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Classic Video Games / Re: Why are the NES era Consoles 3rd Gen and not 4th?
« on: November 21, 2022, 08:22:55 pm »Historically, a new generation begins once a major upgrade in graphical quality has been reached.
With that said, Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 are formally considered to be a part of the second generation.
Going from the 2600 to the arcade quality 5200 was a leap in graphics.
It is probably best to not compare the items on their own but instead within the generation as a whole and the many systems which were released concurrent to them.
I'm not familiar with this generation of consoles, so I don't have any opinion the quality of the 2600 and the improvements the 5200 had over it.
Judge for yourself.
Donkey Kong on Atari 2600:
![](https://www.retrogames.cz/games/001/A26_00.gif)
Donkey Kong on Atari 5200:
![](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Uh23MRW7ypA/VubRFY_8HgI/AAAAAAAAbLk/OYTnNwD-s5Mve_6DV_-Alv9anhoGowR5w/s1600/post-13491-0-46170700-1457115683.png)
It's a big difference. One sort of looks like Donkey Kong. While the other is a near arcade-quality port.
And 5200's contemporaries were the Intellivision and Colecovision, both of which are improvements over the 2600 (especially the Colecovision).