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The games may look laughable by todays standards, but when the Atari 2600 launched in 1977 it was state of the art. Before then, games consoles had often been monochrome with a limited number of games, normally all of which were just slight variations on Pong. The Atari 2600 blew those machines out of the water with its colour graphics and, most importantly, wide range of varied games. It also reinvented the method of control by coming with a 8 directional, single buttoned joystick. Prior to this most machines used a twisty dial thing to control the game, which is why Pong was so prevalent - it was about the only game you could do on such a system.
The looks of the console fit well with the television sets of the era, with a wooden panel along the front, a series of switches to control difficulty levels and so on, and a big slot that accepted a plastic cartridge containing the games themselves. There was a wide range of games available, some good, some bad and some truly terrible (even taking into account the limited power of the machine). Some of the better examples were Space Invaders, Yars Revenge and Breakout. There was a fairly mediocre version of Pacman too, but some awful ones such as Haunted House and ET.
As already mentioned in an earlier post on this site, the late 1980’s home computer war was thought between the 
I remember getting the Grandstand Munchman game for Christmas one year, and spent most of that Christmas period playing it. The Nintendo Gameboy had yet to be invented, so portable games tended to be fairly large, requiring the massive C cell batteries to power them, and dedicated to playing a single game. That didn’t matter for Munchman, as the fact that I could take this game with me when doing the traditional family-visiting-the-relatives thing was a great advantage.
The Commodore Amiga was the computer of choice during the days of the 16-bit home computer. Well, I think so, anyway! Its big rival was the Atari ST, but the Amiga just had the edge when it came to graphics and sound. The Amiga appeared in it’s first incarnation in 1985, as the Amiga A1000. This version of the computer looked like a desktop PC, with a separate keyboard and base unit, upon which it’s monitor could be placed. However, most people will probably be more familiar with the version pictured, the Amiga A500.
In the UK, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was probably the most popular home computer of the early 1980’s. I’ve no sales figures to back that up, but the fact that it was both British made and less expensive than it’s rival the 
In the days before videogame consoles, home computers ruled the roost, and probably the most popular was the Commodore 64. Released in 1982, and somehow managing to stay on sale until 1994, it sold a massive 17 million units across the world! In the UK there were several home computers to choose from, but most kids allegiances would be to either the Commodore 64 or the