Atari 7800 Expansion Module: a useless accessory for an even-more useless system

The 7800 Expansion Module: it also plays LaserDiscs

Once in a blue moon, I see a retro-gaming accessory that's so wonderfully dorky and useless that it brings a tear to my eye. The soon-to-be-released Atari 7800 Expansion Module may look like a prop from the lost Dark Crystal sequel, but if you're one of the 3 people who still has an Atari 7800, you can preorder it right now from Legacy Electronics. It even comes with a nifty Silver Atari-style box and instruction manual!

The Atari 7800, Atari's third video game console, was the company's attempt to unseat Nintendo from its dominance of the video game market after the release of the NES. Though it came nowhere close to accomplishing this, it was nevertheless a reasonably successful console with impressive capabilities and a solid library of games. Plus, the 7800 was backwards-compatible with Atari's famous 2600 system, giving it an extra library of thousands of well-known games for its users to choose from. According to Legacy's website, the 7800 Expansion makes the 7800 even better by adding 128K of extra available program memory, a built in High Score capability, and a 15 PIN/Serial port to enable use with keyboards, disk drives, printers, and modems.

Jack Tramiel would be proud.

It's a wonder why anyone thought that 2011 would be a good time to manufacture and produce an accessory for a 20-year-old discontinued toy, and at more than $100 with shipping, it's a pretty steep asking price. But considering its limited availability and authentically cheesy packaging, it's not too much of a stretch to say that this thing could be the ultimate Atari 7800 collectible (which, to be fair, isn't saying much). And if you've got a stack of Atari 2600 games lying around, or some old Atari 400 accessories, the 7800 Expansion may give your collection a new lease on life.