Atari 2600



"Have you played Atari today?"

Ah, good old 2600 — originally called the Video Computer System, or VCS, but widely know simply as "the Atari". Folks, this is the definition of classic gaming. It's impressive to see how far some developers have pushed a machine with a measly 128 bytes of RAM - yes, one 8192th of a megabyte. To put this in perspective: if you combined the RAM of every 2600 console ever produced (some 30 million units), you'd get 3.6 GB, less than one typical PC nowadays. Unfortunately, it has the most shovelware of any console to date, so we're here to help you pick the right games from those garage sale bins.

The console itself is worth owning because it looks nice and isn't too costly. The Atari 7800 is backwards-compatible with the 2600's games (and has a pause button); and there are adapters to play them on the Intellivision II and the ColecoVision.

Also, the 2600 had an interesting add-on, the Starpath Supercharger, which greatly expanded the system's RAM and loaded games from cassette tapes.

Much thanks to http://virtualatari.org/ for their java emulator-in-a-browser "Play it now" links.