So I've been lurking the forum for a while now and I've decided to register to share my story. I thought people might like it.
Even though I was born in 1989, just as the Atari 2600 was beginning to die out, I still have some vague childhood memories of the system. This is because my mom happened to have bought one for herself years earlier, and I got to play it. The Atari was my first ever video game system, and it kicked off a lifelong love of gaming. The game I played was Space Invaders - I'm pretty sure we had Pac-Man and Circus Atari, but Space Invaders is the one I remember actually playing and not just looking at the cart of.
So one day the Atari seems to go dead. Knowing what I do now about Atari 2600 systems, it probably wasn't actually dead, but since my family had no technological expertise whatsoever, we all just assumed it was broken because it wouldn't boot up any games. All I knew was that I couldn't play Space Invaders anymore and was very upset about it. I then got a Sega Genesis for my birthday that year, and I've moved from system to system through the last two decades. Ever since the Pokemon craze in the late 90s I've been fairly loyal to Nintendo, but in the last couple years I've begun playing games on the PS2 and Xbox 360 my younger brother has brought into the home. I play games from almost every generation (I've never owned a NES-era system) and I have several retro compilations for my GameCube and PS2, like Namco Museum, Sega Genesis Collection, Sonic Mega Collection, both Capcom Classics Collection games, the entire Midway Arcade Treasures series, and Intellivision Lives. Basically, I have no allegiance to any particular generation nor do I carry a flag in the console wars.
Fast-forward to September 2012. I had an elderly neighbor who lived across the street from me. When she was moved into a retirement home, her children went through her house and did a major cleanup, leaving a ton of junk on the side of the road, free for the taking. Among the pile was a cardboard box with an Atari VCS inside! Shocked at my good fortune, I gathered up the system and everything I could find related to it and brought it to safety - just in time, because it rained hard the next day.
What I found was a system that looked identical to the one from my childhood. Now that I've lurked enough to figure out the differences from one console to another, I can tell you that mine is almost definitely a woody light six-switch - the power supply is an official Atari one, and it says "Made in Taiwan". It's my understanding that foreign-made Ataris aren't heavy sixers. Mine is also a factory refurbished model from 1981, according to the sticker on the bottom. It came with eight games - ET, Combat, Video Pinball, Donkey Kong, Cosmic Ark, Space Invaders, and two copies of Pac-Man. It also came with two coaxial cables. There were no instruction manuals, boxes, or controllers. Fortunately I happen to own an Atari Flashback 2 that I scored off of eBay for under ten dollars back in 2010, and was delighted to find that the joysticks are compatible (I've since learned my Genesis controllers would work, too, but I really wanted to use the joystick like back in the day).
I wanted to hook up the system to see if it worked, but the TV cable was broken - the end was snipped off, leaving some exposed copper wire and no way to connect the Atari to my TV's coaxial port. But the difference between having a broken Atari in 1993 and a broken Atari in 2012 is that I now have the Internet to turn to. I looked up information on replacement parts and how to open the system to remove the broken cable. A few weeks later, I finally got the chance to go to Radio Shack and grab the plug I needed (one of those RCF-to-coax adaptors). Then I spent an evening opening up the Atari, changing the cable, and generally messing around with it as I tried to get a proper picture.
After a lot of time, screws, and reading Atari repair sites, I finally hit upon whatever the solution was (I had basically no idea what I was doing poking around in this thing) and Atari 2600 Space Invaders is displayed in front of me for the first time in 19 years. Every single game worked perfectly (the colors seem off on the Pac-Mans, but that game looks better in black and white anyway) and I ordered some more games to play from atari2600.com. I even found a leatherbound three-ring binder at my local recycling center and have begun recording my high scores in it (there's something about the leather that makes it seem old-school). The only problem I have now is that my coaxial cable does not fit through the hole in the back of the system, so I haven't been able to reassemble it yet (I imagine an X-Acto Knife or something similar could carve out a bit of the plastic shell?).
I've attached a photo of my new Atari collection, including the Flashback 2 (which I now realize I should play more often) posing with its grandfather. I'm a gamer rather than a collector, and more than that I'm a gamer on a budget, so finding a whole video game system and a bunch of beat-up common carts (almost all of which are absent from the Flashback 2's lineup!) for just the cost of the adaptor (3.80 including tax) has made me very happy and has rekindled my love of the oldest of video games. It's too bad that my original Atari is long thrown away - and with it probably some perfectly good games and joysticks - but at least I was able to save this one from the landfill as well.
