Though the Atari 7800 didn’t have much of a long commercial life, and was lacking behind the Atari 2600 which had a ton of games, however it was compatible with almost all of the existing games in the Atari 2600 library. The sound chip was however the same as that of the Atari 2600, thus there was no major improvement in the sound department. The Atari 7800 came with a simple digital joystick, significantly improved graphics hardware over the Atari 2600, the new custom CPU and MARIA graphics chip that powered the system were capable of moving up to 100 objects on-screen at the same time and likewise capable of displaying up to 25 colours on screen out of a 256 colour palette. As at the time of its release it was in direct competition with the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Master System. It was built to have largely backward-compatible with the previously released Atari 2600, making it the first console to have backward compatibility without the use of additional modules. The Atari 7800 (originally named Atari 7800 Pro System), is an 8-bit home video game console officially re released in 1986 by the Atari Corporation, after its previously announced release two years earlier under Atari Inc.
