Everything Old Is New Again: A Look Back at LEGO Atari Consoles
/As the saying goes, “Everything old is new again.” This not only applies to the Atari 2600 (VCS) home gaming console finally becoming an official LEGO set but also to BrickNerd articles written about MOC tributes to them. Who knew when we wrote our “retro game console round-up” back in March that we’d be reading about an official LEGO set for one of them just over three months later? Well, some designers at LEGO certainly must have. It would be presumptuous for us to think we had any influence over their decision to bring the actual set to fruition, but we can at least say that we affirmed the community’s interest in building them.
Before we take a look at MOCs of Atari gaming consoles from around the LEGO community, here are a few real-life glamour shots of the upcoming 10306 LEGO Atari 2600, available on August 1st.
It is in that “Everything old is new again” spirit that we take another look at some of the Atari MOCs we highlighted back in March… These MOCs may also give you ideas on how you might modify the official set once you finally have a copy for yourself (for example: if you already have a sizable part collection in brown, you might consider mixing in some of your older brown plates to give a little color variation into the front wood-grain paneling of the console, to give it a more realistic depth-of-color).
Atari - Home Pong
Before we get to MOCs built of the Atari 2600 (VCS), we would be remiss without giving at least one more nod to Atari’s humble gaming console that started it all for them; Home Pong. Although it was pretty much designed to play just one game, Home Pong’s positive reception gave an early indication of how much demand there would be for home video game consoles in the years to come. Quy Chau built the tribute to Home Pong shown above back in 2013.
As for the game of Pong itself, it was a fairly basic version of table tennis (aka ping-pong); Just hitting a ball back and forth with a paddle, and trying to get it past your opponent. The winner was declared once a player reached the required number of points or their opponent quit out of boredom (“I quit. Let’s go play with LEGO instead!”). If the game Pong was a Nerdly, it would kind of look like this rendition by Anthony SÉJOURNÉ below.
Atari 2600
It wasn’t too long after Home Pong that Atari released the Atari 2600 (branded as the Atari Video Computer System [VCS]) to the masses in 1977. When people said they had an “Atari” growing up, this was the gaming console that they were referring to. And when people say “do you remember that Atari console someone built out of LEGO?” invariably it is DξβS version that he built back in 2011 that they are referring to (and the standard by which the official set will likely be compared).
In 2020, -derjoe- built their own version of the Atari 2600 (VCS), complete with power cords and a couple classic games to go along with it. Combat was the one that came standard, but the home versions of Space Invaders and Pitfall were classics too. I was always partial to Asteroids myself.
Gilcelio chagas had his own Atari game favorites. After coming back home from BrickCon in 2012, he was inspired to build a video game mosaic of H.E.R.O. (an acronym standing for Helicopter Emergency Rescue Operation). It was a single-player video game published by Activision for the Atari 2600. In that game, the player uses a helicopter backpack and other tools to rescue victims trapped deep in a mine.
But let’s say you want to scale-it-down instead, and build a minifig-scale tv-room habitat of those early gaming days. Well, Kristi had those same thoughts back in 2013 and came up with these custom minifig scale joystick controllers, along with a matching console. Wouldn’t those look great sitting in front of that retro TV screen from BrickStuff?
Chris McVeigh is another builder (now LEGO designer—more on him later) well known for scaling down retro video game consoles and home personal computers too. He has built a couple versions of the Atari 2600 console. First is this one with the joysticks being built 3x3 studs in size.
Chris then scaled them down further to be 2x2 studs, but also kicked the nostalgia up a notch by completing the scene in all its wood-paneled, rabbit-eared, earth-toned living room glory!
Before you head out to play some old-school games, here are a few interesting facts about the upcoming 10306 LEGO Atari 2600.
Chris McVeigh (who made several of the MOCs above) designed the set. What a fitting project!
The LEGO set is based on the four-switch revision of the Atari VCS/2600 which debuted in 1980.
Along with the joystick, you get game cartridges for Asteroids, Adventure and Centipede—but sadly E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial has been neglected yet again.
The set comes with a special minifigure and a super secret surprise (that we’re sure will get spoiled by other blogs—or by looking at the back of the box). Click the arrow in the gallery below if you can’t wait to find out.
That concludes our look back through some of the best Atari console MOCs that we uncovered. Will the official LEGO Atari 2600 stand up to comparison? We will let you be the judges.
Do you know of any other LEGO Atari MOCs that we missed? Let us know in the comments below!
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