Game Console Reviews – Atari 2600

Game consoles are one of the best ways to entertain you, your family and your friends. However, these things wouldn’t be possible if not for the first-ever game console called Atari 2600. This article will be discussing this primitive game console, and will show you some of its impressive features 30 years ago. This will help you learn how game consoles evolved and how technology has brought our gaming experience to a whole new level.

This video game console was released in 1977 and with its hit game Pac-Man, Atari 2600 rapidly gained popularity in the gaming world. Atari 2600 uses a dedicated hardware that has all the games built inside the console. Although micro-processors were already available during that time, it was only Fairchild Channel F that uses this technology. Atari 2600 brought gaming to the world and is the most popular form of entertainment during that time.

Unfortunately this game console is only available in pubs and arcades wherein you need to insert tokens in order to play games. This console is normally bundled with two joystick controllers and a conjoined pair of propel controllers, with a built-in game inside the machine, which allows two gamers to play the game at the same time.

The outline of Atari 2600 is quite similar with most video game consoles and home computers during that time. The console only uses 128 bytes of RAM which allows it to read games and display video using the built-in screen. Having a frame buffer inside a console during that time is almost impossible, because the needed RAM for it will be very expensive and impractical.

Although it may seem lame for us today, Atari 2600 is considered as the most technologically advanced machine during that time. In addition to its “powerful” features, Atari 2600 also supports several input devices like joysticks, keyboards, and propel controllers.

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