Happy 30th birthday, Atari 2600!

See that Wii or Xbox sitting under your TV? The PSP or DS tucked away in your messenger bag? That copy of Pac-man on your cellphone which cost five bucks and expires next month? Each of them owe a debt of gratitude to the granddaddy of all videogame consoles, the Atari 2600, which ushered in an era of unprecedented television usage, and which turns 30 years old this month. That's right, the first 2600 units rolled off the assembly line in October of 1977, delighting both children and kids at heart with games like Pitfall and Pole Position, and helping distract the nation after the untimely death of the King, the tragic crash of Lynyrd Skynyrd's plane, and Pele's retirement. So here's to you, dear 2600: Atari may only be a shadow of its former self today, but you've lived on in our fond memories, in retro Flashback products, and last but not least, in tricked-out mods from the great Ben Heckendorn.

[Elisha Adeagbo @ Oct 1st 2007 12:36AM]

HAPPT BIRTHDAY!!!

[Elisha Adeagbo @ Oct 1st 2007 12:37AM]

HAPPY*

[js @ Oct 1st 2007 12:37AM]

That looks like an AppleTV ad.

[ark_v2 @ Oct 1st 2007 1:51AM]

w00t! atari's new lawsuit!

[holz69 @ Oct 1st 2007 12:46AM]

WTF!!!!!!!
ATARI 2600 DIDNT START VIDEO GAMES IT WAS RALF BEAR!!!!!!!
weres his birthday man
he made fox and hound the very first video game ever

[Allen @ Oct 1st 2007 9:49AM]

I think you mean Ralph Baer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Baer

[Tony @ Oct 2nd 2007 5:23PM]

Was Atari the first video game ever? the first video game system ever? No, of course not - not close. Was it the first video game system to make it big, break into the mainstream public awareness and dominate the landscape with Nintendo sized hugeness.

[john @ Oct 1st 2007 12:48AM]

2600 ROCKED

You could even play 3rd party games on it!
Pretty cool uh?!
It was Un-belieevable
boom!
Would'nt it be great if you could do that with an iphone?

[JAmerican @ Oct 1st 2007 1:14AM]

You can on WM and Palm OS ;)

[Homer J @ Oct 1st 2007 1:10AM]

I loved my 2600. I remember finding it under the tree Christmas morning and thinking there could be nothing better in life. I still remember the feel of the joy-stick when it got all crunch and you could blame lacking performance on the thing. Ahhh the days....

[JAmerican @ Oct 1st 2007 1:13AM]

You can on WM and Palm OS ;)

[RadioNed @ Oct 1st 2007 4:59AM]

Yep, that was a Christmas my brother & I will always remember. Our Dad pulled the "one more present" trick like at the end of "A Christmas Story"... we were both beside ourselves... just looking at that ad makes my thumb hurt. I'll have to look around, we may still have one of our original machines packed away somewheres...Happy Birthday 2600!!

[John @ Oct 1st 2007 1:19AM]

I can't tell you how many hours I spent in front of my Atari 7800 playing 2600 games back in the late '80s/early '90s. Props to the 2600. May it live on for another 30 years in emulation.

Now to work on that component video output hack for my 7800 that I found...

[Philip S @ Oct 1st 2007 1:40AM]

Someone needs to come up with an easy hack to get composite output from a 2600 so I can still use mine when TVs no longer ship with NTSC tuners.

[John @ Oct 1st 2007 1:46AM]

Start here. Composite on the 7800. I misspoke in my original post. I meant to say "composite." http://www.atariage.com/7800/faq/index.html#cat2_11

I don't know how similar the video hardware in the 2600 and 7800 are as I've never owned a 2600, but since they both use a simple RF modulator I can't imagine it would be too different.

[Vorin @ Oct 1st 2007 1:52AM]

it's my b-day too!
i didn't know i shared my b-day with the good ol 2600!

[Jim Goldstein @ Oct 1st 2007 2:44AM]

I may have to break mine out and play Asteroids. The 2600 rules

[abram @ Oct 1st 2007 2:51AM]

I still have one that is new....in the box...sitting in my closet.

[Ray @ Oct 1st 2007 3:15AM]

I love the 2600.its the first video game console i ever played and it still works.. :D

[Allen Foster @ Oct 1st 2007 3:34AM]

You never forget your first 'Woody'.

[Rene @ Oct 1st 2007 5:05AM]

This was my first console as well, glad to see that I am not the only old fart still interested in this stuff.
By the way, I just bought my second console in life, a PS3.... can't wait for the sarcie comments!

[John Brian Silverio @ Oct 1st 2007 5:32AM]

I was born in this era. I remember how sore my hands were from the unforgiving joysticks which merely has 5 primitive switches (?) (not microswitches, a PCB and a bunch of wires.

I still have it! I wonder if it still works after being stored in a humid basement?

[tony @ Oct 1st 2007 5:53AM]

I am sorry, but i owe all my gaming experience to the odyssey 100. lol. pong at its finest

[FatTatt @ Oct 1st 2007 3:51PM]

What about the Odyssey2?
Pick Axe Pete, KC Muchkin, and a bunch of other games no one remembers!
Although, KC Munchkin was way better than the Atari version of Pac Man.

[Vagrant @ Oct 1st 2007 6:49AM]

Pong was the first video game we had in the house, and we played it on an 8" B&W TV. It was truly fantastic, but lost it's luster before Atari rolled in. When the Atari arrived, it got a front seat on the color TV in the living room. It was truly awesome. Tank with it's different modes were great. (Wait, wasn't there planes to fly too?) Then along came Space Invaders and Asteroids. Oh man, let's just say that Asteroids was the first game to keep me up all night, so that i could turn the game over. After getting a blister on my thumb from playing, I learned to hold the joystick differently, which still brought it's own fatigue. I remember looking at my hand after hours of playing and wondering, at 7-8 years old, what the effect of muscle fatigue was going to do to it, but kept playing anyways.

