Inside the Atari 7800
Inside the Atari 7800
"We re-invented the video game"
Atari is known for a lot of video game consoles over the years, none of which were as successful as their first, the Atari Video Computer System (known as the VCS and later the 2600).
But their 2nd-most popular console was the Atari 7800, an odd system with an odder history.
This post is a long one and completely free to everyone! I hope you enjoy it.
History of the 7800
After the 5200 flopped in 1982, Atari realized they did not have anything to replace the 2600 and compete with the ColecoVision and other newer consoles.
In 1983 Atari began talks with Nintendo to sell its Famicom system in the US with a new design and under the Atari name. That deal fell through for a variety of reasons1 and Atari was again left with no new console to sell.
Rather than create something in-house, they decided to contract with GCC (General Computer Corporation) to create a new console.
Announced in May 1984 as the Atari 7800 ProSystem (originally it was called the 3600, but I suspect the number was changed so that it was higher than the 5200 SuperSystem), it quickly disappeared when, just a month later, Jack Tramiel acquired Atari and its assets. The 7800 was shelved so that Atari could focus on selling its older products to raise cash to keep Atari afloat as it worked on its new ST computer. There was also a dispute between the new Atari and Warner as to who owed money to GCC for 7800.
The new Atari did re-engineer the 2600 into the 2600jr to be smaller and less expensive to produce. It was sold at just $50, but by this point few in the US really wanted a 2600. Dedicated gamers had moved on to the 8-bit Commodore 64 and Atari computers. Most of the 2600jr sales were overseas.
The 7800 was forgotten and ignored until 1985. Perhaps after hearing more about Nintendo’s upcoming launch of The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Atari felt they wanted to have the 7800 available as a competitor. In May 1985, Atari relented and paid GCC. There were still additional negotiations for the launch games and other things which were completed in November of 1985.
Atari started selling the 7800 in January 1986. This was primarily the old 1984 stock that had been sitting in warehouses for years. In May 1986 Atari released the 7800 nationwide at a price of $140 (about $400 in 2024). For its pack-in game, Atari went with Pole Position II.
In order to jump the gun on the NES, which had not yet done a full rollout of the NES, Atari decided to take the 7800 out of mothballs and released it in March 1986 with Pole Position II as the pack-in game. The launch titles were: Pole Position II, Asteroids, Joust, Ms. Pac-Man. Dig Dug, Food Fight, Robotron and Centipede.
As you can see, none of those games were really new and enticing as they were all just more ports of older arcade games. New games were slow to come out, with only 10 available by the end of 1986.
In September 1986 the NES got its full North American release with Super Mario Bros. as the pack-in game at $180 (about $500 in 2024). The NES soon had a large library of games and the 7800 quickly fell behind.
By the time it was discontinued in January 1992, the 7800 sold over three million units, but that is dwarfed by the NES sales of over 60 million units.
The Sega Master System is estimated to have sold over 10 million units.
About the 7800
The Atari 7800 was designed by General Computer Corporation, marking the first time Atari went with an outside company to design a console.
The console itself is sleek and reminiscent of the Atari 5200 angled design. However, the 7800 is much smaller than the 5200.
Learning from the debacle of the 5200, the 7800 uses the same controller ports as the 2600 (and the 8-bit computer line). It did come with an all-new two-button joystick, however. This joystick was generally considered uncomfortable, although it looks rather cool. Europe got a much nicer gamepad-style controller.
One of the 7800’s most notable features is that it is backwards compatible with the 2600 library. Existing 2600 game cartridges can plug in and be played. Although games were all technically compatible, the cartridge port on the 7800 has slightly smaller than the one on the 2600. Atari cartridges all worked great of course, but some 3rd party cartridges did not fit well and some not at all.
Having access to the large library of 2600 games would have certainly looked good for the 7800 from a marketing standpoint, but realistically by the time this was released the 2600 and its games were already considered very dated. I don’t think this ended up being the big selling point they hoped it would be.
Overall the 7800 had much better graphics (handled by the MARIA chip) than the 2600 and its graphics were even better than the 5200 and 8-bit computers in most ways. There were two resolutions available, 160x240 and 320x200, with a palette of 256 colors you could work with, although there was a limit to how many could be onscreen at once depending on the resolution.
