Casino – Poker Plus
Casino is an early Atari 2600 card game cartridge programmed by Bob Whitehead and released by Atari in 1979. Sears sold it under the name Poker Plus. It puts three card games on one cartridge: blackjack, five-card stud…
Play ▸Bob Whitehead joined Atari in January 1977 and programmed some of the first Atari 2600 cartridges, including the launch titles Star Ship and Blackjack. His other Atari work includes Home Run, the card games of Casino, and Football, where he repeated and flickered player graphics to field two teams of four. On Video Chess (1979), written with Larry Wagner, he solved the problem of showing eight pieces in a row with the “Venetian blinds” technique. An earlier prototype, Computer Chess, is on the site too.
In 1979 he left to co-found Activision. His games there include Boxing, one of the company’s first four cartridges in 1980, and Skiing, a race against the clock with no enemies at all. Stampede, Sky Jinks and Private Eye followed, along with Chopper Command (1982), a desert shooter that won Best Action Video Game at the Arkie Awards.
All thirteen are listed below, and you can play every one of them in your browser.
Casino is an early Atari 2600 card game cartridge programmed by Bob Whitehead and released by Atari in 1979. Sears sold it under the name Poker Plus. It puts three card games on one cartridge: blackjack, five-card stud…
Play ▸Private Eye is a detective game for the Atari 2600, designed by Activision co-founder Bob Whitehead and released by Activision in early 1984. You play the French detective Pierre Touché, driving a jumping Model A car around a…
Play ▸Video Chess is Atari's chess cartridge for the 2600, released in November 1979. It was programmed by Larry Wagner and Bob Whitehead, with help from chess expert Julio Kaplan. You play against the computer on a full board,…
Play ▸Computer Chess is an unreleased 1978 Atari prototype by Bob Whitehead and Larry Wagner. It is the early version of the program that Atari later shrank and sold as Video Chess. It never reached the shops, but it…
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