Lego is making an Atari 2600 to celebrate the console’s anniversary

The Atari 2600 — in its acquainted, wood-paneled, super-groovy late-Seventies incarnation — will get a celebratory Lego-styled construct this August in recognition of the console’s fortieth/forty fifth anniversaries (see under), in response to German Lego fan web site Promobricks.

In accordance with Promobricks (translation through Google), the playset will function a buildable Atari VCS deck, with a scene from Activision’s seminal hit Pitfall!. Pitfall!, by David Crane, was video gaming’s first third-party, made-for-consoles blockbuster.

Pitfall! launched in 1982, the identical 12 months that Atari rebranded the VCS (so, there’s your fortieth anniversary) because the 2600. The console initially launched in 1977 (there’s the forty fifth). That got here 5 years after Allan Alcorn and Nolan Bushnell put in the primary PONG coin-operated cupboard at a bar in Sunnyvale, California (a fiftieth anniversary, for good measure).

Promobricks advised that the fold-out scene of Pitfall! must be movable, utilizing the playset’s joystick reproduction. In 2020, Lego launched a commemorative Nintendo Leisure System brickset, which included an almost life-size illustration of the console, a Tremendous Mario Bros. Sport Pak, and an lovely, wooden-legged TV (with analog dials and rabbit-ear antenna) as a monitor. Builders may scroll Mario via a illustration of World 1-1 by turning a crank on the facet of the assembled TV.

The Lego Atari 2600 has set quantity 10306 (Atari fiftieth Anniversary Gaming Console) and can promote for $199.99 (€169.99), says Promobricks. Apparently, that value (US) is about $10 extra, in complete {dollars}, than the Atari VCS’ authentic MSRP when it launched in 1977. In fact, $189.95 in Jimmy Carter cash is about $900 right now.