PixlBit

In 1987, my dad got my mother yet another new computer: the Atari 130XE. And let me tell you, I spent a lot of weekends and weekday evenings over the next few years in the computer room.

In the early 1980s, at the height of the 2600's success, Atari began trying to break into the nascent home computer market. Atari had two major lines of computers over the 1980s: its 8-bit line which encompassed various models over the years, and the Atari ST (nicknamed the "Jackintosh" after Atari president Jack Tramiel), which was meant to compete against the IBM PC and the Mac in the business market.

Atari's 8-bit family, of which the 130XE was the penultimate product, were powered by the hugely successful 6502 processor, the same processor that powered the NES. The first 8-bit Atari computers were the the low-end 400, which sported a membrane keyboard similar to a Texas Instruments Speak 'n' Spell, and the higher end 800, which had a real keyboard. These computers came on the market in 1979. Next came the XL series, in 1982. Though the XL series was more successful, a three-way price war between Atari, Commodore, and Texas Instruments caused the bottom to drop out of Atari's computer line even as the 1983 crash did the same with the 2600 and 5200. At around this time, Jack Tramiel, the former head and founder of Atari's rival, Commodore, who had been ousted from the company he founded, bought the home division of Atari from Warner at fire-sale prices, while the arcade division of Atari would spend the next decade changing hands between Warner, Namco, and Midway, leading to there being two Ataris. Believing video game consoles to be a dead end, Tramiel ended development on consoles and focused all of his Atari's energies on computers and leaving the NES virtually unopposed in the console space when it launched in the US in 1985. Atari's subsequent attempts to return to consoles, the 7800, the Lynx, and the Jaguar, would all end in failure and ultimately with the end of Atari itself. They even repurposed the XE into a games console, the XE Game System, to try to compete against Nintendo, to no avail.

Which is a shame, because other than the NES, the 130XE was probably the best gaming machine of the 1980s. The 130XE sported 128K of RAM, good graphics for its time, the best sound a computer would have for at least a decade and would not be surpassed until the SNES released in 1991, and a massive library of games, including games made by Atari, third-party games, as well as games hacked and converted from 5200 ROMs. The 5200, Atari's ill-fated follow-up to the 2600, had the same basic chipset as the Atari 8-bit line, so it was easy to port games between the 5200 and the 8-bit computers. The 130XE really showcased the wasted potential of the 5200, as in my opinion, it had the best games of any Atari system, and you could play them with standard Atari and third-party joysticks instead of with the abomination that was the 5200 controller. Once Atari controllers went off the market, I discovered that Sega Genesis controllers, which used the same connectors, worked perfectly with the 130XE. 

I first became acquainted with the 130XE at my aunt and uncle's house in Arizona when I was 8. My cousin was also there, and we spent hours on end playing with the computer. My dad was impressed with the computer, too, enough so that he bought one for my mother a few months later. Not long after that, I got a package from my uncle that contained hundreds of floppy disks, all of them with games on them!

My friends loved to come over to my house and play video games on our Atari, at least until they got NES's, and even when they weren't there I spent much of my free time in front of it, much to my dad's annoyance - my dad didn't like video games in the 1980s, and years later, he'd admit to me how wrong he was once he got a gaming PC and became a gaming addict himself. My mother was generous in allowing me to use the computer so long as I didn't neglect homework. The Atari would remain my primary gaming machine for many years. I got a Game Boy in 1989 and loved it, but still played a lot of Atari, and I continued to play it even when I got a PC in 1992. It was only when I got a SNES that I put the Atari aside for good, as its floppy disk drives were wearing out. However, it still holds a large place in my heart in my gaming childhood, and I have recently begun to revisit my Atari favorites through an emulator. I plan this blog as part of a possible series where I will share some of my favorite Atari 130XE games with you. Hopefully it will give you an insight into this slice of forgotten Atari history.