Happy B-Day Atari!

Signed,
Gamer Fatigue Hand

[bugmat @ Oct 1st 2007 7:04AM]

Happy birthday Atari! A classic no doubt! Btw pole position and pac-man were geat!

[jessy @ Oct 1st 2007 7:09AM]

asteroid and space invaders will live on... pong isnt that great. but hey cmon.

atari ftw

[Press er John @ Oct 1st 2007 7:13AM]

SECOND console I ever owned. Like tony above, I also had the Odyssey 1000. PONG at its finest. My poor old Atari lasted a good long time. I clearly remember the insanity among the neighborhood kids when we learned Pac-Man was coming out... and how very disappointed we were. But Activision really made the console. I also stayed up all night, turning over Pitfall and working through Pitfall II, the greatest 2600 game ever.

Wow, I'm old. :D

[Cesar Cardoso @ Oct 1st 2007 8:01AM]

The 2600 lives forever!

And it's (and it'll ALWAYS be) amazing how people crammed so much fun and gameplay on so little hardware.

[Engadgeteer @ Oct 1st 2007 8:33AM]

"See that Wii or Xbox sitting under your TV?"

No, I see a PlayStation 3 sitting under my TV.

[Allen @ Oct 1st 2007 9:48AM]

awww... I'm sorry :(

[Engadgeteer @ Oct 1st 2007 2:07PM]

Sorry? For what?

[joe @ Oct 1st 2007 9:25AM]

Happy B-day! I loved those switches. My favorite game was Outlaw. It doesn't get any more like the old west bouncing bullets off the wall to kill your opponent.

[eric f. @ Oct 1st 2007 9:33AM]

i did love my oitfall. the good old days...

[eric f. @ Oct 1st 2007 9:33AM]

^^ pitfall

[nick @ Oct 1st 2007 9:39AM]

I love my 2600, still have it and it still works. I've owned a number of the newer modern game systems, but there was always something nice about the simplicity and joy of playing with the 2600. Happy Birthday

[Curt @ Oct 1st 2007 10:29AM]

My family had the Sears store brand knock-off system. They even had their own knock-off games that were identical to the proper releases. Its funny to think that they could do that back then.

[Greg Legowski @ Oct 1st 2007 11:03AM]

As I recall, the Sears system and games were directly licensed from Atari. I still agree that it's funny they could do that, but it's funny in a "Sears was a powerful enough retailer to request something like that" kind of way, not a "funny in they could blatantly rip Atari off like that" kind of way.

Just picking nits... ;)

[Ben Spence @ Oct 1st 2007 10:49AM]

The retrothing.com guys announced this as part of their Atari Week a few days ago. I emailed them asking about the October 1977 bit, because a lot of what I've read says the machines hit the stores in November 2007. James wrote back that they were probably in production earlier than October, but it was a safe thing to write.

[Adam @ Oct 1st 2007 12:31PM]

Atari 2600 was the first video game system I played. Man, I wish ours hadn't of busted. I do still have the games somewhere, though. We had a TV in the family room that was just for video games (or watching off-air TV as the cable was only in the living room)

-Adam

[Rich Adrion @ Oct 1st 2007 12:39PM]

I turned over Kaboom from Activision.That was a hard game!

[Michael Jennings-Offen @ Oct 1st 2007 1:00PM]

Not to single myself out as the single biggest geek reading engadget, but I wish you guys could have put up a pic of an actual original 2600, you know, a heavy 6'er. That thing is newer than a NES.

ok, I suck, but whatever.

[RoboDan @ Oct 1st 2007 2:49PM]

Crazy - my bro JUST brought one home. He paid $20 for a box with an N64, Atari 2600, Sega Genesis, SNES, and some games.

[nathan.wong @ Oct 1st 2007 8:06PM]

"Have you played Atari today?"

[Kimi.Johnson @ Oct 1st 2007 9:01PM]

I had an Atari 2600 and played for hours and hours as a kid. I also collected the cartridges for the box art, as the art was great stuff. Did anyone ever play Yars Revenge or Defender? Those were two of my favorites. I compiled my top 10 favorite Atari 2600 games on my friend's blog under his account ... hope you don't mind me posting it, but I did feel like it was very relevant.

http://www.drilluranus.com/posts/my-favorite-atari-2600-games

[Hass @ Oct 2nd 2007 10:23AM]

The Atari 2600 is responsible for turning me into a huge fan of video game entertainment. My brothers and I spent many a day playing everything from Missle Command, Asteroids, Pitfall, Adventure and Joust to Combat. It was an awesome system (how did they do all that was just 2K?!), came with TWO sets of controllers (two joysticks and a set of two paddle controllers) and even had a game thrown in as well. I consider myself an old school gamer and to me, this is where it really started since this was the first successful and enjoyable cartridge based home system. Don't show me the 'Know your roots' t-shirt that has an NES controller on it. Show me one with the iconic one-button Atari joystick on it and I would be sold. Happy Birthday Atari and thank you for starting and inspiring thirty years of console gaming.

[Nhori @ Oct 3rd 2007 10:49AM]

I have one

working today

OK

[jason @ Oct 9th 2007 6:28PM]

Space invaders

http://www.atariguide.com/1/170.htm

Missile command

http://www.atariguide.com/0/133.htm

Asteroids

http://www.atariguide.com/0/072.htm