Category: AGDQ

The Atari is overrated

I know, I know. The Atari was groundbreaking. They made playing video games at home “cool” and the norm. If I had to make a top 10 list of best consoles ever made, I would list the Atari 2600. With that said, was the Atari really that good? For every decent game on the console there were 100 shitty ones. The Atari 5200 was a flop. The 7800 didn’t do well. And the Atari Jaguar…. Yeah, let’s just move on.

This article won’t be me wasting your time on the entire history of the Atari. To make a long story very short, the Atari was known for home computers. Then they got into video games. The Atari 2600 is still one of the best known video gaming consoles ever made. We all know their logo. The Atari is as 1980’s as big hair, hair bands and MTV were to the era.

(The Atari 2600. One of the most important video game consoles of all-time.)

Atari gave us the experience to play such classics as Space Invaders, Pitfall and Asteroids in the luxury of our own homes. They dominated the early era of video gaming. They were also the near downfall of home video gaming. Disasters such as ET and Pac-Man almost destroyed home gaming. Atari wasted millions to produce these games to little fanfare. ET is considered by most to be one of the most broken video games in history. Their home version of Pac-Man suffered from glitches and was not even half as fun as the arcade version.

(ET, one of the biggest flops and worst video games in history. Myths and legends have been made about this game.)

Sadly Atari did not learn from their mistakes. Their next system the Atari 5200, was junk. It suffered from numerous controller malfunctions and lacked a library of good games. The Atari 7800 was also a flop, coming in third in sales behind both Nintendo and Sega. The Atari tried a comeback during the 16-bit wars, only to be laughed out of the market. The Atari Jaguar, a misleading 64-bit system was a complete flop, selling between 100,000 and 200,000 units. The SNES and Sega Genesis had sales of 49.1 million and 30.7 million, easily dominating Atari. The Atari also got into the handheld gaming world with the Lynx, also a flop.

(A 32-bit system that misled the public about having 64-bit graphics. Still got destroyed by the 16-bit SNES and Sega Genesis.)

We all know those Atari fanboys. They love their Atari. Look, I’m not saying everything they did sucked. I wasted a many hours myself playing Donkey Kong and Space Invaders. When you look at the entire history of Atari, the bad outweighs the good. Atari had about a five year window of greatness and about 15 years-worth of failure. While I respect what the Atari 2600 did, overall, Atari is overrated. Nintendo, Sega and the newer systems such as PlayStation and the Xbox have all done more for the video gaming world.

Watch, donate and support AGDQ 2020!!!!!

The older I have gotten the more I suck at video games. My reflexes are off. I die a lot. I throw a lot of controllers and yell at the TV as if the fake video game characters can hear me. You know who doesn’t suck at video games? The speed runners currently playing at Awesome Games Done Quickly 2020 (AGDQ 2020).

These gamers aren’t playing for fame or to simply show off their awesome skills. They are playing for charity. This year’s charity is The Prevent Cancer Foundation. My mom has beat cancer for 18 years. Her mother was not so lucky. Cancer took her life at age 51. Many people out there have lost or seen a loved one suffer due to cancer.

Cancer blows. But these awesome gamers kick cancer right in the ass! If you have never seen a speed run, you are missing out on tons of fun. These gamers make the hardest games look easy. Some of the glitches are as comical as they are amazing to watch. And all of this for a good cause.

You can tune into the runs on Twitch here and watch live! Please donate for this great cause. To add, I am not paid or endorsed by Twitch or anyone from AGDQ. If anything, you would donate to not watch me play games.