Warning massive Atari 5200 appreciation post ! 😉

[OldSchoolGamer]

Just more sorting, organizing my collection. Having recently put together my little retro gaming corner well, I think I definitely need to make some time and add some 5200 playtime and appreciation. Found all my 5200 related items in a couple boxes and it’s not a bad little collection I think.



I had gotten a decent sized lot consisting of the console and games probably 10 years or so ago. Later, one of the first things of course was getting an early Atarimax USB flash cart as I figured that would cover me for other games I might want to play. HOWEVER, looking through it just now I got to say overall it’s not to bad a collection of original carts? Definitely some titles like Vanguard I would have wanted anyways and I look forward to replaying some of these and see how some like Star Wars arcade compare to other versions? Really, as far as original cart collections I forgot that this is one of my better ones until I pulled it all out of storage 👍

Also shown a variety of manuals, some catalogs and such, controller overlays, some are doubles and I thought that was all of them but as I was sorting through I noticed many carts already have an original overlay tucked in the back of them. I am quite pleased with the overall condition especially of the 5200 still having the plastic on the silver label and specially the back storage cover is intact. It’s an original 4 port with the odd power passthrough RF box as well, I have two original power supplies but see one has heat shrink wrap near the end of the connector so I will stick with the other one. I do know it is compatible with the 2600 add on as well as all 5200 games because it had the fix applied.



At some point since it never came with a controller I got one of the original 5200 controllers from BEST ELECTRONICS with the gold contacts inside and a member on atariage, was creating his own db9 pc controller adapter that allows me to plug in both an original controller and PC CONTROLLER SIMULTANEOUSLY, it’s not pretty but I recall it working back when I originally tested it. Pretty sure I picked up the Gravis pc joystick back during my thrift shop days and though we’ll, this is the one to go with my 5200 🧐



So there is my massive post on it, sorry for the novel but I been building up to it and had to find time to put everything together take the pictures as well as have the motivation which comes and goes so easily these days. 🤷🤟 I know many hate on the 5200 but back when it initially came out I could not afford replacing or adding to my 2600, I knew only one person who had one in their home but it belonged to his step dad and so we were not allowed to play it, weird 🙄 I recall seeing commercials and thinking wow it looked so much better then my faithful old 2600 😍