The History of the Atari 7800

Atari 7800 Console and Hardware

The Atari 7800 was released in 1986 by Atari and produced by General Computer Corporation. The project began in 1983 as the Atari 3600 with the aim of making more realistic ports of arcade games, such as the ColecoVision, but the following year the company was sold and the project was shelved. Due to payment problems to GCC, the hardware was only released two years later. The console came with a SALLY CPU, a customized version of the 6502c, with 1.79 MHz of power, a custom PPU video chip, called MARIA, with 256 colors and 25 simultaneously, a TIA sound chip used in the 2600 also with 2 channels and 4kb of RAM. The console came with less memory and sound than its predecessor, which had 16kb of RAM and 4-channel PSG sound. The console was designed to compete in 1984 with the NES (which won in terms of video chip and RAM) and the SG-1000 (which won in terms of video, colors and RAM), but it did not count on the appearance of the Master System in 1985, which beat the 7800 in everything except the video chip, which was of a lower class, the so-called VDPs. But despite having better hardware than its biggest competitor, the NES, it did not produce graphically better games than it.

Pole Position

Another problem arose with the delay in the release, the production of games ported from original arcades from 1980-83, which were already out of date in 1986. Despite this, they were released, with Pole Position II coming with the device. In addition, there was the NES problem, which brought in companies such as Activision, Capcom, Taito and Namco to produce games exclusively for the device. Luckily, Atari found a loophole, managing to port games from these companies released in arcades that were not theirs, also giving the rights to their games to the manufacturer of these arcades, and thus some games could be ported to the Atari console. Among them, we had Mario Bros., Double Dragon, Commando, Rampage, Xenophobe, Ikari Warriors and Kung-Fu Master. The console also had many improvements, from a joypad based on the SG-1000, to the possibility of running Atari 2600 games, which its predecessor failed to support. It also required digital signatures for its games, avoiding the excess of bad and repeated games that resulted in the 1983 crash with its 2600 model.

Atari 7800 Games

Among its successful games, we had ports of its predecessors, such as Xevious, Centipede, Choplifter, Galaga, Donkey Kong Jr., Fatal Run, Ms Pac Man, Dig Dug and many others. Despite this, it had fewer games ported from its predecessors than the 5200, with practically half of the games released as exclusive to an Atari console, which was the case of Pole Position II, One On One, Impossible Mission, Super Skateboardin', Alien Brigade, Tower Toppler, Karateka, Scrapyard Dog, Basketbrawl, Mean 18, Super Huey UH-IX, among others, totaling 26 games out of a total of 59 released for the device. The console also had unlicensed arcade ports released between 2005 and 2022, such as Klax, Beef Drop, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and others, most of them from the AtariAge website. Even with the reported problems, along with poor marketing, some slow ported games and a smaller number of games released in total compared to its predecessor, it sold 10 million units in six years, having released 1 million of them in the first two years, similar to the Atari 5200. The console was discontinued in 1992, along with the 2600 and Atari's 8-bit computers.