It was followed by the Flashback 5, with 92 games, in October 2014. The Flashback 4 was released in November 2012, with either 75 or 76 games (some have one more than others do). An Atari Flashback Portable, which contains a bunch of pretty awesome features, has been in Development Hell since 2006. The Atari Flashback 2+, released in 2010, contains all of the games on the Atari Flashback 2 with the exception of five (including both Activision games, which are replaced with a couple of sports games). In 2005, Atari released the Atari Flashback 2 (the original, based on the Atari 7800, was released in 2004), which is a pretty faithful re-creation of the actual thing and contains numerous games built into it, including the Activision games Pitfall and River Raid. Since 1995, a homebrew scene dedicated to making new games for the system appeared. Atari Corporation would also continue publishing new games for the console until 1990, as the library still held some value thanks to the 7800's backwards compatibility. The 2600 would end up being actively supported for 14 years, from October 14, 1977, to January 1, 1992. These ports sold moderately well, likely thanks to abusing Nintendo's brand recognition. Atari would also reissue older 2600 ports of some of Nintendo's own games, as they had retained licensing rights from the fallout of a failed deal between the two companies. Seeing the market revived, Atari Corporation would redesign and relaunch the 2600 as the Atari 2600 Jr., selling it for US$49.99 as a budget alternative to the newer Atari 7800 (released around the same time), and its redone form factor even heavily resembled its little brother. While Atari lost its leader position as a result of the North American Crash and never truly recovered, they were able to somewhat ride the coattails of Nintendo after the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1986. The system's popularity led to '80s and '90s home computers and video game consoles using the same connector, and they could thus accept inputs from 2600 controllers, even if it wasn't always practical. The simple joystick controller for the Atari 2600, with a stick capable of rendering input in any of eight directions (from four buttons) plus a single fire button, has become an iconic symbol of video gaming in general, and of retrogaming in particular. As a result of these problems all subsequent consoles have had lockout mechanisms in place to prevent unauthorized software releases and complicate or prevent cloning. The system was also trivial to clone thanks to being built from off the shelf components, the most famous of which is the Coleco Gemini. The most infamous such title is Custer's Revenge due to the highly publicized legal battle between its publisher American Multiple Industries and Atari. This flood of bad games was perhaps unavoidable as the Atari 2600 did not have any control mechanism in place to prevent unauthorized games from being produced. It also began the dubious tradition of licensed games, with titles such as Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and (worst of all) E.T. With only a few exceptions, most of the classic games of the era had home versions available for the Atari, some ( Space Invaders, and Atari's own Missile Command and Asteroids) more successful than others ( Pac-Man, whose failure to match the immensely popular arcade version disappointed many consumers). the Extra-Terrestrial and Pac-Man games for the system was the trigger for The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. Inversely, the sudden failure of the market for Atari cartridges in the wake of a speculator bubble and the disastrous E.T. The Atari was wildly successful, and was one of the forces that drove The Golden Age of Video Games in the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was originally launched in September of 1977 in North America for US$199. The idea was to make a better system down the line to replace it eventually, but the success of the system changed everything. Originally, just ten games were planned for it. It also featured plug-in controllers that could be swapped out, allowing new kinds of controllers to be later introduced. The Atari Video Computer System, later known as the Atari 2600, but best known as just the "Atari" during its heyday, was the first really successful home video game console system, and only the second to feature interchangeable ROM cartridges that allowed new games to be published and installed without modifying the basic system itself.
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