Parker Brothers was best known for board games when it began making Atari 2600 cartridges, and in 1982 its versions of Frogger and The Empire Strikes Back were its two best-selling video games. The company built its range on licences: the Star Wars films, Marvel’s Spider-Man, G.I. Joe and Strawberry Shortcake, plus a run of arcade games from Konami, Nintendo and Universal. Some cartridges were written by its own programmers, such as Rex Bradford, Laura Nikolich and Mark Lesser; others came from outside teams. A few good places to start:
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1982): snowspeeders against Imperial Walkers on Hoth, the first licensed Star Wars video game.
Spider-Man (1982): climb skyscrapers on a web line to defuse the Green Goblin’s bombs.
Amidar (1982): Konami’s maze game in which you fill in the boxes of a grid.
Tutankham (1983): explore King Tut’s tomb with a laser that only fires sideways.
Popeye (1983): catch Olive Oyl’s hearts, notes and kisses while Brutus chases you.
Frogger II: Threeedeep! (1984): the Frogger sequel, spread over underwater, surface and sky screens.
The list below also holds Jedi Arena, Death Star Battle, Sky Skipper, Mr. Do!’s Castle, G.I. Joe: Cobra Strike and the children’s game Strawberry Shortcake: Musical Match-Ups. Pick any of them and play it in your browser.
G.I. Joe: Cobra Strike is a 1983 Atari 2600 action game designed by John Emerson and published by Parker Brothers. It was the first licensed G.I. Joe video game. A giant robot cobra rears up over a G.I. Joe training camp and spits venom and laser beams at the recruits running for cover below, and you defend them with a moving shield and a gun turret. You can play it here in your browser.
Amidar is Parker Brothers’ 1982 Atari 2600 version of Konami’s arcade maze game, programmed by Ed Temple. Instead of eating dots, you trace the lines of a grid to fill in its boxes, while a pack of patrollers runs up and down the maze after you. Konami’s original started the “grid capture” style of maze game. You can play it here in your browser.