Everyone remembers their first video game console. Whether it was an NES, a PlayStation 2, or an Xbox 360, your first console always holds a special place in your heart. For the first generation of gaming way back in the 1970s and 80s, that console was the same for all of them. The Atari 2600. Though it looked like a wood-paneled tape deck, the 2600 was a pioneer in the world of home gaming. Before it hit store shelves, video games could only be played at arcades and cost players a quarter to continue overtime they got a game over. The idea that you could buy a video game and play it at home whenever you wanted just didn't exist.

The Atari 2600 changed all of that. For the first time, gamers could play their arcade favorites and brand new games in the comfort of their living room. It was a revolutionary piece of technology in more way than one. Many of the things we take for granted about modern gaming consoles were first done on the Atari and it became a household name in the same way Nintendo or PlayStation would in the years after. The market for video games would look much different today without it.

But even with such a vaunted and groundbreaking console, there are still parts of its history that people may not be aware of.  And as the first console of its kind, the Atari 2600 has some weird tidbits in its story. In that spirit, here are 25 Facts About The Atari Only Hardcore Gamers Know.

26 Believe It Or Not: It Was HUGE To Have Different Looking Stages

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Think of some of the classic games from the arcade days. Pong. Pac-Man. Space Invaders. One thing they all have in common is that they only use one screen. Think of how Pac-Man just ends up on the other side of the maze instead of going to another room. Having more than one screen was just beyond the technology of the time. Until the Atari. The 2600 featured the first game to have multiple screens. It was called Adventure and put players into a sprawling castle of many rooms. A precursor to the vast open-world environments of today.

25 Every Game Was Made By One Person

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Game Designer Howard Scott Warshaw

Nowadays, video games have huge developments teams of hundreds of people. But back at the dawn of the medium, this was not the case. Atari didn't have the money or technology for that.

Every game was made by one person who did everything.

Developing the concept, writing the program, making the graphics and sounds, all of it. The graphics were the hardest part because they had be drawn by hand on graph paper first and then put into the computer. It was an exhausting process but produced some true classics.

24 The Indirect Birth Of Activision

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Every game at Atari was made by one person, but those people were never credited for their work in the games themselves. Developer Warren Robinett went so far as to hide his name in the game Adventure, creating gaming's first easter egg.

It was just Atari's company policy to not credit their designers.

Finding it unfair that Atari was making millions off their anonymous work, four-game designers left and formed Activision. Activision put more emphasis on game creators, even highlighting their names in advertising, and became a serious competitor with Atari.

23 Two Of The Worst Games Ever

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It'd be a feat to have one of the worst games ever, but two? For that, you'd have to be Atari. The 2600 had the misfortune of being home to two of the what are considered the worst video games ever.

Pac-Man and E.T. the Video Game.

Not the Pac-Man you're thinking of though. The Atari port of the arcade classic was a rushed by a programmer who didn't like the original and poorly translated the gameplay. E.T. was also rushed (it was programmed in only five weeks!) to meet to a Christmas release. It was so bad that its designer quit the industry entirely.

22 The Secret History Of The Name Atari

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Board for the game Go

As I said in the intro, Atari became a household name for video games. But where did the name Atari itself come from? Bushnell and Dabney were originally going to name their company Syzygy, a term for planetary alignment, but found that it had been registered already. Instead, they chose a word from the Japanese game Go. The Japanese equivalent of chess, in Go Atari means something similar to "check". A perfect name for a game company about to put the world on notice.

21 The Best-Selling Christmas Gift

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Though it was released in 1977, it took a little while for the Atari 2600 to gather steam. Despite a $200 price tag and nine games to play, the company had trouble making a dent in the market. It wasn't until 1979 when they decided to sell video games year round that their fortunes improved. With a bigger library of games than its competitors, and hit titles like Asteroids and Space Invaders, the 2600 sold more than 1,000,000 units that Christmas. It was the best-selling gift of the season and made the company $200 million.

20 Creepy Games That Weren't For Kids (At All)

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One of the things that made the Atari 2600 so successful was the ease with which games could be designed for it. Problem was, that ease could backfire on Atari as well. A company called Mystique produced several grown-up games for the console. The most infamous was probably Custer's Revenge, which depicted some pretty repulsive stuff. People were up in arms about the game's insensitivity and parents groups protested having such lewd content on a children's toy. Atari sued Mystique over Custer's Revenge and won, but quality control would continue to be a problem.

19 National Toy Hall Of Fame

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Though Atari never returned to its place of glory after the Great Crash, it kept producing new 2600 consoles until 1991. At 14 years, it's the longest-lived gaming console of all time. By then, the 2600 had already colonized the happy memories of a generation.

It was many people's first experience with home gaming.

In recognition of this, the National Toy Hall of Fame inducted the Atari 2600 to its museum in 2007. There it sits with other hallowed members of childhood nostalgia like the Rubik's Cube, Etch-a-sketch, and LEGO. Truly, an honor well-deserved.

18 The Atari Entertainment System?

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After the fall of Atari, the next company to become the household name of video games was Nintendo. The Nintendo Entertainment System (or NES) took the 2600's spot as gaming console of choice. But the NES was almost an Atari project. When Nintendo was first considering expanding into the Western market, they approached Atari about releasing a console under the Atari brand. Negotiations between the two fell apart after Nintendo allowed another company to port Donkey Kong to computers, which Atari had exclusive rights to, and the Great Crash of '83. Nintendo forged ahead though, taking a chance by releasing the NES under their own name.

