Atari had some excellent arcade games in the 70’s and 80’s. I understand their role in the “crash” of the video game market in the 1980’s, but once it became clear that there was a rebound afoot, wasn’t it strange that they didn’t come out with a system that would compete with NES or SMS? Probably the closest thing to really playing the Atari produced arcade gems on Atari hardware was the Atari Lynx, and that was developed by Epyx as I understood it.

People point to the Jaguar as the commercial flop that finally did Atari in, but even at the time that system was viewed as a last resort hail mary from a company with one foot in the grave. Seems like the timing was off and an earlier system would have stopped Atari from appearing relevant, which was the position they were in by the time the Jaguar was released.

Going back and playing 2600/5200/7800 games just feels hollow and rudimentary compared to other offerings from the mid-late 80’s.