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March 5, 2013 By Chad Vander Veen
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
In the image above -- a line of Atari home computers -- the Atari 800 is being marketed using an eye-catching display booth. Though it appears amusingly dated, it’s not very different from display booths found at tech conferences and in electronics stores today.
It’s worth noting that the 800 boasted an 8-bit processor that operated at a blistering 1.79MHz and had an expandable memory slot for up 48Kb. The Atari 800 – and its counterpart, the Atari 400 – were originally named Colleen and Candy.
In typical 1970s fashion, according to gaming history website Gamasutra, the machines were “dubbed Colleen and Candy after two particularly attractive secretaries.”
Photo courtesy of James Vaughn/Flickr
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Pac-man is on the screen. It didnt come out in arcades till 1980 and it was 1982 before it was on the 400/800. I'd say the picture is from late 1981-1982 rather than 'circa 1979'.
Faster than the Apple 2 , but not as well marketed. Atari had a sped up clock on the 6502, plus by using "player missile graphics" and collision detection built into the OS you had state-of-the-art at home game technology in 1979.
Man I miss my 800