Atari 7800
Atari 7800 Specifications
The Atari 7800 ProSystem is a console released by Atari in 1986.
Its 1986 release is often considered a re-release, because the console was first announced on 21 May 1984 as a replacement for the ageing Atari 5200. It was shelved when Warner Communications sold Atari’s consumer division to Jack Tramiel later that year.
The delay gave the NES time to establish itself, and by the time the 7800 reached shops Nintendo dominated the market, which made it a very hard sell.
Thirteen games were announced for the console’s launch, including Centipede, Dig Dug and Ms. Pac-Man. After criticism that the 5200 could not play older games, Atari made sure the 7800 could play almost every Atari 2600 game.
At a time when many people saw a home computer as a better investment than a console, the 7800 was also designed to be expanded into a computer, with a keyboard and support for peripherals such as disk drives and printers. The keyboard was never released.
The 7800 sold far fewer units than the NES, but it was still profitable for Atari, selling around 3.8 million units worldwide. Atari ended production on 1 January 1992, with about 12% of the market against Nintendo’s 80%.
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Atari 7800 Emulators
A7800 is an open source Atari 7800 emulator forked from MAME's 7800 driver, with improved accuracy and support for many controllers and cartridge formats.
EMU7800 is an Atari 7800 ProSystem emulator by Mike Murphy, built on Microsoft .NET. It runs most 7800 games and also emulates the Atari 2600.
ProSystem Emulator is an open source Atari 7800 emulator for Windows by Greg Stanton. It emulates both NTSC and PAL consoles but is no longer developed.
