Even though it has some flaws, overall I definitely like the 5200 and it's great I finally have one. I have played the 5200 at least some every day since I bought it in early August, and am still having a lot of fun with the system. This is a pretty nice system which I love to have. The 5200 isn't powerful enough to do perfect ports of early '80s arcade games, so 5200 games are at least somewhat unique, and no 5200 game is available on any modern platform - while Atari and Activision have done collections and re-releases of many of their 26 games, 5200 games have not been re-released, unfortunately. That is too bad, but at least the games it did get are mostly good, and often have some differences versus other versions of the games. There aren't many 5200-exclusive games, in fact there are very, very few. And that is one issue with this system, its library mostly consists of ports. Of course, almost all of the games I have are conversions of popular arcade games, so that does make sense - they are working from quality source material. All of the games are fun to play to some degree.
One thing I've noticed about the 5200 is that while the library is small, it's really high quality! Most of the 17 games I own are good, only a few are only average, and none are bad. Instead, in early August this year, I got a 5200. I really, really need to get it fixed, but haven't. It's a good system and playing 26 games was interesting and often fun, but sadly that console mostly stopped working in early to mid 2014 - its power button died. At the time I kind of wanted the 5200, but that wasn't available locally then while the 7800 was, so I got one. So, the first Atari system I got was a 7800, which I got in early 2013.
That's the big thing most people dislike about this system, after all. I liked the games, I just wasn't sure what I'd think of the very-unpopular controller. I probably played 5200 games more than 7800 games, interestingly enough. So, in the '00s I played a lot of emulated games, and one thing I tried were the 52. Once I did hear about it, it interested me because of its short lifespan, small library, and poor reputation this made me want to try it to see if it was better than people said, as such things often are in this industry.
I grew up playing PC and Nintendo games, not Atari, so the 5200 isn't a console I knew much about as a kid. The Atari 5200 is really interesting and kind of good. If you have an item which is not on the list, please contact me and maybe we can trade.Or read this on my site with better formattingīackground & My Thoughts on Getting the System This is the collection of original hardware and software.
These consoles can be identified by an asterisk in their serial number. In fact, towards the end of the four-port model’s production run, there were a limited number of consoles produced which included these modifications. While the adapter was only made to work on the two-port version, modifications can be made to the four-port to make it line-compatible. It also has changes in the cartridge port address lines to allow for the Atari 2600 adapter released that year. The 1983 revision of the Atari 5200 has two controller ports instead of four, and a change back to the more conventional separate power supply and standard non-autoswitching RF switch. A single cable coming out of the 5200 plugged into the switch box and was used for both electricity and the television signal. This unique RF box was also where the power supply connected in a unique dual power/television signal setup similar to the RCA Studio II’s. Previous RF adapters required the user to slide a switch on the adapter by hand.
The 5200 also featured the innovation of the first automatic TV switchbox, allowing it to automatically switch from regular TV viewing to the game system signal when the system was activated. The 5200 also featured a new style controller with an analog joystick, numeric keypad, two fire buttons on each side of the controller and game function keys for Start, Pause, and Reset. The initial 1982 release of the system featured four controller ports, where nearly all other systems of the day had only one or two ports. The 360-degree non-centering joystick was touted as offering more control than the eight-way joystick controller offered with the Atari 2600. The 5200’s controllers have an analog joystick and a numeric keypad along with start, pause and reset buttons.
The 5200 was based on Atari Inc.’s existing 400/800 computers and the internal hardware was almost identical, although software was not directly compatible between the two systems. as a higher-end complementary console for the popular Atari 2600. The Atari 5200 SuperSystem, commonly known as the Atari 5200, is a home video game console that was introduced in 1982 by Atari Inc.