In 1978 Atari released Atari Football, which is considered to be the first video game to accurately emulate American football ; it also popularized the use of the trackball, having been inspired by an earlier Taito soccer game that used a trackball.

The Atari Jaguar and 3DO were the first consoles to be targeted at 3D, but it was the Sony PlayStation with its revolutionary textured triangle throughput and powerful geometry coprocessor that really popularized 3D gaming.

Trackballs have appeared in computer and video games, particularly early arcade games ( see a List of trackball arcade games ) notably Atari's Centipede and Missile Command – though Atari spells it " trak-ball ".

Football, by Atari, released in 1978, is commonly misunderstood to be the first arcade game to use a trackball, but in The Ultimate History of Video Games by Steven L. Kent the designer of Football, Dave Stubben, claims they copied the design from a Japanese soccer game by Taito.

Cerny decided to use a trackball system ( marketed by Atari as Trak-Ball ) to give the game a unique control system, and he chose a motorized trackball for faster spinning and braking when the in-game ball traveled downhill and uphill, respectively.

In 2004, Asteroids ( Including both the Atari 2600 port and the arcade original, along with Asteroids Deluxe ) were included as part of Atari Anthology for both Xbox and PlayStation 2, using Digital Eclipse's emulation technology.

Development of the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner, developer of the Atari 800 chip set, as the principal hardware designer of Amiga Corporation.

Atari 5200 system with controller, game cartridges and packaging

The 360-degree non-centering joystick was touted as offering more control than the eight-way joystick controller offered with the Atari 2600.

Atari decided to re-enter the games market with a design that closely matched their original 1978 specifications.

While it touted superior graphics to the 2600 and Mattel's Intellivision, the system was initially incompatible with the 2600s expansive library of games, and some market analysts have speculated that this hurt its sales especially since an Atari 2600 cartridge adapter had been released for the Intellivision II.

) This lack of new games was due in part to a lack of funding, with Atari continuing to develop most of its games for the saturated 2600 market.

It had simple digital joysticks and was almost fully backward-compatible with the Atari 2600, the first console to have backward compatibility without the use of additional modules.

They justified this relatively low ranking ( though higher than every other Atari console save the 2600 ) with the summary statement: " Its delayed release, its cancelled peripherals, and a lack of financial backing from the company's new owners all combined to ensure that Atari 7800 would never see any success beyond being a sexier way of playing Atari 2600 titles.

Atari 7800 System ( PAL system with Joypad controller )

11 titles were developed and sold by three third-party companies under their own labels for the 7800 ( Absolute Entertainment, Activision, and Froggo ) with the rest published by Atari themselves.

Following the debate over Custer's Revenge, an Atari 2600 VCS title with adult themes, Atari had concerns over similar adult titles finding their way onto the 7800 and displaying adult graphics on the significantly improved graphics of the MARIA chip.

The 7800's compatibility with the Atari 2600 is made possible by including many of the same chips used in the Atari 2600.

The Atari 7800 came bundled with the Atari Proline Joystick a two button controller with a joystick for movement.

In response to criticism over ergonomic issues in the 7800 ’ s Pro-Line controllers, Atari later released joypad controllers with European 7800s, which were similar in style to controllers found on Nintendo and Sega Systems.

Unlike the NES or Sega Master System, there were few add-on peripherals for the 7800, though its backwards compatibility feature allowed it to be compatible with most Atari 2600 peripherals.

The most notable exception was the XG-1 lightgun, which came bundled with the Atari XE Game System.

* Atari Football ( 1978 )

* TV Sports: Football ( 1988, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS )

* Warner Communications ' Atari introduces the trak-ball controller on the arcade game Football ; releases the Pinball Game System home console.

* Football ( video game ), an American football game for Intellivision ( 1979 ) and the Atari 2600 ( 1982 )

* Football ( 1978 video game ), an American football game developed by Bob Whitehead of Activision for the Atari 2600

* Backyard Football 2008 ( Atari ) ( 2007 )

* Backyard Football 2007 ( Atari ) ( 2006 )

* Backyard Football ( Atari ) ( 2005 )

* Backyard Football ( Atari ) ( 2003 )

Other examples of innovative games are Atari Games ' Paperboy in 1984 where the goal is to successfully deliver newspapers to customers, and Namco's Phozon where the object is to duplicate a shape shown in the middle of the screen.

