potato_hamster said:
Atari 5200 would like a word. Both it and the 2600 are part of the "2nd generation".
So would the Sega master system. Both it and the SG-100 are part of the "3rd generation".
Did you know there's only 8 months difference in release dates between the Atari 5200 (Nov '82), and the SG-1000, and NES (July '83) yet, the Atari 7800 is considered 3rd generation, even though it released in May '86, just a little over a year before the PC Engine came out, marking the start of the 4th generation. So the 5200 spends the vast majority of its life competing for shelf space with "third generation" games, yet it's considered "2nd generation", and the Atari 7800 spent most of its life competing for shelf space with "4th generation consoles", yet it's still considered third. Now you might be asking "well what was Atari's fourth generation home console" and the answer to that is that they didn't have one. The Jaguar is considered "5th generation".
Trying to come up with logic and reason to which consoles belong to what generations is a fool's errand. It's completely arbitrary.
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The 5200 was discontinued already in 1984 after only 2 years without really competing with any major 3rd Gen system (NES was only out in Japan until 1985). It’s a victim of the video-game crash and it was outlived by the 2600, it’s predecessor. I’d say that’s a fair enough reason to say it’s a second 2nd Gen entry for Atari. The generation classification we have isn’t perfect, but it’s not totally without reason or logic.
