Why we are pumped about the launch of the Atari VCS

I am a child of the 80's, I have grown up in the computer age. When I was born so was the Apple Macintosh. I remember the era when purchasing video games on a personal computer entailed a dozen 3.5 inch floppy disks. I also remmebr the Commodor 64 and the Atari 2600, games were 8 bit and you had programme them to start and wait about 20 mins before the system was ready to start. 

Having said that it was always Atari and Sega that were the kings of cool in the gaming space in my formative years. Console's like the Sega Dreamcast and Atari Jaguar whilst considered commercial flops in comparison the the juggernauts of Nintendo and Playstation had some of the coolest games

The Atar Jaguar was the only console to have Aliens Vs Predator, i rest my case!

Now in 2021 videogames are gargantuan, mainstream and a core pillar in popular culture on a level playingfield with music and film these days. With Atari, they started it all back in the 70's with Pong, this led to the arcade craze with coin operated machines pulling in audiences to play successive titles such as Centipede, Pitfall, Missel Command, Ms Pacman and many more.

The predecessor to the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System was the Atari 2600, when it came to home gaming this was a revolutionary system. The games are iconic, fun, simple and legendary. Not only were the games great, the design of the console itself is one of the best looking with its wooden pannels and sloping top.

The good news is this console is coming out in the coming months ahead, the bad news is currently unless you live in the United States you can't pre order it. Stock issues are spoling some of the fun when it comes to the current availibility of PlayStation 5's, the Atari seems like refreshing spin on the gaming console so we can't wait to get ahold of it and play games like Astroids, then seamlessly close applications and fire up Google Chrome, Twitch or Netflix.

For me, in a living room setting when sharing the experience I am not the biggest fan of hardcore long form games. Quick to play arcade style gaming is right up my street, I have seen lot's of preliminary YouTube reviews from people with early access slating it saying 'its underpowered', 'it's not good for playing games like CyberPunk etc'. This sort of misses the point, as a piece of desgin/ art to me it looks more asthetically pleasing than anything else on the market.