The interesting part about the name PAM for the Video System X was that Atari was considering actually calling it the Atari P.A.M. which stood for Atari Personal Arcade Machine.    However the Atari VCS was renamed after its model # which was 2600, so the VCS became the Atari 2600 and the new Atari Video System X (VSX) was finally named the Atari 5200 to designate that it was twice the power of the 2600.     Atari then came up with a new color-coding system to help its customers easily find games for the 2600 and games for the 5200.   Gone went the colored boxes and in came the silver boxes with Red stripes for the Atari 2600 and silver boxes with Blue stripes for the 5200.    (Atari Corp several years later claimed it came up with a revolutionary color coding system: Red for the XE's and Blue for the ST's, gee I wonder where they came up with that idea?)

Originally Atari's VSX Video System X was showing its new game cartridges in a sort of brown box with red and blue stripes along the top of each game image.   Games such as Asteroids, Adventure, Skiing, and Tank Battle which never made it to market.   It should be noted that Atari has listed Asteroids as game CX-5201.   Its believed that Atari may have canned 5200 Asteroids since there would have been no way to properly play the game with the non-centering analog joysticks which would have caused all sorts of control problems with the ship.   After trying out the prototype of PAM Asteroids, the theory is correct, control is difficult and annoying at times and makes the game less then enjoyable.