Atari was established by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney on June 27, 1972, and would soon bring Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Pong into the living room.

Though the company endured various splits, financial issues, and management battles, its products helped define the computer entertainment industry from the 1970s to the mid 1980s when it began to lose ground to competitors.

Lesser known than its gaming systems were the Atari personal computers the company tried to get off the ground in the 1980s as it attempted to join the home computing explosion, brought about in large part by the Apple II.

Atari also launched a mobile gaming system, the handheld Atari Lynx with color graphics, but it lost out to Nintendo’s less expensive Game Boy with its black-and-white display.

Though an Atari 2600 or personal computer would be a rare find today, the company’s name and games remain well known, and in 2017, the company announced it was working on a new console. The Atari VCS is described as “a completely modern gaming and video computer system, blending the best of consoles and PCs to delight a whole new generation of gamers and creators.” It is available for pre-order and scheduled to launch in 2020. The console made an appearance at CES this year.

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Editor’s note: This article was originally posted on June 27, 2012, and edited June 26, 2020.