The highest resolution was technically higher than the NES could achieve, but most games seemed to use the lower resolution since it had more available colors.
The 7800 had way more sprites, with up to 30 per line and 100 total. These sprites could also vary greatly in size and have multiple colors. The 8-bit computers only had up to five sprites, each a single color. You can really see the difference when you compare Joust on the two systems.
One area were the 7800 was worse than the 8-bit computers was with its sound. The 7800 had the same sound chip as the 2600. The 8-bit computers had the fabulous POKEY chip. The poor default 7800 sound definitely hurt it with many games sounding exactly like their 2600 counterparts (see Desert Falcon).
Fortunately cartridges themselves could include the POKEY chip, so it was possible for a game to have better sound. But adding a custom chip to a cartridge increased the cost of making the game, which meant that few bothered to do it.
Atari 7800+
The Atari 7800+ is a new retro console that Atari recently announced for availability later this year. This console is similar to the Atari 2600+ from 2023. The Atari 7800+ is styled, as its name suggests, similarly to the 7800 (it is about 80% of the size of the original). It also plays both 2600 and 7800 cartridges, but via emulation. It comes with a wireless gamepad that looks really cool. It’s priced at the same $130 as the 2600+.
Unfortunately you cannot load games onto it from a USB stick or SD card. The games all have to be cartridges.
Along with the console, Atari announced some new 7800 games, including Bentley Bear’s Crystal Quest (which is the pack-in game for the 7800+), Bounty Bob Strikes Back, Space Duel, Frenzy, Berzerk, and Asteroids Deluxe.
And for the 2600 they also announced Caverns of Mars along with some multicarts: Epyx game collection, RealSports collection, M-Network collection.
Since I prefer the overall design of the 7800 and like that there will be a wireless controller, I’m really excited for the 7800+. It’s ability to output directly to HDMI will make my collection of 104 games look great on my big TV.
Comparison with the NES
Was the 7800 as powerful as the NES? They were close.
The 7800’s highest resolution was technically higher than the NES could achieve, but most 7800 games seemed to use the lower resolution since it had more available colors.
In the end it seems the 7800 was better suited towards arcade-type games, but by the mid-80s platform and open-world games were becoming more popular and the 7800 didn’t have much to compete with that. As everyone knows these days, the power of a system often pales in comparison to the games that are available for it2.
Inside the 7800
I bought my first 7800 in the early 90s at a flea market for cheap. I sold it a short time later. I’ve bought another one a few years ago from Facebook Marketplace. I think I paid around $120 for the 7800 and a collection of 20 or so (mostly 2600) games.
The only 7800 games I own at the moment are Pole Position II (the pack-in) and Choplifter.
Now let’s take al look at the 7800 hardware itself.
Perhaps the one big thing I don’t like is that the 7800 uses a proprietary power plug. It is two-prong and probably not easy to find a replacement should the included one fail.
The 7800 only has RF output. This can make it tricky to use on modern TVs. I am able to connect it to my 55” LCD, but the picture is definitely rather fuzzy. The output can be modded to provide composite output. I keep meaning to try this, although I probably won’t until I get a second backup 7800 (or I might not bother and just get the 7800+).
Although the 7800 can play all 2600 games, as I mentioned above, not all cartridges will fit. Some 3rd party cartridges had cases that were slightly wider or thicker and don’t fit into the 7800 cartridge slot. In particular, I cannot get most Imagic games to fit at all. Many Activision games also don’t fit well.
I’ve worked around this problem by using the Video Game Brain. This is essentially a switch box for games and it works with the 7800, at least with most 2600 games.
Overall I really like its exterior design. Now let’s look inside!
The four round buttons at the bottom correspond to Power, Pause, Select, Reset.
Below those you can see the joystick ports and the difficulty switches.
At the top left is the RF output and the channel selector switch.
In the top center is the cartridge port. You can see how tight the plastic is at the corners, which is what prevents some cartridges from fitting well (or at all). I’ve heard some have cut the plastic back with a Dremel to get better cartridge support. Yikes!
The large chip on the left is MARIA, the graphics chip.