Paperboy is a 1984 arcade game by Atari Games.

Paperboy was ported to the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron ( by Andy Williams, 1986 ), Commodore 64 ( by Chris Harvey and Neil A Bate, 1986 ), Commodore 16 ( 1986 ), Amstrad CPC ( 1986 ), ZX Spectrum ( 1986 ), Apple II ( 1986 ), TRS-80 Color Computer ( 1986 ), DOS ( 1988 ), Apple IIGS ( 1988 ), Nintendo Entertainment System ( 1988 ), Game Boy ( 1990 ), Game Boy Color ( 1999 ), Atari ST ( 1989 ), Amiga ( 1989 ), Atari Lynx ( 1990 ), Sega Master System ( 1990 ), Game Gear ( 1991 ), and Mega Drive / Genesis ( 1991 ).

Unlike the arcade version, several of these versions inspired a sequel, Paperboy 2 for several home systems ( Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, DOS, Game Boy, Game Gear, Sega Genesis, NES, SNES, ZX Spectrum ), and a 3D version for the Nintendo 64 called Paperboy 64.

* Paperboy ( video game ), a 1984 arcade game released by Atari Games

It was best known for its ports of popular Atari arcade games, including Klax, Hard Drivin ', STUN Runner, and Paperboy, although they published many other titles as well.

* Marble Madness and Paperboy are released by Atari Games.

* Paperboy by David Ralston ( Atari, arcade game ), later ported to many platforms, featured innovative bike handle steering controller.

Atari also used the game for its other late ' 90s and 2000s anthology series.

This would eliminate the need for more ports on the back of the machine, and allowed for the elimination of expansion slots for supporting more complex devices ( the Atari 8-bit family used a similar solution, known as SIO ).

The Atari 5200 controllerThe controller prototypes used in the electrical development lab used a yoke and gimbal mechanism that came from an RC airplane controller kit.

Atari Inc. released the Pro-Line Trak-Ball controller for the system, which was used primarily for gaming titles such as Centipede or Missile Command.

There was also a small faction of devoted Atari BBSes that used the Atari 800, then the 800XL, and eventually the 1040ST.

Reading Atari 8-bit 130kB or 180kB disks was possible as well with special software, but the standard Atari 8-bit 90kB format, which used FM rather than MFM encoding, could not be handled by the 1571 hardware without modifying the drive circuitry as the control line that determines if FM or MFM encoding is used by the disc controller chip was permanently wired to ground ( MFM mode ) rather than being under software control.

* Atari DOS, which was used by the Atari 8-bit family of computers.

Although used in the early days of the personal computer ( on the Sinclair ZX80, ZX81 and Atari 400 ), they have been supplanted by the more tactile dome and mechanical switch keyboards.

The 68000 became the dominant CPU for Unix based workstations including Sun workstations and Apollo / Domain workstations, found its way into heralded computers such as the Apple Lisa and Macintosh, Amiga, Atari ST, and was used in the first generation of desktop laser printers including the original Apple Inc. LaserWriter and the HP LaserJet.

The 1993 multi-processor Atari Jaguar console used a 68000 as a support chip, although some developers used it as the primary processor due to familiarity.

The interrupt controller can be as simple as a 74LS148 priority encoder, or may be part of a VLSI peripheral chip such as the MC68901 Multi-Function Peripheral ( used in Atari TT030 ), which also provided a UART, timer, and parallel I / O.

The 65xx family most notably included the 6502, used in several home computers such as the Commodore PET and VIC-20, the Apple II, and the Atari 800.

The 68030 was used in many models of the Apple Macintosh II and Commodore Amiga series of personal computers, NeXT Cube, Sun Microsystems Sun 3 / 80 desktop workstation ( a member of the " sun3x " architecture, where the earlier " sun3 " used a 68020 ), later Alpha Microsystems multiuser systems, and some descendants of the Atari ST line such as the Atari TT and the Atari Falcon.