November 1, 2008by Chris

Pushing ahead through the money pile, Atari decided to venture into home computers and the Atari 400 and Atari 800 came to be. Each computer was named for how much memory there were to have (400k and 800k). But by fabrication time, memory was cheaper so both machines ended up with 16 and 48 kilobytes. Gotta love the progression of technology.

The lesser memory of the Atari 400 confused the public and the agonizing 'McDonalds' membrane keyboard planted the seeds for carpel tunnel syndrome for the enthusiasts who would stop at nothing when it came to programming the custom 256 color graphic ANTIC chip and delving into machine language to speed up the sprite-predated 'player/missile' graphics.

The evolving Atari 8bit family executed some extremely invigorating gaming titles such as Defender, Joust, Shamus, Ballblazer, Preppy, Blue Max, Necromancer, and kilobytes of others. Most noteworthy, however, is Star Raiders - clearly the best 3D game of its time: a wild romp through the galaxy, fighting a plethora of baddies with twin photons - fore and aft - protecting space stations or even blowing them up just for fun (and gaining the prestigious title of 'Garbage Scow Captain').

Atari 400 and 800 were beautiful systems..nothing will ever be like that ever again.

CS 11-8