A Brief History of Video Games:
Chapter 2
Atari Video Computer System...the 2600
(Part 1)
The Atari 2600 (originally the Atari Video Computer System or VCS, until 1982 rebranding to coincide with the release of the Atari 5200) was the first majorly successful console in the video game industry. Originally conceived by Steve Mayer
and Larry Emmons in 1973/74 it was eventually designed by Mayer and Ron Milner
in 1975 after seeing the MOS Tech 6502 
showcased at WESCON trade show. After realizing that even
at about $25 dollars a piece the 6502 was still cost prohibitive, nearly ending the 2600 before it even launched. Not wanting to lose a lucrative deal the chip designer, Chuck Peddle 
(the man with one of the coolest names
Ive ever typed), offered them the planned 6507 
processor at half the price(about $12). From this point Atari acquired a JOLT machine
From here Joe Decuir
was brought in to debug the original programming. He is the one that gave the system the Legacy Name of STELLA (it was actually the name of the brand of bike he had, despite all the other rumors you may have heard).
Decuir is credited with starting the coding that would make up the graphic user interface of the 2600. The next hand in the systems
creation was Jay Miner.
Miner is crediting with one of the key components of the 2600, the TIA(Television Interface Adapter).
For those in the know you understand how brilliant this bit of programming/engineering really was,
for those who dont I recommend the book “Racing the Beam” by MIT Press.
The fact that the design of the system is what it is also is why we have regional games. It was designed so that while the over-scan is being”drawn”
is when the game processes “logic”, due to each region (NTSC, SECAM, and PAL)
having to match the resolution of TV in that region, meaning different times it would be “out of bounds”. 
Years later we
do it for cultural reasons more than anything I think, just funny to realize that there was once a logical reason other than it costs to much to translate.
The next group brought in were the guys that helped develop the actual cartridges. George Landrum and Doug Hardy had both been with competitor Fairchild as they launched their Channel F.
They were joined by James Asher. Landrum had written the report suggesting design elements such as the
iconic wood grain finish,
as well as suggesting four or five built in games. While the preinstalled games were not included in final design, another of his suggestions, “idiot proof, shock proof” games, was followed
up on by Asher and Hardy. Hardy took the design that Fairchild had used and changed just enough to avoid patent infringement and that became the 2600 cartridge format.
By October of 1976 Warner Communications
(yes that
Warner)
saw a chance to profit off of video games and more importantly saw a company in Atari that had a product worth producing but not the money needed to do so.
They purchased Atari outright for 28 million dollars (133 million today) and injected 120 million(575 million today) into development of the now named Atari VCS.
At the Summer Consumer Electronic Show in June 1977 it made its debut.
Initially with an announced retail release
of October. Rumors swirled for years that the announcement was delayed due to a previous patent lawsuit involving Magnavox over Ralph Baer’s patents 
The system was launched in September of 77 at 199 dollars (900 dollars today!). The 2600 launched with two controllers, and packed in with Combat cartridge.
Other launch titles included Basic Math, Air Sea Battle, Blackjack, Indy 500, Star Ship, Street Racer, Surround and Video Olympics. In the final 4 months of 77 they moved roughly 400k units, less than expected, this is thought to be due to delayed release and consumers unfamiliar with he relatively new cartridge format(previous systems were “pong” clones,
usually single built in game, although later pong clones contained multiple games or variations of the one game.In 78 the sales stayed at about the same pace, if not slightly slower, moving only 550k out of the 800k produced. Following an infusion of cash by new owners Warner(a choice that will factor into Atari’s downturn later,
as insider trading dating back to this cash infusion was found to have occurred)in early 79, the company had a much better 79, as during the 79 holiday season alone they shipped 1 million units.
It wasnt all good news in 79 though, Atari’s building success and the market being thin at the time led both Magnavox(With the Odyssey2)
and Mattel(through their Intellivison)
joining the market and becoming competitors in the swappable ROM console battle.
Following the progress of 1979, Atari produced
the first officially licensed arcade conversion with a port of Taito’s Space Invaders
creating the Atari 2600’s first killer app.
The launch of the game coincided with Atari sales doubling, they would do the
same in 81 and 82. It was this success that lead to Atari launching the 5200
as well as changing the name of the VCS to officially being the 2600.
While this is often considered to be a bad choice, the more damaging blow may have been dealt by a leather company out of Connecticut. The Colecovision,
launched by Coleco ("CO"nnecticut "LE"ather "CO"mpany).
Coleco made a big splash by getting the exclusive rights to Donkey Kong
from some company from Japan
and bundling it in with
every console.
Nintendo’s arcade hit was a major weapon against the 5200, with Coleco outright refusing to publish it on the system and Coleco, holding exclusive console rights, released gimped versions for both the 2600
and Intellivision
(at least in comparison to the better Colecovision port).
