Atari 7800

Summary

After the commercial failure of the Atari 5200, the successor model Atari 7800 relied on the buyership of the Atari 2600 – the console has its own module library of about 100 games, but is also almost completely backward compatible.

The future of Atari, however, was so uncertain after the video game crash that the Atari 7800, although limited in 1984, disappeared from the market for two years. The actual release was in 1986 when Atari Inc. was sold and reorganized. At that time, however, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was already on the market in the USA, against which Atari was hopeless. However, production of the Atari 7800 continued until the end of 1991, largely unnoticed. About a million consoles were sold, only a fraction of the sales of the Atari 2600.