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I guess I'll go with the model I had: 4 switch woodgrain. It's also the model both the Lego 2600 and 2600+ are based on so I guess that makes it the iconic version?

Same! Never got to play 4-player MULE back in the day since I had an XL.

Atari should have committed to a single path for 2600 successor. First it was going to be the 400, then the 5200, then the 7800 and XEGS. And in the interim they were talking to Nintendo about releasing the NES as an Atari-branded console. That's insane! Since they put so much marketing behind the 5200 as the 2600 successor, that's the console they should have stuck with through the 3rd generation. Fix the controller issues, make a cost-reduced "slim" model. And release exclusive games to make people want it! Not only was much of its library a rehash of what the 2600 had, the AtariSoft effort was porting Atari's best games to every system under the sun. And some of those ports were as good as or even better than the ports on Atari's own hardware! How are they supposed to sell their own hardware? The 7800 - send it back to the drawing board for enhancements so it could be released a few years down the line as a true 5200 successor instead of a panic move. Having Atari's most loyal customers spend a hefty amount on 5200 hardware only to kill it after 18 mos was extremely bad for goodwill. If the internet was around back then, that would have been a huge gaming controversy. Just because your competition is doing something doesn't mean you should too. Atari and the other guys were copying each other's bad ideas instead of checking with the customers. Did the customers want a keypad controller, or did you copy it from Mattel? Did consumers really want a mountain of pricey peripherals that are only supported by a couple games each? Or were you just locked in an arms race with Coleco and Mattel to see who can produce the most peripherals. Better management-- Because Atari was printing money during the gaming boom years of the early 80s, it wasn't obvious how bad many of the management decisions were until it was too late and Atari became a huge liability to Warner. "Consoles are dead" - Because Tramiels believed this post-crash conventional wisdom (which they helped spread at Commodore), they neglected the console market for a few years, giving Nintendo a huge opening to exploit and steal Atari's "king of gaming" crown. Turns out that proprietary computers like the ST/Amiga were actually a dead end but proprietary consoles are still alive and well. There's also a few things outside Atari's control that could have gone differently: * What if Jack Tramiel was never terminated from Commodore? What would late 80s/90s Atari be like? * What if Coleco never showed Donkey Kong running on ADAM? Would the falling out between Atari and Nintendo have happened? Would Atari have released the NES console, which would have changed the course of gaming? * What if Atari actually acquired the Amiga chipset? What would Atari Corp do with it? ST design was already far along at this point, so would he have integrated into the ST, delaying release? Introduce it into a later model ala STe? Release it as a separate computer? Or would it become an abandoned footnote like the AMY soundchip or Abaq Transputer? And in an alternate universe where Tramiel doesn't leave Commodore, what would Atari Inc do with it? Release their planned Amiga based gaming console? The 1850XLD? I'm not sure getting the Amiga chipset would have mattered much. Both Atari and Commodore fought and increasingly uphill battle against the PC market and both gave up on their computer lines around the same time.

I've read that the PS5 (and PS4) can't even play audio CDs, though I haven't tried it myself.

Did the recent OS update fix the Pokey sound in the a7800 emulator?

I never saw the appeal of unboxing videos at all. Are people so bored they'll watch someone else take a product out of a box and draw out the process as long as possible? I guess so, people keep making them!

Can we also make the screen shatter and the cabinet shoots a rock at the player for better immersion? Maybe a NERF rock to keep the lawsuits at bay

It's confusing, there must have been an agreement in place to let Atari Games use it. Atari SA has a new "Neo Sprint" game that's in early access on VCS so they must still have the rights.

The gaming journalists do stir that pot, and I think it has little to do with their generation and it's more 1) those articles will get clicks from annoyed players. 2) many of them are people with journalism degrees who didn't get a job at a 'real' publication and so they aren't gamers at heart and therefore struggle with tough games. Elden Ring also got a bunch of game developers annoyed on twitter that the game didn't do quest design correctly or UX correctly, and yet was still a hit with a high metacritic score. Many gamers assumed that by "correct" they meant "the Ubisoft way" of hand-holding your way through quests and other aspects of the game.

Not all modern gamers. That's why series like Dark Souls exist and are popular, to bring an old-school challenge and not hold your hand through the entire game.

There's been A LOT of skepticism around here about whether or not Atari SA is the "Real Atari". I think Wade Rosen's moves have soften a lot of people's stances.

I've never seen one except for Genesis collections, but I didn't realize there was a Taito collection until this thread so thought it was worth a try

I've been trying to get my hands on some of these old collections I missed at the time. Was there ever a collection of Sega Arcade games? It's one I haven't seen (yet?)

I remember there was an article at Onion or other satirical site during the dot-com era that was something like "12 year old kid accidentally buys Atari with allowance money". That indicates how dead and worthless the brand seemed among the general public at the time. Hasbro did little to revive the brand name, that was all on Infrogrames.

What do modern gamers want in an arcade game these day? I'd worry that my ideas and others here would be what we would have liked to see in an arcade game in the 80s/90s, but might not work in a modern context. I'm guessing modern machines that attract money offer something you cant get at home?

Are you sure MacOS isn't LF like other Unix derivatives? I do move text files and scripts between MacOS and Linux, and I have never run into EOL issues, like I do if I move files between Window and Linux and forget to convert.

5200 sprites aren't 8x8, they are the height of the screen + border area. On 5200 you can change the sprite color per line or even the sprite horizontal position (resulting in seemingly more sprites on screen)

There's a ton of them, any particular focus? Track racing? open world? off-road? Sim or Arcade?

True, but Printshop banners were pretty popular around the time inkjets first hit the consumer market in the 80s

Never saw such a beast, and now I wonder why. Some of the older inkjets I owned were pretty poor at paper handling and could have benefitted.

Yeah I just looked and finding black ribbons for the Star NX1000 is easy, color not so much

I had an Okimate 10. The Okimate 20 was higher dpi and maybe faster but it's still the same tech- thermal transfer Thermal transfer is basically waxy ink on the ribbon. The printhead melts it off onto the paper. After the wax gets melted off, you can't really reuse that section of ribbon unlike traditional ribbons (where there's always a bit more ink), so ribbons are essentially one time use and printing is expensive. It also needs a good quality paper smooth paper (like copier or laser printer paper). Coarse paper gives weak results as the waxy ink doesn't stick evenly. On good quality paper the color results are pretty vibrant though. Tractor feed paper works best. Okimate 10 was also unidirectional printing making it extra slow. But since you have an 850, you should have better options available. I remember there being a "Star NX-1000 rainbow" printer which is a 9-pin Epson compatible https://www.atarimagazines.com/v7n10/nx1000rainbow.html

That's why I would think people would be more nostalgic for it. Every compilation Atari SA puts out has the basics of Pong, Asteroids, Centipede, Crystal Castles. But if you want a compilation with games like Gauntlet, Marble Madness, Klax, APB.. good luck! None have been released in over a decade let alone modern "recharged" versions of such games.

The other Atari iteration that doesn't get the nostalgia or respect they deserve (at least around here) is Atari Games. People act like it's not really Atari but its tragic they got separated and should be reunited to make Atari whole. You don't see all that much discussion about their games here. Seems like the Atari Corp side gets all the fandom and nostalgia simply because they had the consumer hardware business.

The Hasbro era is even more ignored from what I've seen, it was very short and they didn't release a whole lot before they sold the name.