Mutually assured destruction: The XE Game System / Missile Command | NES Works Gaiden 70
982Can any exploration of the consoles appearing on American retail shelves in the late 1980s be properly complete without a look at the final Atari 8-bit machine? Hard to say. That final pre-16-bit-era console was Atari XE Game System, the computer pretending to be a console. But still, it was sold as a console and had its own library of XEGS-branded software. And it didn't boot into Atari DOS but rather launched missile command at startup. And it was indeed out there, if only just.
So, that means we also need to consider the XE Game System. Don't worry, there's not much to see here. Its library isn't even 1.5 Virtual Boys, and a bunch of those games have already shown up on 7800.
You can learn more about the XE Game System's history by preordering The NES Era Vol. II: NES and the Console Revolution, a comprehensive photographic atlas of every console game released for NES and its competitors—including the 7800—from October 1985 through December 1987. Take a deep dive into the prehistory of NES with this limited-edition oversized (12x12"!) photo book: https://limitedrungames.com/products/the-nes-era-vol-2-hardcover
Production notes:
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XEGS footage captured from original hardware. NES footage captured from Analogue Nt Mini. Video upscaled to 4K with RetroTink 4X.