Atari 2600 Turns 30

Ah, Atari 2600. How many rainy days, and sunny days was it?

I have to tell you that I still have my old wood paneled Atari 2600, along with the millions of games that I got out of the dollar bin during the Video Game Crash of 1983.

Perhaps a lengthy article explaining the life and death of Atari would be in order? There are some spectacular books chronicalling the subject. One of the best, but the most refuted one is Zap the Rise and Fall of Atari.

The story of Space Wars and Pong! created an Empire overnight - and remember this was all in the 70's - there were parties that would rival Caligula. Stories include the bellowing, wafting smoke in the old skating rink where they assembled the coin op arcade games...

Or the story where the Sears Sales Executive 'popped in' to the R&D 'lab' where there was a test of a new machine. It was a video spectrograph that was manipulated by sound - (i.e. your iTunes "Visualizer.") The Exec. looked at it, and asked "what were you smoking when you came up with this one?" On cue, another 'reseacher' fell out of the closet, and held up a smoldering joint.

"This."