Atari 2600 (1981, + 1978)
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Last, unknown date. Some of those games were pricey! That $28 bridge cart is around $105 in 2026 USD.
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My dad was a BSEE, we had every game burned on EPROMs. His coworkers and him split up all the games to buy then started an assembly line burning all the games. My house was the most popular in my neighborhood.
Proof that game prices have always been shit, lol some of those games are fully 25% of the price of the console. That would be like GTA VI releasing on PS5 for $160 and all so you can play Backgammon.
What are those controllers on the left in the first pic?
Looks like it's for pong, and other games that need a single axis proportional control. Not sure, maybe they had racing games that used them?
The joysticks were toggles, in each of the directions. You could move left, or not move left, but nothing in between.
Closeup:
There were also separate driving controllers for the 2600 which looked almost identical to the paddle controllers, the only difference being the label and the paddle controllers could spin infinitely in either direction while the driving controllers had a limited degree of spin.
Edit: My mistake, it was the driving controllers with unlimited spin, while the paddles were restricted.
So they did! That's the first I ever heard of those. Nice little racecar icon, so you know which you're about to plug in.
I just noticed in the middle ad, 1978 mom got the best of 1978 dad 10-7. Dad shot into the cactus on this round.
We had the Sears version, which never seemed quite as cool.