The rise... and fall... and rise... and fall of the Atari 2600

Thanks to the massive success of the NES, the once-popular Atari 2600 was given something few game consoles ever get... a second chance at life. Atari, under the direction of its new CEO Jack Tramiel, resurrected the 2600, offering it as a budget alternative to its own Atari 7800 and the competing NES and Master System.

This was fantastic news for cash-strapped gamers like myself. From the mid to late 1980s, the Atari 2600 was in ample supply not only in retail stores like Meijer, but at yard sales and pawn shops, eager to unload their stock and free up some space in the garage. Whenever and wherever 2600 games were offered, I was quick to snap them up, typically for a couple dollars.

By 1992, Atari was eager to retire the Atari 2600 (again!), and thousands of its games wound up in the dollar stores of malls. That's one dollar for an Atari game, in the box, with the instructions, in pristine condition. Every time I'd visit the mall, I'd scoop up one... or two... or more Atari games and take them home for a cheap thrill.

This was how I wound up with Solaris and Midnight Magic, easily two of the best games on the Atari 2600. Solaris, the deep and challenging shooter with dazzling 3D graphics even the NES couldn't match! Midnight Magic, the slick, endlessly replayable pinball sim that makes Video Pinball look like a relic! Either could qualify as the best dollar I've ever spent, at a time when video games were climbing into the sixty and even the seventy dollar price range.

Those were good times. Times which, as you can probably imagine, didn't last long. Once the stock of old Atari 2600 games had been exhausted, that was the end of the gold rush!