

 

-mitchell-

[liveinabin]

I'd say they're fairly serious concept sketches. before the wonder of computer design, this is what design illustrations looked like. all pantone markers and gouache paint.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

What I find interesting in these sketches is that many elements shown on those pages were later used in final concept drawings for some of the other later units that weren't released. Also the idea of the storage for joysticks and carts was always something Atari was interested in. The 5200 is the only unit where they actually did build some sort of built in storage.

 

Anyway, the drawings are cool but most of the units in those drawings aren't really all that much smaller than the Jr. turned out to be.

[Ze_ro]

quote:

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Originally posted by -^Cro§Bow^-:

Also the idea of the storage for joysticks and carts was always something Atari was interested in. The 5200 is the only unit where they actually did build some sort of built in storage.

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Kind of ironic that the system they finally did this to happened to be their largest machine by a wide margin (even without the storage!)

 

--Zero

[liveinabin]

These look like 'brainstorming' sketches, ie. a company will ask its designers 'what would you like to see, irrelevant of cost', all these sketches get produced, the silly stuff (flat screen) gets ignored and some of the nifty little design ideas get used for later projects. I dont think its at all a coincedence that some of these drawings show design features built into later Atari games systems.

[Albert]

quote:

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Originally posted by liveinabin:

These look like 'brainstorming' sketches, ie. a company will ask its designers 'what would you like to see, irrelevant of cost', all these sketches get produced, the silly stuff (flat screen) gets ignored and some of the nifty little design ideas get used for later projects. I dont think its at all a coincedence that some of these drawings show design features built into later Atari games systems.

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In the game industry we call sketches like this "concept art", although I'm sure that we don't have a monopoly on that term. There might be hundreds of drawings like this for a typical project. I'd be willing to bet that thousands of such sketches were made during Atari's lifespan. It's amazing to watch have quickly talented artists can generate concept sketches of this nature. If you have several full-time artists creating them, well, you can imagine how much is probably not even saved. It's fortunate that so many sketches like these from Atari have survived and in such good condition.

 

..Al