Toy Files · 🕹️ Video games

G33Z3R Toy Files · 19771984

When did the Atari 2600 come out?

Atari 2600

Introduced
1977 (as the Video Computer System)
Made by
Atari
Price then
$199 at launch
The peak
Around 1982, with Pac-Man and E.T. cartridges — and the crash that followed in 1983

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The file

The woodgrain box that put the arcade on the living-room TV. Space Invaders in 1980 was the killer app; by 1982 Atari was the fastest-growing company in American history and the joystick was in ten million homes.

Then came the bad Pac-Man port, the worse E.T. game, and the 1983 crash that ended the first video game era. The cartridges buried in a New Mexico landfill were dug up in 2014, which tells you how the story ended.

Sources: Wikipedia — Atari 2600

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