The Atari VCS

The Atari VCS was released in the U.S.A. in autumn 1977. A few years later it was then released in Europe and other continents. In 1982 Atari started to call this machine the "2600", named after its model-number so that it was easier to distinguish from the then released Atari 5600. In the same year the VCS 2600 als became the dominant videogame machine in Germany as well as in other European countries. Like many others I bought this fantastic system back then. Back then it was available in nearly all stores that sold electronics. It was so popular that others wanted in on the business and for the Colecovision (a system from a competitor) there was an expansion module available that enabled it to play VCS games. Atari supported the VCS 2600 was supported until 1991.

When it was developed (Codename: Stella) und released as the Video Computer System (= VCS) no one would have thought that it will be such a great success.

... The original Atari VCS had a woodpanel and six switches: (Power, tvtype, left diffficulty, right difficulty, game select und game reset)
(By the way.. these pages are named after the "Game Select" switch ;) )
... Later the VCS with only four switches was released. The now much smaller "difficulty" switches are placed at the back of the machine. The woodpanel was the same than before.
... The following VCS still had four switches, but the woodpanel disappeared.
... In the later eighties when the VCS was technically not up-to-date anymore, the Atari 2600 jr. was released. It was the same machine with a different design.
...

Besides the normal silver version there was also a black version, however not much is known about is. As far as i could find out this could have been an earlier version of the 2600 jr. (not sure)