Atari 5200 brings home the arcade in November 1982...and nobody cares


Atari makes watches these days, and that's phenomenal because it's time to consider the DeLorean of video game consoles, the impossibly sleek Atari 5200. Like Rocky Balboa in the first movie, Atari became the People's Champion with the Atari 2600, but took a merciless pounding and fell short of actual victory from a graphics and sound standpoint. When it came time for a sequel in 1982, the boys and girls in Sunnyvale were looking for Rocky II redemption. A little respect from their peers and the hardcore arcade denizens of the world. Alas, the stairs in Philadelphia seemed a lot taller than in the movies when Atari began its spirited ascent in November 1982.

The 5200 entered the ring as the favorite in the match. Atari had the sales clout and the coveted arcade franchises. Now it was bringing in true arcade-quality graphics and sound. Spoiled brats who mocked the 2600's tablet-munching Pac-Man conversion in 1982 are still laughing about the game today. Why, even K.C. Munchkin on the Odyssey 2 console wiped the floor with Atari's flickering, squared-off gobblefest.

But when Atari rolled out Pac-Man for the 5200, the skeptics were floored by the faithful rendition of America's hottest arcade game. The 5200 not only had Berserk, but their version talked and taunted the player in the way the Stern arcade machine first turned the heads of gamers in darkened bars, pizza parlors, and arcade palaces. "Chicken - fight like a robot!" And Atari was ready to fight, indeed.

The futuristic lines of the 5200 were only matched by its controllers, for which four ports beckoned on the machine. That's right - four players at once. So many buttons! Slick keypad overlays like Intellivision and Colecovision! Yet the controllers that looked and felt so good turned out to be the Achilles' heel of the machine. The nifty little sticks had an aversion to performing the simple task of returning to center when let go, something the 2600 and virtually every arcade machine could do. Longetivity and durability were not things the 5200 controllers were known for, either.

Along with the hefty price, the shortage of launch titles, and the new idea of having to buy expensive new systems that didn't play the cartridges you already had...well, that last one, frankly, just pissed a lot of parents off. And Mom and Dad had veto power, not to mention clear heads. It would take the game industry decades to wear down consumers with the prescription drugs and strong marijuana that would sap their ability to fight back against anything from high taxes to overinflated game console prices, creating an audience now willing to pay astronomical sums for Playstation 12. Parents still in possession of gumption at Christmas 1982 were a death sentence for the Atari 5200.

The bulk of the 5200 library, ultimately the smallest of any major game console in history, would arrive in 1983. And it had some great titles like Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, Space Dungeon, Ms. Pac-Man, and Star Raiders. But the lack of software and the press coverage of the controller issues made the 5200 a hard sell, when there were so many hot titles still being cranked out for the old 2600 you already had in the family room free and clear.

By spring 1983, the 5200 was the Betamax of game consoles—technically superior, spiritually pure, and doomed. Atari slashed the price to $189, then $99, then gave them away with cereal proofs-of-purchase. The analog dream curdled into a sticky residue inside millions of non-centering joysticks.  

Yet something lingered. In the attics of America, beneath boxes of Members Only jackets and Duran Duran cassettes, the 5200 sits in its cardboard sarcophagus, waiting for the retro archaeologists of 2042 to plug it in and marvel at the hubris: a machine so ambitious it tried to turn your living room into an arcade cockpit—and almost, almost succeeded.  

Location: Sunnyvale, CA, USA

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