Atari 7800

The Atari 7800 (in the USA includes ProSystem in the name, which means professional System) was the successor to the Atari 5200 or Supersystem console, in an attempt by Atari to regain its supremacy in the game console market against its local rivals Intellivision and Colecovision, and the Japanese landing of the Sega Master System and Nintendo NES. It was developed during the year 1983, and is what was supposed to have been the 5200, a retrocompatible system with the Atari 2600 console, with an improved graphics chip. In all respects it is supposed to be the best machine of the Atari series consoles, but it's not from the 8-bit Atari consoles, as it is located behind the XEGS, as this is a computer made and the 7800 is an improvement Of the 2600, so that the sound chip of the 5200 and the XEGS is the Pokey (included in the series 8 bits), is higher than the 7800, which leads to an improvement of the chip of the 2600, also creating sounds in several channels , without getting to the level of the pokey. This was subsequently reviewed, including the Pokey chip directly on some game cartridges from the 7800, which allowed for higher polyphonies. It should be noted that the fact of being retrocompatible, makes the games of the Atari 2600 are seen through the chip Maria, and not the Stella as originally makes the Atari 2600, this is perceptible because the games lose brightness, contrasts and colors, as the chip Retrocompatible, it causes the games to be "filtered" in retrocompatible mode, so that the 2600 experience is largely lost, since most of the 7800 consoles were used to play games of the 2600 that had a Immense game library. It was discontinued in 1991 and its game library in PAL system is only 49 titles, where most are mediocre and in many cases many of them do not surpass graphically the series 8 bits either (400,800, 600XL, 800XL, Xegs console , 65 XE). It is estimated that they sold about 3 million of consoles worldwide. A curious step is that the company Atari developed for the console 5200 an adapter to play the games of 7800, but never happened backwards, hence still today many continue to claim that the 5200 (never left in European PAL version), is more powerful than the 7800.