Atari 50 is a fantastic piece of videogame preservation that will take you back to the '80s while also making it very clear why the company never really recovered from the crash of 1983.
. It dominated an industry that saw over $3 billion in revenue in 1983, owning almost 60% of the home console market. The Atari 2600 was the standard bearer for home videogames, the system most likely to be found in American homes, and with a massive selection of games unmatched by any of its competitors.
Over the next two years that industry saw revenues collapse by 97%, with Atari and the entire idea of home consoles feeling like a passing fad whose time was up. Nintendo saved the videogame industry with the NES, learning from Atari’s many mistakes en route to becoming a deeply entrenched, decades-spanning part of the pop culture firmament. As Nintendo launches, a fantastic multimedia release that’s both a detailed documentary about the rise and fall of a company that has never been allowed to fully go away, and a playable library of its best and most notable games.
The causes of the videogame crash are well-documented. By 1982 a glut of companies tried to capitalize on the industry’s popularity by rushing out bad games made by inexperienced designers, while Atari itself started sacrificing quality to hit release dates and exploit the popularity of arcade games and movies. Terrible games vastly overnumbered good ones in 1982 and 1983, some of them coming from Atari itself, and that drove away consumers and retailers alike.
The excitement of loading up these games dims quickly and considerably once you start creeping into the 5200 era. The follow-up to the 2600 was a confused mess, with an overly complicated controller and a lack of new, original, exclusive games. Today, even though 5200 versions of Atari arcade hits look nicer than earlier 2600 versions, they still can’t compare to the originals, and often can’t even capture the charm of the technically inferior 2600 ports.
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