Atari 5200

By 1982 the Atari 2600 was five years old and looking it, outclassed by the sharper visuals of the Intellivision and ColecoVision. Atari's answer was the 5200 SuperSystem, a machine derived directly from its own 400 and 800 home computers and boasting genuinely superior graphics and sound. On paper it should have reclaimed the throne. In practice it became one of gaming's cautionary tales.

The hardware was strong, capable of smooth, colorful arcade conversions like Pac-Man, Centipede, and a celebrated version of Star Raiders. But Atari saddled it with a controller that has become infamous. The 5200's joystick used an analog design that did not self-center, so the stick simply stayed wherever you left it rather than snapping back to neutral. Combined with fragile internals prone to failure, it made even good games frustrating to play, and no amount of processing power could overcome a controller people did not want to hold.

Compounding the problem, the 5200 was not compatible with the enormous existing library of 2600 cartridges at launch, alienating the very customers Atari most needed. An adapter arrived later, but the early message was that buyers would be starting over. The console also stumbled into the market at the worst possible moment, just as the industry was tipping toward the catastrophic crash of 1983.

Sales reached perhaps a million units, a disappointment for a company of Atari's stature, and the machine had a startlingly short life. It was effectively abandoned within two years and formally discontinued in 1984 as Atari itself was broken up and sold amid staggering losses.

The 5200 is remembered less for its games, several of which were excellent, than as a study in how a technically capable console can be sunk by poor design decisions and bad timing. Its balky joystick is a permanent fixture in discussions of gaming's worst hardware, and its failure to build on the 2600's dominance marked the beginning of the end of Atari's reign over the home.