Atari 7800 - Game Hardware

The Atari 7800 is a video game console released by Atari in June 1986 (a test market release occurred two years earlier). The 7800 was designed to replace the unsuccessful Atari 5200, and re-establish Atari's market supremacy against Nintendo and Sega. With this system, Atari addressed all the shortcomings of the Atari 5200: it had simple digital joysticks; it was almost fully backward-compatible with the Atari 2600; and it was affordable (it was originally priced at US$140).