Atari

Atari Consoles

Atari was one of the first serious suppliers of gaming consoles for private homes. Although Atari truly made its name with the first arcade machines like Pong, their Atari Video Computer System (VCS) (later Atari 2600) was the first console to be widely brought into living rooms.

Atari spent large sums developing games that, unlike the earlier Pong machines, could now be switched via different cartridges. However, despite this, Atari was under immense pressure to deliver, which led to games being released before they were finished. A fatal example of this is E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, which was rushed through development and released with numerous bugs and an impossible control system. The game flopped completely, and most of the games ended up in a landfill in New Mexico, where they were discovered during an excavation in 2014.