In 1982 Atari released its newest and most powerful home video game console,
originally shown as The Atari Video System X (VSX) the Atari 5200 was born.
With state of the art technology brought over from the Atari 400/800 computer
systems the Atari 5200 packed a mean punch and came in a really mean looking
case as well. The Atari 5200 represented a pushing of
the envelope in video game systems. With START, PAUSE
and RESET buttons on its all new controllers, Atari was hoping to give
its gamers the best it could offer. Many people thought the
Atari 5200 was Atari's answer to the Colecovision, however the Atari 5200
was meant to be the Intellivision killer. Intellivision always
boasted about its 16 position controller versus Atari's 8 position so Atari
fired back with a full 360 degree speed sensitive joystick which was a
brilliant design... except it had several short comings, the joysticks
were flimsy and easy to break, the rubber around the base would turn into
tatters after only a few hours and worst of all, the joystick was non-centering
making games such as Pac Man a labor of fustration to play.
(It should be noted, that during the course of Atari's support of the Atari
5200, 9 revisions of the Atari 5200 joysticks were made. The
rubber base was made thicker, the joystick stalk was shortened and the
"flex circuit" improved. Atari was also working on a
new self-centering joystick as well as an Arcade joystick.
The Atari 5200 was cancelled before these new controllers were completed
and released.) The other problem with the Atari 5200 were its games,
they were the same tired old releases that had already been seen time and
again and although much improved over their Atari 2600 counterparts, gamers
wanted to see new game titles, meanwhile Coleco was packing in the hottest
game in the arcades: Donkey Kong. Also Coleco had an Atari
2600 compatible interface before Atari did for its own 5200!!!
Add to that the fact that the Coleco had all sorts of new and exciting
controllers and promises, while all Atari had for the 5200 was a very well
made and very expensive Trak Ball controller. Talk of
a computer keyboard for the Atari 5200 was mentioned, but due to a conflict
with Atari's Home Computer Division, the Atari 5200 keyboard was cancelled.
The Atari 5200 had a hard time of it, still the system had a very nice
sized library of games comming out for it, but the Great VideoGame Crash
did in the Atari 5200 before it even had a chance to reach its full potential...
besides, Atari had a trump card up its sleeve to fix the Atari 5200 problem...
The Atari 7800.
Converting Atari 8bit programs to the 5200
This controller could've been one of the earlier inspirations for what
would later
become the Atari 5200 Joystick controller.