Below that is the 6502 Sally CPU.
In the center, the top two NEC chips are the RAM, 2K in each chip for a total of 4K. That’s less than the 5200 had (16K), but much more than the 128 bytes of the 2600!
Continuing down, the AMI 8804MBT chip is the 7800 ROM, I believe.
Below that, the AMI 8828 chip is the RIOT RAM I/O timer chip and I believe is used to play 2600 games.
The UM6532 at the bottom center is the TIA from the 2600, which the 7800 used for sound.
Looking Back
The 7800 was not really a failure, but it also was not a big success.
The 7800 might have been a much bigger success had it been released in 1984, long before the NES. The 5200 was clearly a flop and Atari was correct in canceling it. I still think a next generation console based on the computer line could have been a success, but the 5200 was not well executed. I’ve written about this previously, so won’t re-hash it here.
Going with an outside firm to design a new system was not a terrible idea, either. And the resulting console is rather nice. Having the same limited sound as the 2600 is a shame, but the MARIA graphics chip had a lot going for it.
But again, an unforced error was made. Warner wanted out of the Atari business in 1984 and offloaded it all (except the arcade division) to Jack Tramiel.
It’s perfectly understandable that this new Atari had to shelve the 7800. They had more than enough on their plate getting the ST designed and built! Remember that by 1983/84, most people thought that video game consoles were a fad that had come and gone. Computers were the future.
But is painful to look back and think that had the 7800 actually been released in 1984 with some good games, things might have turned out different. Of course, the “good games” part is key.
I’m not sure Atari really understood that back then. Many of the 7800 games were just ports of arcade games that were already on the 2600. Granted those games did look a lot better, but people wanted new games and game ideas, not just rehashes of stuff they’d already seen and already played.
Nintendo clearly understood this better. Super Mario Bros. was a killer game for the NES and they bundled it with the system! Atari included Pole Position II with the 7800, a game that came out in 1983 and everyone had already seen and probably played. Even though it was improved over the original, it was hardly a showcase game. Plus, driving games don’t translate well to a joystick.
In the end, only 59 games were made for the 7800 (not counting homebrews and the new ones announced this week) and most of them were arcade ports. The only platformer from that time was Scrapyard Dog.
Today the 7800 is a great system to have if you’re an Atari fan. Being able to play 2600 and 7800 games on one sleek console is nice.
I do have to rant some about the name. Atari 7800 ProSystem is quite a mouthful, although perhaps not unlike Nintendo Entertainment System. Both names are not great in my opinion. I probably would have preferred if ProSystem had stuck as its name, but 7800 is clearly the name that prevailed. Ah, well. A while ago I did a post on the names of retro computers, so perhaps I need to do one on the strange names of video game consoles.
Collecting Games
I like collecting games for the 2600 and 7800 because the games are mostly inexpensive. I’ve had little trouble finding 2600 games for sale on Facebook Market Place, area flea markets and retro stores. Finding 7800 games has been trickier, though. People seem to think they are rarer than they actually are and want too much money for them.
Of course I could just find whatever I want on eBay easily enough, but that’s too easy and not much fun. I may do that for a specific game here and there, but otherwise I prefer the surprise of finding them myself.
Homebrew Games
This is probably worth a separate post as I don’t really know much about 7800 homebrew games. I know there are quite a few and some are looks amazing. But I’ve not played any and can’t really comment on them.
However, here’s a video of Ricki & Vicki which is a highly regarded homebrew:
Atari felt their Donkey Kong license was violated when Nintendo allowed Coleco to release it for the ColecoVision. Plus, Atari was going through some turmoil in 1983 and when Ray Kassar was replaced, the Nintendo deal just died on the vine.
Nintendo has mastered this art with both the Wii and the Switch.
I appreciate this article, as I have very little knowledge of anything Atari in general, but particularly the 7800. Didn't know about the 7800+ coming out either, I'll have to keep an eye out for that!
To be super nit-picky, technically speaking, the VCS was not Atari's first "console" but rather its first cartridge-based console. The word "console" is also applied to the earlier dedicated single-game machines like Pong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pong#/media/File:TeleGames-Atari-Pong.jpg