Third-party games are Atari 2600 cartridges made by companies other than Atari itself. That seems normal today, but in the late 1970s nobody outside a console maker published games for its machine. The change came from Atari’s own staff. In 1979 a group of its programmers, including David Crane, Alan Miller and Bob Whitehead, left to found Activision, the first independent console game developer. Atari sued, but the case was settled by 1982, with Activision paying royalties and the idea of third-party publishing left standing. Activision also printed its designers’ names on boxes and manuals, something Atari did not do.
Other companies followed quickly. Imagic, co-founded by former Atari programmer Rob Fulop, brought out games such as Riddle of the Sphinx (1982). Toy and film companies joined in too: Parker Brothers with Tutankham, Coleco with Zaxxon, and Mattel’s M Network with BurgerTime. Starpath went further with its Supercharger add-on, which loaded games such as Communist Mutants from Space from audio cassette and raised the console’s memory from 128 bytes to over 6 KB.
Activision’s own hits remain the best-known third-party games, including David Crane’s Pitfall! (1982) and Frostbite (1983). By 1983 so many publishers had flooded shops with cartridges, of very mixed quality, that the glut is often named as one cause of that year’s video game crash.
Browse the full list below and play games from dozens of publishers right here in your browser.
Star Wars: The Arcade Game is Parker Brothers’ 1984 Atari 2600 conversion of Atari’s 1983 Star Wars arcade machine. As Luke Skywalker in an X-wing, you fight TIE fighters, fly over the surface of the Death Star and dive into its trench to fire the shot that destroys it. The 2600 couldn’t draw the arcade’s vector graphics, but all three stages of the attack made it onto the cartridge. You can play it here in your browser, with nothing to install.
Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is a 1982 Atari 2600 game from Parker Brothers, programmed by Rex Bradford. It was the first licensed Star Wars video game, and it recreates one famous scene from the film: Rebel snowspeeders fighting giant Imperial Walkers on the ice planet Hoth. You can never win, only hold the Walkers back a little longer each time. You can play it here in your browser.
Stargunner is a horizontally scrolling space shooter for the Atari 2600, designed by Alex Leavens and published by the small Californian company Telesys. It plays much like Defender without the people to rescue: you fly back and forth shooting down alien invaders while dodging bombs from above. It has sharp graphics and smooth scrolling, and it is forgiving, which makes it a good pick for beginners. You can play it here in your browser.
StarMaster is a first-person space combat game designed and programmed by Alan Miller and published by Activision in 1982. You pilot a lone starfighter across a galaxy map, hunting enemy fighters before they wipe out your starbases, while you juggle energy, damage and docking. It has more strategy than most 2600 shooters. You can play it here in your browser.
Stone Age is one of the least documented Atari 2600 cartridges. Very little is known about who made it or when. The only cartridge collectors have confirmed was sold in Brazil by CCE, a company that released many 2600 games there in the 1980s. You can try it here in your browser and see it for yourself.
Strawberry Shortcake: Musical Match-Ups is a 1983 Atari 2600 puzzle game for young children, published by Parker Brothers and programmed by Dawn Stockbridge. The Purple Pieman has cast a spell over Strawberryland and scrambled the characters’ heads, bodies and legs, and you have to put them back together. Each finished character dances to their own tune, which makes it a gentle first video game for small players. You can play it here in your browser.
Weltraumtunnel is German for “space tunnel”, and this page runs Space Tunnel, the shooter made by the Taiwanese company Bit Corporation. The German title belongs to the version sold in Germany, where the mail-order company Quelle offered many 2600 games under German names. You fly a small ship through a tunnel with jagged walls while UFOs fire missiles that bounce off those walls. You can play it here in your browser.
Spacechase is a space shooter from Games by Apollo, a small company from Richardson, Texas, that made games for the Atari 2600. It was designed and programmed by Ed Salvo and came out in early 1982. You fly a Starcruiser in orbit above a slowly turning moon and shoot down wave after wave of alien raiders. It became Apollo’s best-selling title, and it is a fair, quick-to-learn shooter with more freedom of movement than most games of its type. You can play it here in your browser.
Spacemaster X-7 is a 1983 space shooter for the Atari 2600, published by 20th Century Fox and made by Sirius Software, with David Lubar as the programmer. You fly an assault ship against enemy bases, each wrapped in a pulsing force field and shields that keep growing back, so timing and positioning matter more than firepower. You can play it here in your browser.
Spider Fighter is a fixed-screen shooter for the Atari 2600, designed by Larry Miller and published by Activision around the turn of 1982 and 1983. You guard an orchard from swarms of fruit-stealing insects, firing up from a blaster at the bottom of the screen. The twist is that you are protecting three pieces of fruit, not only yourself. Each type of bug behaves differently, so it rewards thinking about which target to shoot first. You can play it here in your browser.