Just listening to the sounds from this Myst remake brought back some core memories of playing our neighbor's state of the art Atari 2600, and it was a fun way to spend a cold winter afternoon. I can definitely believe that those that didn't grow up with it would find the graphics (and sound) lacking, but if it was your first home video game console, it was amazing.

The 2600 was also my first game console. I played it a lot, even after the Spectrum 128K arrived home. But, as much fun as I had with it, I have a similar issue with it now: I would happily play a SNES game now, but I have zero interest in playing an Atari 2600 game. I mean, I would play Qbert, but the graphics/sound would put me off enough to try the Commodore 64 version instead, and I have never touched a C64.

In fact, I have the same problem with the NES. For me the SNES is exactly the sweet spot.

I 'started with a Colecovision', so providing some perspective...

The VCS2600 came out in 1977 and did a good job with contemporary arcade games. Space Invaders was arguably better in some ways than the original, for example.

Five years later, 2600 hardware was getting stretched. Coleco and 5200 were 'Next Gen' but mostly just the same downgrade arcade ports. 2600 PacMan was awful, but 5200 PacMan was still just a poor imitator. Same with Coleco and Donkey Kong. We liked this stuff, but it was obviously deficient.

This is a fair point and probably a big reason for how I feel. Another factor may be that I never played Atari games socially; I didn’t really have play dates at that age (~7-8), or if I did we pretty much strictly played outside. Also, I was an only child. I did however play NES and then SNES with cousins and school friends.