Atari 400
Your teacher told your parents you should have a computer. At school you use Commodore 64s and your friend has an Apple IIe. Both have real, clicky keyboards.
They take you to Computer Express on High Street, next to the dog grooming place. The clerk takes one look at your family and steers you over to the older models. The Atari 400 is already two years old by the time you look at it but it supports the newer games and the clerk sells you the 400, a third-party joystick, and River Raid. You ask for Atlantis and the clerk adds it to the pile.
Your parents check out. You get the machine home. They didn’t buy Atlantis.
The membrane keyboard is hard to use. You try to type in a game from Antic magazine and it takes hours, days. You need a disk drive but your parents won’t buy one. You find a kid at school who has an 800XL and spend hours at his house, trying his games, the ones you don’t have.
