I hate to show my age but I bought an Atari 5200 when it first came out so I lived through that whole period of time. Basically the reason the 5200 wasn't so popular was packaging Super Breakout with it while Colecovision came with Donkey Kong. If you weren't into the home video game scene at that time you simply can't believe how big Donkey Kong was at that time. It was huge. Every store that was selling video games at that time had Donkey Kong up on their screens. It was everywhere. The in the corner was the 5200 running Super Breakout. Really, the comparison was pathetic. Now I've always been a huge 5200 fan and think it was superior to the Colecovision, but I've got to admit Donkey Kong was a damn good game. Overall the Atari wins the battle with the quality of its games, but it had nothing to compair with the popularity of Donkey Kong. Even PacMan wasn't as popular as Donkey Kong was at that time. Plus after shelling out big money to get a system, and remember this was 20 years ago, a dollar was worth a hell of alot more then than it is now and still those systems were around $300, and getting home and playing Super Breakout, you did feel like you were kind of screwed. But still I've never regretted buying that 5200. What a blast I had with that system!