The Atari 401
The Atari 401 was a very early cartridge based gaming system created by Atari that was released to very limited number of test markets in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Sandusky Ohio in the fall of 1976.
The 401 was created in secret by a rouge group within Atari's Grass Valley, CA Think Tank where the company developed new ideas for arcade games. Early development began in 1976 when Nolan Bushnell, hopeless Pong addict that he was, recognized the limitation of games that relied on custom logic burned onto a circuit board. The "401" designation indicates the date that Bushnell came up with the idea after he fell off his toilet while hanging a clock and hit his head on the sink. The system was a complete failure and it was quickly pulled off the shelves and the remaining units were shipped to an undisclosed land fill where they were buried.
Design
The case features the now iconic 1970’s woodgrain styling, offset against a poop brown injection molded plastic case. A slot at the top accepted cartridge based games. Unlike other dedicated consoles from Atari that were relased around the same time, the 401 doesn’t have a battery compartment. It strictly relies on the battery eliminator power adapter thingy.
Atari didn’t invest heavily in quality control and because of that many of the 401’s were defective. One specific issue is that there is no shielding on the internal components. Because of this the unit generates an EM surge when powering up, which can make the lights in a room flicker when you turn it on. The system also didn’t use any sort of heatsinks, so they also had a tendency to overheat. There were a number unconfirmed rumors that a few of the earlier models got so hot that the plastic case would actually warp.
Games
There were only six games released, most of which were based on the earlier dedicated consoles and arcade titles that Atari had already developed. Titles included Space War, Bowling, Tank Battle, Breakout, Night Driver, and Super Ultra Awesome Pong Pro-Am Ten for Doubles.
Atari 401 Video Game System three-switch "wood veneer" version, dating from early 1976 and its accompanying joystick and paddle conrollers
Any resemblance to any game systems, living or dead, is entirely coincidental or is intended purely as a satire, parody or spoof and is not intended to communicate any true or factual information about that system.