HiGame

I’ve got a shelf full of computer history books, many of which I love and have reread several times. But I wanted to write one that focused on the first real computer I grew up with, the one that eventually led me to the tech industry and journalism: the Atari 800.

We’ve covered vintage computing many times before on ExtremeTech. I wrote a retro gaming feature back in 2010 (and a 2017 rewrite of that is in the works and will be ready real soon now). But I’ve always wanted to do a deep dive on Atari’s 8-bit computer, its peripherals, and most importantly, its games. It was an astounding machine. It was the first real gaming PC, one with graphics coprocessors and hardware sprite animation. It blew the contemporary competition out of the water, and was even superior in some respects to the Commodore 64 — also a great early computer, but one that lacked some of the Atari 8-bit’s innovations despite coming out three years later.

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