As the successor to the ill-received 5200, the Atari 7800 was meant to save the company from bankruptcy. It was developed in 1983 by a company called General Computer Corp (GCC) after Atari won a lawsuit against them for developing a speed up kit for the arcade version of Missile Command. (GCC would also develop the arcade game Food Fight for Atari as well as games for the 2600 and 5200.
The graphics chip GCC developed was called Maria, and could push almost 100 sprites on the screen without any of the annoying flicker the 2600 had become known for. Another impressive feature of the 7800 is it’s backward compatibility with the mega popular 2600. This gave it an instant library of games and alleviated one of the major complaints 5200 owners had. (BTW, the 7800 was the first console to feature backward compatibility long before Gameboy Advance and PlayStation 2.) The 7800 was also to have a cartridge for saving high scores and a keyboard attachment. Neither of which was released by Atari, but the high score cart was released by Curt Vendel in 2003. Curt is also working on releasing the keyboard attachment.