The Atari 2600 – in its familiar, wood-panelled, super-groovy, late 1970s incarnation – will be given a celebratory Lego-style build this August to celebrate the 40th-45th. anniversary of the console (see below). German Lego fansite Promobricks.
According to Promobricks (translation via Google), the playset will feature a buildable Atari VCS deck featuring a scene from Activision’s seminal hit Cases!. Cases!, by David Crane was the first blockbuster third-party video game made for consoles.
Cases! was released in 1982, the same year that Atari renamed the VCS (your 40th anniversary) to the 2600. The console was originally launched in 1977 (that’s the 45th). That was five years after Allan Alcorn and Nolan Bushnell installed the first PONG Coin cabinet in a bar in Sunnyvale, California (a 50th anniversary, for good measure).
Promobricks suggested that the fold out scene from Cases! should be moveable with the playset’s replica joystick. In 2020, Lego launched a Nintendo Entertainment System commemorative set that featured a near life-size representation of the console, a Super Mario Bros. Game Pak and an adorable, wooden-legged TV (with analog dials and bunny-ear antenna) as a monitor. Builders could scroll Mario through a representation of World 1-1 by turning a crank on the side of the assembled TV.
The Lego Atari 2600 has set number 10306 (Atari 50th Anniversary Gaming Console) and will retail for $199.99, Promobricks says. Interestingly, this price (US) is about $10 more in whole dollars than the original MSRP of the Atari VCS when it was released in 1977. Of course, $189.95 in Jimmy Carter money is about $900 today.
