Let's take a closer look at the Atari 5200 SuperSystem

Back before we had "console generations," the media called the 5200 a part of the "third wave" consoles. That's because we had three successive waves. The first were the "pong" consoles. We call those first generation today. And the second was led by Atari 2600 and Intellivision, which we call the 2nd generation. We generally refer to 5200 as a second gen consoles too, but it's really ahead of the 70s consoles that it tends to get grouped in with.

Released in 1982, the 5200 SuperSystem was the result of a long design process that included at least one scrapped console. It's based off of the Atari 400 computer architecture, and it a big step forward from 2600. It was designed to be an Intellivision killer. Atari seemed oblivious to the fact that ColecoVision was coming, and 5200 was outsold by it by a margin of 3:1.

On the back of the box we can see all the stuff that's in the box. Doesn't that family look like they're having fun?

I just wanted to point out that this box has a handle. I guess Atari imagined that kids would carry it to their friends' houses. I like handles, though.

Xbox for scale. I just wanted to point out here how massive the 5200 box really is. It's not that my love seat is small. It's normal sized. It's that the 5200 box is enormous.

There were two version of the 5200. This is the first version which had four controller ports. The second had only two. As far as I know, this is the second console to come with four controller ports. Do you know what the first is? (Edit: this originally had a typo where I said two and not four.)

The first was Bally Astrocade, which is fucking awesome. Here's a pic of the top of the console so you can get a look at the cart slot. There's also a power button in the bottom right.

Under the console we have built-in storage for the video cable, which serves double duty as a power cable. More on that later.

Xbox for scale. I wanted to again point out how massive this thing is. If you open it up, which I was too lazy to do for this (sorry), you'll see that the internals did not necessitate such a large case. It was that Atari wanted people to upgrade to a 5200 and the thinking was that consumers would figure that "bigger is better."

There's a little door on the top of the system that stores two controllers. I am sure you could stash other things too.

The controller is the worst thing about the 5200. It has an analog joystick that doesn't recenter itself. This makes playing a lot of games really annoying. Pac-Man, for instance. If you turn left and then you need to turn right, instead of just tapping the direction you have to swing the entire joystick from one position to the other. It's awful.

If you look above the joystick, however, there's some good here. There are buttons for start and pause. 5200 is the first console in history to have a pause button (on the controller).

Here's a side profile of the controller. The action buttons are on the side. This actually isn't bad.

Here's another area where the 5200 gets weird. Here's the RF switch for the console...

...And here's the power brick. I like it because it has a plug that goes into the outlet with the power brick in the middle.

...And here's why the RF switch is weird. You see, both the power supply and the video cable connect to it. As to why, I have no idea. I know of only one other console that did this, 1977's RCA Studio II, which is hands down the worst home console ever made. Someone at Atari saw the worst console ever made, and decided to take some pointers from it. In later models of the 5200 there's a more normal set up where the power goes into the system and the RF doesn't serve double duty.

The one thing I like about the RF switch is that it doesn't have one of those annoying screw-on ends.

The game boxes are the same size as the 2600, and later 7800 boxes. It's the one area where they didn't super size things. Maybe they figured that would be too annoying to retailers.

Here's the stuff in the box.

While I have a manual out, I may as well take a pic of it. They have full color illustrations, like this mildly racist one.

The cartridges are super sized, however. Here's 5200 Pac-Man with the much less good 2600 Pac-Man for scale.

With the console powered on, there's a little red light can be seen.

"Press Start" is one of the most common phrases in a video game. Atari 5200 was the first console to use it.

I am gonna look at some games now. Q*Bert looks pretty good.

Back to Jungle Hunt, it's a pretty good example of the 5200 being more advanced that its predecessor, as it features full color screens and much more detailed graphics.

The other thing that makes Jungle Hunt a nice example is that it has three different screens per level. Earlier we saw the vine hopping screen, and here are the swimming screens...

And lastly the platforming screens.

Countermeasure is a pretty cool combat/strategy game that also looks pretty nice.

I am sure you know who this guy is.

I bet you know this guy too.

I'll leave you with Missile Command. This is one game where the joystick really works. The 2600 version of this is also my first memory of a video game. I also happen to think it's one of the most brilliant game designs ever. You're always on defense, and you can't win. Eventually you'll die in nuclear fire. How awesome is that?

Overall, 5200 is not a console that I bother hooking up often. There just aren't a lot of games here that are totally exclusive to it. Most of the ones worth playing have Atari 8-bit computer versions, or there are ColecoVision versions. The hardware is finicky and doesn't always like to turn on. The controllers are fragile and break easily, plus they don't work too well even when they're in 100 percent working order. The system is best suited for collectors and Atari fans.