Atari 5200

The Atari 5200 four controller port model.

The Atari 5200, marketed as the 5200 SuperSystem, is a second generation video game console created by Atari and released in November of 1982. It was marketed to compete with the other video game consoles on the market like the Intellivision and ColecoVision, but it sold quite poorly and was discontinued after fewer than two years on the market. The console used a MOS 6502C processor for it's CPU and the POKEY chip for audio.

Internally, the hardware was very similar to the Atari 8-bit line, but different enough to be incompatible with the games. The original model featured four joystick ports, but a cheaper two-port model was released in 1983. The number 5200 is from the console's catalog number, CX-5200, but this number appears to be derived from the Atari 2600, whose catalog number was CX-2600. Two times 2600 is 5200, and three times 2600 is 7800, used by Atari's third console, the Atari 7800.

Personal

5200s are hard to come by and working joysticks are even harder, so I've never been able to play a 5200 in real life. All of my experience with the system comes from emulators.

I've never owned or even used an Atari 5200.

Games

See all Atari 5200 Games.

Initial Games

The four controller port 5200 included Super Breakout, while the two controller port 5200 included Pac-Man.

The following games were available for purchase when the console was released: Galaxian, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Super Breakout.

Personal

I haven't really played many games on the 5200, but, these are games that I enjoy which were ported to the 5200:

Review

Good

Though not as impressive as the ColecoVision, the system had pretty decent graphic and sound capabilities for the time.
The console was one of the first to feature four built-in joystick ports.
This was one of the first systems that featured a pause button directly on the joystick.
There is a button on either side of the joystick for left-handed players.
An adapter was sold (for the later model) which let the 5200 run 2600 games.

Bad

Very few unique games were made for the console. Most of the titles were just 2600 games with slightly better graphics and sound. This isn't unlike making a special edition DVD; sure, the die-hard fans will buy them, but most people are fine with their originals.
The system had a limited game library. It launched with only a handful of games, and even by the time it was discontinued, it had fewer than 70 games.
Only a couple games take advantage of all four joysticks, probably because the hardware wasn't powerful enough to handle complex 4-player games.
The storage box in the back of the console makes it unnecessarily bulky.

Ugly

The joysticks are analog and non-centering which makes controlling a player pretty difficult.
The joysticks were made with cheap circuitry, so they tended to break after only a little use.