(As an interesting aside to this story, Atari did win the Computer rights to Donkey Kong and released it on a range of computers of
the 80s
(Apple II)
(C64, US Version)
(C64, UK Version)
(PC Booter)
(TI-99/4A)
(VIC-20)
including the Atari 400/800 range
that had much architecture in common with he 5200. Coleco in the meantime had released the ADAM computer, both as a stand-alone device
and as an add-on for the Colecovision. Now what happened next is debated but either Coleco believed their console exclusive rights allowed them to release a version for the ADAM add-on
(incorrectly as the contract was for cartridge based consoles only) or they saw an opportunity to stick it to Atari by showing how good one of their games would look on the system.
Of course I believe it may be somewhere in the middle, they had the code from the cartridge version, the systems were designed with portability in between the two in mind so easy quick conversion plus they could show up Atari and had the plausible deniability of saying they thought they had the rights to it.
In normal circumstance this would of been frowned on lawsuit threatened and nothing would come of it beyond that. In normal circumstances...but this was not normal circumstances. The third company involved in this triangle was Nintendo
who happened to be at the very 1983 CES Chicago that the ADAM was debuted running Kong. Why was Nintendo at CES in 83 when the NES wouldn't launch until 85? They were negotiating with Atari to distribute the NES, then the Nintendo Advanced Video System, an obvious play on the original Atari VCS name.
Atari was furious with Coleco as the war between them was real, Nintendo demanded and was given concession by Coleco that the ADAM port would not be released, but Atari was upset with Nintendo over this and did not finalize the deal with Nintendo that day, just over a month later Atari CEO Ray Kassar
was fired, and Nintendo decided to go it alone
thus beginning Atari’s
downfall, even if they didnt know it at the time.)
Going back to Spring of 82, Atari released one of the most legendary “critical flops that sold insanely well” in game history with the 2600 version of Pac-Man.
While it reportedly sold over 7 million copies, it was widely lambasted as a rushed poor port. Shovel-ware before shovel-ware was a thing.
This “success” lead to Holiday 82 where the ET game was expected to sell well
(having 4 million copies
made) but only sold ok, at 1.3 or so million. It can be argued if this was the beginning of the Video Game Crash of 83 or just a sign that it had already started, but the poor game, one of the earliest Christmas Rushed games
in history(Howard Scott Warshaw was only given 5 weeks to program it alone with Jerome Domurat doing the graphics and numerous restrictions in place on what they could do., but it did have awesome box art)
along with Pac-Man are rightfully considered among the worst console games of their era.
That is not to say it was these two games that caused the video game crash and the beginning of the end for Atari.One of the biggest issues was over estimating the growth rate of the industry. As one Goldman Sachs analyst pointed out that yes demand was up 100% year to year but production had been up 175%, purely unsustainable business model.
Ray Kassar estimated that the saturation point for sales of consoles would be when 50% of households had a system (84 million households in 1982 so half would be roughly 42 million) but in reality the saturation point ended up at around 15 million units as this is when the crash occurred ( in reality there had been 25 million total units sold between all the swappable ROM cartridge systems).
A glut of low quality games pushed by new third party publishers trying to emulate the successful third party publishers like Activision
and to a lesser extent Imagic
Mattel
Parker Brothers
CBS Video Games
Coleco
and Games By Apollo.
There were charges of Industrial espionage and reverse engineering among these new publishers and even involving Atari as they were accused by Mattel after hiring away some of the Intellivision team. This expansion of third parties can be seen by the fact that between June and December of 1982 the number of Atari games went from just 100, all the way to 400. A six month increase of 300%
or roughly 50 games a month for half a year.
The market flooding become so bad most analyst thought that only 10% of the games next year would make up 75% of sales(for modern context Steam sales including indies and free to play games end up about the same).
Another often overlooked aspect of the Crash is the price war between Texas Instruments
and Commodore
that lead to computers being less expensive
than video game consoles, and in the end the market went from an impressive 42 billion in 1982 to a gutted 14 billion by 1985.
Most Notable Games (1977):Combat
Indy 500
Video Olympics
Most Notable Games (1978):Breakout
Most Notable Games(1979):Bowling
Most Notable Games(1980):Adventure
Space Invaders
Most Notable Games(1981):Asteroids
Missile Command
Kaboom!
Most Notable Games(1982):Pac-Man
ET: The Extra Terrestrial
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Pitfall!
River Raid
TL:dr: Atari 2600 got made
shit went down
market collapsed
Atari survived
shit went down again
and market again collapse
To Be Continued.....
While this was originally going to cover the entirety of the Atari 2600 history, I really think at this point that separating it in to multiple articles is the way to go
I have gone from Development up to the Crash of 83 in this article and plan is currently to go from Crash through the launch cycle of the 7800 in 1987(as the games and important events slow down in the later years). From there I would finish up on the life cycle of the system in a final post.
Anyway thank you for reading if any of you did, if not no worries.
This post is very different in style from my normal ones, still trying to figure out how to do this, if you have any suggestions, kiss my...lol no kidding lmk.
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