Atari Console Riot!

I owned a Colecovision, and Atari 2600, and an Atari 5600, I think.
This was thirty years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy.
I'd spend hours playing the same two dozen or so games.
I don't remember what my favorite games were, but I remember Defender and Combat getting regular rotation.
I had a cousin that had an Atari and about as many games, but different ones than I had.
He had Zaxxon, which was probably my favorite of the Atari era video games.
A few years later, when all of my peers had Nintendo Entertainment Systems, I bought a 2600 console with about 50 games from a friend for $50.
If you remember, the cartridges used to retail for $50 each new, so getting a new, used console and 50 games for $50 was a hell of a deal.
My mother let me have the run of the basement in the place we were living and I had an old couch, a TV, and my Atari console and I couldn't count the number of hours I spent down there playing the same repetitive games over and over again.

Here's the Atari era comic books ads from the Uncanny X-Men.

I never owned the AD&D games, but they look like a mix between the Indiana Jones game and Berzerk.

 

Everyone had a copy of Frogger.

Frogger was just about as common as Pac-Man, Asteroids, Combat, and Berzerk.
Frogger kind of sucked as a video game, but at least it was easy to play.

There were also similar looking ads for Q-Bert and Popeye.

And speaking of Q-Bert and Popeye...

For some reason they decided to develop a Kool-Aid themed game.

There were other branded video games that featured unimpressive gameplay.

 

And here's your first taste of Mario.
No princesses.  No castles.  Just you in a sewer with turtles and crabs.

And here's a bunch of random ads for games that I didn't have any emotional attachment too.

And here's two ads from Parker Brothers.