1978 Atari 2600 Commercial – Pete Rose, Pelé & Don Knotts | Vintage Video Game Ad

Before it was called the Atari 2600, it was the Atari Video Computer System — and apparently selling it required a baseball legend, a soccer legend, and Don Knotts in jail. This classic 1978 Atari commercial features Pete Rose, Pelé, and Don Knotts demonstrating some of the newest game cartridges available for Atari’s groundbreaking home video game console. Pete Rose steps up for Home Run, Pelé appears with Air-Sea Battle, and Don Knotts finds himself behind bars for an appropriately literal introduction to Breakout. At the time, Atari advertised 20 available game cartridges with more than 1,300 game variations, showing off just how different a cartridge-based home console was from the dedicated Pong-style systems that had dominated the market only a few years earlier. The commercial finishes with Atari’s wonderfully direct pitch: “Don’t just watch television tonight — play it!” Originally released as the Atari Video Computer System (VCS) in 1977, the console would later become known as the Atari 2600 and help establish interchangeable-cartridge video game systems as a major part of American home entertainment. Original Atari Video Computer System television commercial, 1978. #Atari #Atari2600 #AtariVCS #PeteRose #Pele #DonKnotts #VintageCommercial #VintageGaming #1970s #RetroGaming #VideoGameHistory