2nd Generation - Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 home video console was released in September of 1977. It was the first console that popularized microprocessor based hardware and ROM-cartridges. The cartridges where used to store games released at that era. The Atari, originally names the Atari VCS was later renamed for the Atari's part number CX2600. The Atari 2600 was sold at an affordable price of $200. It was the first console that could read code from a cartridge and using a cartridge to sell games made it very popular. The initial marketing idea was to make the console cheap and make money out of the games sold. At that time Atari made it one of the weakest-powered consoles introduced to the market, but gained success due to the great games.

The Design was made to look retro futuristic featuring a wood-plastic rimmed hood. The console came with  2 joysticks, which each consisted of a paddle and a single red button with was used as a trigger. It also came with a Combat cartridge as a starting game. 

Atari used a 1.19 Mhz CPU , had 16 different colors and to lower the cost price used a 13 pin address instead of a 16 pin with a lowered memory of 4KB. The 4KB memory could be upgraded to 8KB but was not efficient. After some time of success in order for the Atari to compete with other consoles they released a game called Space invaders which was the ultimate hit that made the Atari 2600 a must-buy. This console started a frenzy of game making companies to go wild and the result was allot of poor made games which ended up creating the 'Atari crash' of 1983. This console was later discontinued after 15 years of production.

Bibliography:
Content.time.com, (2015). A History of Video Game Consoles - TIME. [online] Available at: http://content.time.com/time/interactive/0,31813,2029221,00.html [Accessed 6 May 2015].

Atariage.com, (2015). AtariAge - Atari 2600 History. [online] Available at: https://atariage.com/2600/ [Accessed 6 May 2015].

Wikipedia, (2015). Atari 2600. [online] Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600 [Accessed 6 May 2015].

YouTube, (2015). The Video Game Crash of 1983: Continue?. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvHcYe2sQ-I [Accessed 6 May 2015].