![Atari 2600.jpg]()
Even though I was born in 1989, just as the Atari 2600 was beginning to die out, I still have some vague childhood memories of the system. This is because my mom happened to have bought one for herself years earlier, and I got to play it. The Atari was my first ever video game system, and it kicked off a lifelong love of gaming. The game I played was Space Invaders - I'm pretty sure we had Pac-Man and Circus Atari, but Space Invaders is the one I remember actually playing and not just looking at the cart of.
So one day the Atari seems to go dead. Knowing what I do now about Atari 2600 systems, it probably wasn't actually dead, but since my family had no technological expertise whatsoever, we all just assumed it was broken because it wouldn't boot up any games. All I knew was that I couldn't play Space Invaders anymore and was very upset about it. I then got a Sega Genesis for my birthday that year, and I've moved from system to system through the last two decades. Ever since the Pokemon craze in the late 90s I've been fairly loyal to Nintendo, but in the last couple years I've begun playing games on the PS2 and Xbox 360 my younger brother has brought into the home. I play games from almost every generation (I've never owned a NES-era system) and I have several retro compilations for my GameCube and PS2, like Namco Museum, Sega Genesis Collection, Sonic Mega Collection, both Capcom Classics Collection games, the entire Midway Arcade Treasures series, and Intellivision Lives. Basically, I have no allegiance to any particular generation nor do I carry a flag in the console wars.
Fast-forward to September 2012. I had an elderly neighbor who lived across the street from me. When she was moved into a retirement home, her children went through her house and did a major cleanup, leaving a ton of junk on the side of the road, free for the taking. Among the pile was a cardboard box with an Atari VCS inside! Shocked at my good fortune, I gathered up the system and everything I could find related to it and brought it to safety - just in time, because it rained hard the next day.
What I found was a system that looked identical to the one from my childhood. Now that I've lurked enough to figure out the differences from one console to another, I can tell you that mine is almost definitely a woody light six-switch - the power supply is an official Atari one, and it says "Made in Taiwan". It's my understanding that foreign-made Ataris aren't heavy sixers. Mine is also a factory refurbished model from 1981, according to the sticker on the bottom. It came with eight games - ET, Combat, Video Pinball, Donkey Kong, Cosmic Ark, Space Invaders, and two copies of Pac-Man. It also came with two coaxial cables. There were no instruction manuals, boxes, or controllers. Fortunately I happen to own an Atari Flashback 2 that I scored off of eBay for under ten dollars back in 2010, and was delighted to find that the joysticks are compatible (I've since learned my Genesis controllers would work, too, but I really wanted to use the joystick like back in the day).
I wanted to hook up the system to see if it worked, but the TV cable was broken - the end was snipped off, leaving some exposed copper wire and no way to connect the Atari to my TV's coaxial port. But the difference between having a broken Atari in 1993 and a broken Atari in 2012 is that I now have the Internet to turn to. I looked up information on replacement parts and how to open the system to remove the broken cable. A few weeks later, I finally got the chance to go to Radio Shack and grab the plug I needed (one of those RCF-to-coax adaptors). Then I spent an evening opening up the Atari, changing the cable, and generally messing around with it as I tried to get a proper picture.
After a lot of time, screws, and reading Atari repair sites, I finally hit upon whatever the solution was (I had basically no idea what I was doing poking around in this thing) and Atari 2600 Space Invaders is displayed in front of me for the first time in 19 years. Every single game worked perfectly (the colors seem off on the Pac-Mans, but that game looks better in black and white anyway) and I ordered some more games to play from atari2600.com. I even found a leatherbound three-ring binder at my local recycling center and have begun recording my high scores in it (there's something about the leather that makes it seem old-school). The only problem I have now is that my coaxial cable does not fit through the hole in the back of the system, so I haven't been able to reassemble it yet (I imagine an X-Acto Knife or something similar could carve out a bit of the plastic shell?).
I've attached a photo of my new Atari collection, including the Flashback 2 (which I now realize I should play more often) posing with its grandfather. I'm a gamer rather than a collector, and more than that I'm a gamer on a budget, so finding a whole video game system and a bunch of beat-up common carts (almost all of which are absent from the Flashback 2's lineup!) for just the cost of the adaptor (3.80 including tax) has made me very happy and has rekindled my love of the oldest of video games. It's too bad that my original Atari is long thrown away - and with it probably some perfectly good games and joysticks - but at least I was able to save this one from the landfill as well.
