Happy 40th Birthday Atari!

[Pentad]

Today is Atari's 40th birthday.

I had one of the 'sixer' Atari 2600's when I was a kid.  After playing with that for two years I sold it and bought a Commodore 64 and never looked back.

I guess I feel kind of old now...lol  

Anyone want to share their Atari stories?

-P

[odin]

I loved my Atari 2600. Even at the end of the 80s.

[specialK]

My first computer was 65XE, after that I upgraded to Amiga 2000 but always missed the 8bit so I purchased an 800XL.  I got my hands on the 2600 in year 2001 and I have to say I like it…still play it from time to time.

[Bif]

Wow, indeed time flies. My parents got divorced in 1977 or 1978 or something when I was 7 or 8, and first thing I remember my dad doing when he moved out was to go buy me an Atari at Sears. It was the divorce guilt that made him buy it I am sure, plus he kept at his house so I would have a reason to want to go visit him. It was the first video game/computer I ever owned.

I can actually remember going with him to buy it fairly clearly, which is pretty amazing since I remember little else from that era. I seem to remember it costing $365, and we also bought "home run" at the same time. I played a few games against my dad but that's about all the video games he ever played after that. I'd play each game for days on end until there was just nothing else to do with it. It's amazing how focused in you can get on these games when you are that young.

I also remember going to the mall almost every weekend and begging my dad to shell out $70 for a new game. I feel shame about it now, thinking how expensive those games really were in 1970s dollars. The boxes always looked so amazing. The games were almost always a disappointment though. Arcade games were way ahead at the time. I think I ended up with about 40 or 50 of them in the end. I sold the system in the early 80s I think to help fund something else I wanted badly. Skis, guitar, I can't quite remember. Like anyone else, I sure wish I hadn't sold it now, would be nice to still have. But the games really are pretty crap when you go back and play them. Some were pretty good, most Activision games were good, and Imagic games seemed on another level. Even some of the simpler early games like Space Invaders, Adventure, and combat  were pretty well done. We also had Indy 500 and the paddles, which was pretty cool, but very expensive.

I didn't own another system until I bought my Amiga in 1988. Had to go beg to play NES games and with C64s and the like at friends houses.

[Drummerboy]

Happy 40th Birthday!

I still have my Atari 2600 "Woody", from 1978!.  The Atari 2600 its a great Video Game Console! (was designed by Jay Miner! -  Maybe the Amiga 0.1?). although its limitations. I has maybe over 150 Game Cartdridges. From the more commons like Combat, Space Invaders, Berzerk (Great Game!), Yars Revenge (Great Game), to other less commons, like HERO, Kung Fu Master, California Games, Winter Games..

Also i still have  any Atari 600XL Home Computer, with several Cartdridges too.  

But back in the 80s, i had Atari 65/130 XE, and i was in any Atari 8bit Computers Club!. Nice times, although i was always more Commodore user Guy, was close to Atari too.

One pic of my hummble Atari 600XL

[LoadWB]

We got the Sears Intelligames console for Christmas one year.  I actually still have the same one.  I remember staying up late one night playing Atari with my dad for a sleep-deprived EEG the next day.  Poor Dad couldn't hang with me.

Around 1984 we got a TI-99/4A, but the 2600 (Sears) still had a prominent spot in front of the living room TV.  I didn't have a lot of games like my friends had, but I had enough to keep me occupied game-wise, plus some of the games we got for the TI.  Later when my friends went from the 2600 to the NES I moved to a Commodore 64, instead.  It was more fun and had MUCH better games, but was a chore to have set up on the TV, so the Atari remained our family gaming centerpiece.

Later on in life I managed to pick up a 7800 which I have modded for S-Video into my entertainment system.  I also got a couple of 5200s which I wanted for the better games.  During my C64 days a buddy of mine had an Atari 800 and we had Atari 1200s at school, so I had it in my head to get me an Atari computer at some point.  That came around early 1990 when I picked up an Atari 800XL with a 1050.  Still have it, too.

My grandfather had an Atari 520ST, which I took to like a duck to water.  It's funny, really, with all my exposure to Atari stuff that I went the Amiga route.  I certainly don't regret it, though I would very much like to get my hands on an ST -- one of the advanced models would be nice like the STFM or MegaSTs or whatever, though I wouldn't pass up a 1040ST.  My grandfather's 520ST disappeared after he died, sadly.

Lot of personal adventures, exploration, and learning for me and the Atari.  I have to say that while it wasn't prominent in my later life it certainly held a defining role for me.  I'm very happy to have grown up during the 80s home computer revolution.  I wouldn't mind having been born a little earlier, but it's a nice feeling to have touched just about everything that came out during those times and to carry that experience with me.

[runequester]

Never owned one, but a friend of mine had a 2600, before the C64, and we had some fun moments on the beast.

[JimS]

My second computer was an Atari 800. When the 800XL came out, I got one of those and did the 256K ram upgrade. They're still in the storage unit somewhere. I started and ran an Atari user group for years, until the Amiga came out.... then I jumped ship. ;-) Just recently I found online a copy of an old label printing program I wrote back in the day... It was kinda fun to see it run under an emulator on the pc.

[Pentad]

As I posted earlier I received an Atari 2600 for Christmas in '79 I think (I was 10).

A year or two later, they brought Atari 800 computers into my math class so we could do programming.  It was an epiphany for me.  Nothing in my life sense has had so a profound affect on my life's direction.

I talked with my parents about selling my 2600 and using that money along with Christmas to get a computer.  

The problem with Atari -the only computer I knew about- was that it was expensive.  Way more than my parents were willing to spend.

I found the Commodore 64 was much cheaper and had better graphics and sound.

Thus my Commodore life began...

[Megamig]

Happy Birthday Atari.
 
One thing I loved about the ST is the internal power supply. I never got C= fascination with power bricks. They were yuck!

[runequester]

It's funny, even though I have seen plenty of videos comparing the ST and Amiga, and I know the miggy is the better beast, since the ST's were basically gone in Denmark by the time I got a computer, they always had a sort of mythic quality to me