By the late 1980s, Atari was trying hard to stay relevant. The way to do that when you're competing against a powerhouse in Nintendo is by making games for that system. Atari was doing that, but they weren't titles that made video game fans jump. The other way to stay relevant is by making a console to rival the Nintendo Entertainment System. Atari tried, but kept coming up with hardware that was not on par with the 8-bit king. So... they tried to push their 10 year old system back on us; the Atari 2600.
They repackaged it in a slick package, cut the price dramatically and came out with commercials with catchy jingles like the one below. But as we all know, it wasn't enough.
