As a gaming machine it's superior to the Apple 2, but Apple had more games.
As a gaming machine it usually falls short of the C64, but it does have a faster CPU which gives it an advantage in rare cases. I think it also has a better floppy drive, people hate C64 floppy drives.

Most game boxes back then used screenshots from the C64 version because it looked the best. You had to guess what your version would look like.
The A8 was dropped by game developers sooner than Apple or C64, so some games that appear on the latter don't appear on the A8. One factor in that may have been piracy - people figured out some exploit for Atari floppy drives that allowed making perfect copies, and game publishers weren't happy about it.
I'm sure the general instability of Atari (the company) didn't help either, and I think their system sales dropped off sooner than C64 or A2.

The 2600 wasn't expected to stay on the market long. The hardware in the Atari 400/800/etc was meant for a next-gen console which would quickly replace the 2600. The graphics and sound are much improved. It can play music on-key, it can display more moving objects without flicker and can display text properly. It surely would have had much more RAM allowing more complex games. The 2600 doesn't even have a dedicated RAM chip, just the 128 bytes that's built into an IO chip they were using.

The guy who started Atari (Nolan Bushnell) sold the company to Warner, then feuded with them over his plan to replace the 2600. Warner saw it's sales ramping up and didn't want to mess with it, Bushnell wanted to stay ahead of competitors and "wow" people a little more. That A8 hardware got released as a computer instead. The 2600 boomed but became obsolete while Warner kept milking it. The A8 hardware did eventually get consolized in the Atari 5200, but that was years later and it was ruined by bad controllers.
It was hard to make games with much depth on the 2600. It really only lent itself to simple genres, and this combined with the glaringly obsolete looking graphics were IMO major reasons people got burned out on Atari and dismissed video games as a dying fad.

I didn't have an A8 back then, but when I discovered them on AtariAge I got interested. I love the idea of a PC with a cartridge slot. I bought an 800XL a year ago but due to a keyboard issue I haven't used it much.
One game I do prefer on the 2600 is Space Invaders. That version is a masterpiece, the A8 version looks and feels wrong to me.
I don't have Star Raiders but from what I understand it's much better on the A8, the 2600 is too limited to do it very well.
Donkey Kong on the A8 is many people's favorite home version, I haven't played it myself, I just know it has a good reputation. They did reformat the level layout to fit a horizontal 4:3 television, but it has all the stages and people seem to like how it plays.

Aui wrote on 2024-01-30, 03:36:

Personally, Im not a big fan of the 2600 games, especially now that I can play the original arcade releases easily.

That's understandable. Though it has a few quite sophisticated titles.
Like for example:
- "Shuttle" a space shuttle simulator
- That tank game in 3D with the beautiful coloured gradient for the sky (Battlezone)
- Tomcat F14 simulator (first person, 3D)
- Solaris, the space mission game with planets; Radar Lock
- Fatal Run, that Poleposition knockoff with a story
- Sky Jinks, a lighthearted plane game
- Pitfall II, Idiana Jones like game w/ enhanced music
- California Games (on many platforms)

That being said, I think it's clear that the VCS was an USA machine.
Merely the original NTSC type has full colour.
The colour palette for PAL and SECAM isn't pretty.

The system really needs an old school Chippendale TV set with a horrible NTSC tuner.
That's were the Atari 2600 graphics look as intended.

Aui wrote on 2024-01-30, 03:36:

The Atari 400 on the other hand, seems to be a "real" computer. So how does it compare to the PET, Apple2 and TRS80. How does it compare to a Vic20 or C64 and which games are distictly better as compared to the 2600. I know that it is considered the true predecessor of the Amiga, due to Jay Miners involvement, but where does this show...

I don't know for sure about games.
But I believe to remember that the Atari 400/800 were used in amateur radio at one point in time.

For satellite orbit prediction, too, I vaguely remember.
It must have been in that Karamanolis book, I suppose.

Speaking of ham satellites, here's are some pictures of the old RS-14 control room. Atari 800XLs can be seen, I think.
https://amsat-dl.org/amsat-oscar-21-radio-sputnik-14/

Back in the 1980s, when there were several different 8 bit computers owned by fans in the UK (such as the ZX Spectrum, the Commodore 64, the Amstrad CPC range, the BBC and Acorn Electron, etc) I think I only ever saw one Atari 8 bit computer. A mate had one, which I *think* was an 600XL or 800XL (looking at the Atari 8 bits on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family I think I remember the silver buttons). From what little I remember I don't recall seeing any games on it that really impressed me or that seemed better than similar games on the C64 or the ZX Spectrum, which I think surprised me, because I'd heard that the Atari 8 bits were technically very good. I do remember that my mate didn't have a disc drive for it, so he only used cassettes, and perhaps the best Atari 8-bit games were disc only, I don't know. I do remember that the games took a surprisingly long time to load (on the Spectrum and C64 and CPC games started to come out that included 'fast loaders' (software routines that loaded the games faster than the computers' built in cassette loading routines)), did Atari 8 bit games never adopt similar speed loading routines?

I also seem to remember that many Atari 8 bit cassette games didn't have a loading screen (a game specific picture/image that the screen displayed until the game had fully loaded). Is there any specific reason for this?

I had 800XL since around 1986 to 1992... First games I played were awesome - Pole Position, Zaxxon, The Last Star Figher, Hacker, Ninja, BC's Quest for Tires, Montezuma's Revenge, Fort Apocalypse, HERO, ... to name a few 😉 Later games that were very cool and also had very nice music Zybex, Draconus, ...

Atari also had turbo loader. Without it more heavy games would take one side of cassette and load for 30 minutes (if there wasn't any error). With turbo it loaded like 10 times faster and you could cram 10-20 games on one cassette.

Now-a-days we can use SDrive and similar devices for fast loading and storing a complete library on small 1GB SD card.

2600 can't compare with it. I know C64 had many more games although I always longed for arcade quality games. That's why now I also have arcade machine at home. Unfortunately I don't have any time for them and Atari 800XL, Amiga 1200 and Arcade cabinet are all hibernating for years now 🙁

Thanks a lot for the original impressions from this sytem. Meanwhile I read a bit more and also found this article:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/why-i … ted-platform/2/

It also seems that Perifractic is a bit of a fan:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x2q57ewqvg8

However, what is even more astonishing is that fact that I seemingly already had my hands on experience with this system. When I was at school (and long before I would have my first own computer) I could sporadically borrow an Atari XE. This machine came with a tiny BW crt, manual and without any games. I did what everybody did, typing in basic programs (I recall some flashing circles and similar visual special effects). I wondered if that machine could play any games, but there was nothing around. Unfortunately I would only get this machine for a few days in a row and there was also no option to save anything.
From what I read at wikipedia, the XE is just a slightly upgraded (rebranded ?) 800. So in a way, I already know these machines !