The Atari 2600
The Revolution at Home
When I was young, my brother and sister would often spend the night with their best friends, who were children of my parent’s best friend. I rarely did, because that couple did not have a child my age. But I did look forward to the times I’d get to go there in the evenings, because their family was in the restaurant supply business.
And in the 1970s, restaurant supplies included Pinball machines and the few nascent video games. Which means that in the family room of that house there was a Pong machine! Imagine the wonder, having a video game in your own home. As a child, my thoughts mirrored the equivalent of Ozymandias. Who was this king, whose palace I intruded in. How rich must they be, to have such a thing in their house?
Look on his works, ye mighty!
And I played for a few hours. Then despaired. Over time that house acquired a pinball machine and Space Invaders and a few others. But by then, other houses had caught up with them …
The Atari 2600’s games did not look as nice as Space Invaders, but you didn’t need to be in a specific business to get it. They sold it in stores. And sold multiple game cartridges! You could play (uglier) Space Invaders or (uglier) Pong or (uglier) Centipede or (uglier) anything, really.
I could now look forward to playing video games at my cousin’s house, or at several friends houses … and eventually, after one birthday … I could play videogames at home … on an Intellivision! (Intellivision also had poker and blackjack, which may have influenced my father’s purchasing decision).
But no matter, videogames had arrived in the home and for the most part they have stayed there. Nowadays computer gaming is ubiquitous …. Playstations, X-Boxes, Computer games, phone games. You can stream games on Netflix. The 2600’s graphics and capabilities were laughable even in the day — but Pong does not require a Cray. In any case, Moore’s Law — and billions of dollars of R&D spent chasing the video gamers’ money — won out. Games got steadily better as the hardware and software improved.
By the turn of the millenium (if not earlier), you could buy a replica 2600 joystick that contained the console and dozens (later hundreds) of games at a gas station for $15 or so, just another “Hey, do you remember?” nostalgia purchase. Given the history of computing, there was no way that the Atari 2600 would survive for long. But home console gaming is now a monster industry, tripling Hollywood. Systems come and Systems go ….
But Atari was the first breakout hit, a cultural phenomena. It died out, but the industry it helped spawn and cemented into the culture did not, which is why I consider the Atari 2600 gaming system one of the Most Influential Games of the 20th Century.