Was doing a little more thinking about the so called "Video game crash of 1983" and how they pin it all on E.T., actually I think a lot of people are blaming Pacman too now. I think Donkey Kong's July 1982 release had a hand in the equation. Three strikes and your out. Most people knew by the end of 1981 that Atari was starting to release some subpar games to the 2600.
I think the start was Pacman March 1982 Huge Game Arcade hit, big letdown as a port. You have a system with 1 button and a joystick, you cant mess that game up, oh well sh*t happens, Donkey Kong is released in July 1982, another subpar port? Not only that, Coleco visions version is better. What's up wih that? I think I bought Pitfall after being lured back to the platform by a commercial, but even looking back at it, it just wasn't that fun of a game, it got old relatively quick, Then the Fiasco of E.T in December of 1982 hit, I knew that game was going to be a bad game, so I passed on that. But alot of kids got sucked in. Never was a huge fan of the "platformers" on the Atari 2600. To me they all sucked. People say Adventure was good? I always thought that was the dumbest crap around. Your a Square dot running around. I remember looking at that and thinking WTF is that?
Anyways Donkey Kong was the Atari Ender for me.
Bye Atari

They really started running those Atari commercials bigtime in 1982, they must of known they were in trouble.
FU Jack Black made me waste my money on Pitfall
That along with Apple's release of the Lisa/Macintosh pretty much made the 2600 irrelevant, Probably got to throw in the Proliferation of Cable Tv, Before cable maybe 6-7 Broadcast Stations, ABC NBC, CBS,PBS, maybe a few idependents Stations. Times were achangin.