17 Bill Gates Got Fired By Atari

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Young Bill Gates

Like many Silicon Valley companies in the 1980s, Atari had some crossover into the burgeoning world of home computers. They actually started a division focused on games and software for computers.

One of these projects was contracted to a little company called Microsoft.

Bill Gates was hired to program BASIC onto one of Atari's computers. He kept missing deadlines for the project though and was eventually fired. An in-house programmer at Atari finished the project. We all know what happened to Bill Gates after that.

16 The Reason The Atari Has Wood Panelling

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A Video Games system at home was a radically new idea back in the mid-1970s. The Atari 2600 was the first device of its kind and everyone at the company knew it. The question was, how do you get people to buy it? A lot of thought went into the design of the console itself. To keep from scaring away potential consumers, Atari designed the 2600 to resemble home stereos and other high-end electronics. The wood grain panellinpanelingnt to be familiar and non-threatening. The same thought went into the game cartridges, which were made to be the same size as 8track tapes.

via: en.wikipedia.org

A company is only as good as its logo. A logo has to be something memorable to stick in the minds of consumers and represent the brand. Atari's logo, with its swooping curves and futuristic font, did just that.

But what was the logo meant to be?

Was it the letter A for Atari? Was it Mt. Fuji? Actually, Atari's logo is a reference to Pong. The centerline divides the two paddles, which are swooping to catch the ball. It might be obtuse imagery, but it certainly sticks in the mind.

14 The Chuck E. Cheese Connection

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Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and Chuck E Cheese

Before there could be an Atari 2600, there had to be an Atari to make it. The company itself was started in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney to make arcade games for only $500. After the success of Pong, the company's first hit, Bushnell had an idea to make Atari even more money. Instead of selling games to arcades, he'd build arcades owned by the company and keep all the profit. The idea morphed into Chuck E Cheese's, making it a combination restaurant to bring in families and adding a show to keep parents entertained while kids played the games.

13 Steve Jobs, Game Designer?

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Based in Silicon Valley, Atari attracted many people who'd go on to become legends in the tech world. Among these was Apple co-founder, Steve Jobs. A sandal-wearing fella, Jobs went to Atari HQ in 1974 and wouldn't leave until they gave him a job.

The company brought him on for $5 an hour.

Jobs was banished to the night shift due to his habit of not bathing and walking around the office barefoot. It worked to his advantage though. Jobs brought in buddy Steve Wozniak to work on the game Breakout and the money supported them while they built the first Apple computer.

12 The First Game With Speech

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screenshot from the Atari game Quadrun

Nowadays, players expect their video games to be richly voiced with full casts. But back in the Atari days, video game sounds were mostly "bleeps" and" bloops". Even rudimentary music was beyond its capability. That just makes it even more surprising that it had the first game with audible speech.

The game was called Quadrun

Though the voice synthesis could only make a few seconds of dialogue, it was still a major achievement for 1983. This achievement was lost on the game testers though, little girls who complained that Quadrun wasn't Ms. Pac-Man. 

11 The First Multi-Game Console

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Labels of several Atari cartridges

It may seem unbelievable now, but there was a time when video games at home were a really limited thing. Yes, there were home versions of games like Pong but that was it.

They played one game and only one game.

Imagine having to buy a completely new console just to play the latest hit game and it only being able to play that one game. The Atari 2600's innovation was to offer multiple games that you could play on one device. $200 plus another $15 per game, it was a home arcade at a fraction of the cost.

10 Cartridges Are King

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A pile of Atari cartridges

Key to Atari's success was the vast variety of games it offered. From table tennis to tank combat, you could find almost every genre on the console. It was able to achieve this variety because of cartridges. Unlike previous home gaming systems that came with a selection of games pre-installed on their hardware, the Atari 2600 used games programmed onto cartridges that could be switched out. Because the game was on the cartridge, that meant the 2600's hardware was simpler and more adaptable. It was also more cost-efficient. Cartridges were cheap to make and kept hardware production down.

9 The First Multiplayer Console

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While it was a far cry from the vast online experiences of today, the Atari 2600 was also the first video game console to put a focus on multiplayer as well as single player. This was clear from the fact that a second controller came bundled with the basic system. Knowing where the company came from though, this isn't too surprising. Atari's first hit game was Pong, a game that doesn't work without two players. Still, the presence of that second controller shows that from the beginning video games were thought of as games, and games need multiple players.

8 The First Console With Multiple Controllers

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A console becomes known for its controller. Think of the Nintendo 64 and its clawfoot. The Atari was no different, even if its controller was much more simple. Just a black box with one joystick and a single orange button. But like its descendants, the Atari would have multiple controllers and add-ons for different games. There were paddle controllers for games like Pong, steering controllers for racing games, and even a keyboard. If that weren't enough, the Atari also featured one of the first trackpad controllers. Not bad for only having one button.

7 The First Arcade Ports

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arcade games

Remember, before the Atari most video games were played in arcades and arcades cost money. Meaning that players had to dish out quarters every time they wanted to play or got a game over. Despite this, many of the arcade games were very popular.

Atari recognized this and capitalized on it.

They ported popular arcade games over to the 2600, allowing players to experience their favorite games at home. Being able to play the best arcade games without the steep cost in quarters made owning an Atari a bargain in players' eyes.