{"id":146,"date":"2006-06-19T09:50:23","date_gmt":"2006-06-19T14:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2006-07-28T18:54:13","modified_gmt":"2006-07-28T23:54:13","slug":"retro-scan-of-the-week-ataris-obscure-supporting-cast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/archives\/146\/retro-scan-of-the-week-ataris-obscure-supporting-cast","title":{"rendered":"Retro Scan of the Week:<\/span> Atari’s (Obscure) Supporting Cast"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Atari<\/a><\/p>\n
Here’s an interesting segment scanned from a 1983 Atari Game Catalog. In it we see various peripherals for Atari home game consoles — most of them obscure, and some never even released.<\/p>\n

Highlights include the prototype-only “2600 Keyboard” (at the top, which turns the Atari 2600 into a “real computer”) and “2600 Voice Commander” peripherals. Then there’s the VCS Cartridge Adapter, which was released but is relatively uncommon as far as I know.<\/p>\n

Then we move to the bottom of the scan, which shows the 2600 Trak-Ball Controller, the bulky 2600 Remote Control Joysticks (anybody ever used these?), then a curiosity in the form of the 2600 “Pro-Line” joystick (which, in 1983, predates the release, but not the design of the 7800). Then we move onto the ray-gun-looking “Space Age” joystick and the numeric-keypadish “Kid’s Controller” (you know how kids love their numbers!), neither of which I have ever seen in person and don’t know if they were actually released. Finally, we come to the 5200 Trak-Ball controller, which was probably the largest, bulkiest console controller devised until the great Steel Battalion<\/em> fiasco of 2004. Fittingly, this Trak-Ball controller matches the largest, bulkiest console of its day (the Atari 5200) quite nicely.<\/p>\n

If you use this image in a blog post, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks — we truly appreciate it.<\/em><\/small><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s an interesting segment scanned from a 1983 Atari Game Catalog. In it we see various peripherals for Atari home game consoles — most of them obscure, and some never even released. Highlights include the prototype-only “2600 Keyboard” (at the top, which turns the Atari 2600 into a “real computer”) and “2600 Voice Commander” peripherals. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-game-info-and-history","category-retro-scan-of-the-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vintagecomputing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}