Leisure Lines - Retro - Video vault

For the budding game boy like Gordon Laing, the Atari VCS was where the action really started.

1977 was a vintage year all right. There was loads going on, but fort the average child, the release of both Star Wars and the Atari VCS made it a magical time to remember.

Atari's Video Computer System was simply a classic. With only basic black-and-white pong games (masquerading as electronic tennis) preceding it, the VCS was arguably the first proper home games console. Sure, it was to be followed by Mattel's IntelliVision, CBS's ColecoVision and Milton Bradley's Vectrex, all boasting superior technical performance. But none could match the sheer charm of the VCS.

We could just marvel at the corrugated case and fake wooden finish and leave it at that. It was a piece of furniture, a work of art to be adored, a design classic representing all that was naff about the 1970s. What about the six silver switches which set the display to black-and-white or selected a level of difficulty? Who could forget the phenomenal anti-climax of a finished game just sitting there cycling through its colour palette?

And what were all those variations about? You may have thought you'd bought one game, but with as many as 100 pointless tweaks and variations to choose from, the fun never ended. Then again, if it weren't for the variations, we wouldn't have had guided bouncy bullets in Combat, or the futility of invisible Space Invaders.

It's impossible to mention the VCS without paying homage to those two games. Bundled with the VCS when it was launched (for £169) in the UK in 1978, Combat alone, with its hopelessly sluggish biplanes and fiendish tank mazes, was a good enough reason to own the console.

Space Invaders, though, was Atari's turning point. A worldwide craze was born when Taito launched the arcade game in 1978. Atari saw its chance and negotiated for the exclusive home rights. By 1980, it had its killer application (with 112 variations). Space Invaders, and a reduced price of £99 for the VCS, allowed Atari to sell no fewer than 125,000 consoles and over 500,000 games in the UK in 1980 alone.

In 1981, Atari released Asteroids for a fraction under £35. Along with Space Invaders and Missile Command, it became one of the VCS's bestselling titles. But it wasn't all shoot-'em-ups: the success of the VCS saw the very first graphical adventure games. The all-time classic was Atari Adventure, in which the player had to find keys to release the golden chalice while avoiding three increasingly tough dragons and a mad black bat. The graphics may have been blocky, but a game involving actual long-term exploration and problem solving was unheard of on a games console.

Also in 1981, Activision released the first third-party VCS games. Activision was also responsible for the graphically superior Pitfall! adventure game.

Hardware-wise, the VCS drove its 6507 processor at a blinding 1.19MHz, and backed it up with 128 bytes of RAM and up to 4Kb of ROM. It featured an RF TV output socket and a pair of 9-pin serial ports for its games controllers, and came with two joysticks and a pair of analogue paddles, the latter requiring only a single port - perfect for Breakout-style games.

Despite its initial success, Atari began to experience difficulties shortly after its release of Pac-Man. The VCS couldn't keep up with newer products, and by the time the Japanese had invaded the console market, Atari had focused all its attention on home computers with its ST range.

The VCS, however, lives on today. The hardware is readily available second-hand, and emulators have been written for PC and Mac. Countless websites pay homage (try stella.atari.org) and some people are even developing new games. Browsers of the Argos catalogue may have spotted a TV Boy, costing £25 and squeezing over 100 (renamed) VCS classics in a case only a little bigger than a joypad controller.

Go on, relive those heady days ... you know you want to.