Atari XEGS

The Atari XEGS, launched for Christmas 1987, was an inventive piece of repackaging: an Atari 8-bit computer dressed up as a games console, complete with a detachable keyboard, joystick and light gun. It could be a plug-and-play games machine for the living room or a full computer when the keyboard went on, whichever the owner fancied.

It sold respectably over the festive season, helped by that flexible two-in-one pitch. But by the late 1980s the 8-bit platform it was based on was firmly in its twilight, surrounded by far more powerful 16-bit machines, and no amount of clever packaging could disguise that.

The XEGS is a charming curiosity: a last, imaginative attempt to wring fresh appeal out of Atari's veteran 8-bit line by selling it in a new guise. It didn't change the platform's fortunes, but as a final flourish for a long-serving design, it has a certain likeable ingenuity about it.