Atari

Atari is one of the names that basically built the home video game industry. Long before Nintendo and Sony were household names, Atari was the company that brought arcade style gaming into the living room. For a whole generation of players, an Atari console was their very first taste of video games at home.

The console most people picture when they hear the name is the Atari 2600, released back in 1977. It used swappable cartridges and that classic single button joystick, and it ran a library of games that defined early gaming. Titles like Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Pitfall, Asteroids, and Adventure were huge at the time, and a lot of the ideas in those games are still showing up in games today. The graphics were simple by modern standards, just blocky shapes and a handful of colors, but they were a big deal when this was the cutting edge.

Atari is also tied to one of the most famous stories in gaming history, the video game crash of 1983. The market got flooded with too many low quality games, the rushed Atari version of E.T. became the poster child for the whole mess, and the industry took a major hit before Nintendo helped revive it a couple of years later. It is a great reminder of just how much the early days of the industry rode on Atari's success and stumbles.

The brand never really disappeared either. In recent years Atari has leaned into its retro legacy with throwback hardware and re-releases of its classic library. If you want to read about their modern comeback console, check out our Atari VCS page.