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Hot on the heels of the Atari 7800, Atari inexplicably released another game console, the Atari XE Game System (XEGS). A bizarre move, it was as if Atari had realized their losing strategy with the 7800, and wanted to immediately change gears and take an entirely new approach. This time, Atari attempted to leverage their extensive and highly regarded 8-bit computer game library. Eight years in the making, the library was chock full of quality titles. Ironically, Atari had eschewed marketing their computers as game machines in the past, insisting their systems were better suited for "practical" applications (as if!). The XEGS was essentially an Atari XE computer in a fancy console shell. Although cartridge-based, it would support all the standard Atari computer peripherals including floppy disk drives, tape drives, and printers. Unfortunately, most of the games it could run were old and could hardly compete with the fresh new titles coming out for the NES. Still, there's no denying that the XEGS runs some terrific, classic titles. It's a shame it was packaged with the lackluster Flight Simulator 2 and Bug Hunt. Apparently these were chosen to justify the keyboard and gun accesories. Atari proceeded to repackage several old classics like Archon and Blue Max in cartridge form, but the system was basically dead on arrival. Sharing the same fate as its sister, the Atari 7800, the XEGS languished briefly before fading into video game obscurity.