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.
Spy Hunter is Sega’s 1984 Atari 2600 version of Bally Midway’s 1983 arcade hit. You drive a heavily armed spy car up a scrolling highway, taking out enemy agents before they take you out, and at the waterways the car turns into a speedboat. The 2600 cartridge was unusual because it needed two joysticks to play. You can play it here in your browser, with nothing to install.
Squeeze Box is a 1982 Atari 2600 action game from U.S. Games, developed by James Wickstead Design Associates and programmed by Henry Will IV. A gun-toting jailbird is trapped in a room whose walls keep growing in on him, and he has to shoot a way out before they close. It is a simple idea with a real sense of pressure, and you can play it here in your browser.
Squoosh is an unfinished Atari 2600 prototype from Apollo, the company behind games such as Skeet Shoot and Lost Luggage. It was never released. What survives is an early demo of a wine-making game, originally called Vat’s Incredible!, with no real gameplay yet. You can load it here in your browser and see how far it got.
Sssnake is a 1982 Atari 2600 shooting game from Data Age, one of the five cartridges the company launched with in October 1982. You are a big-game hunter hiding in an old fortress in the Amazon, shooting prehistoric creatures outside the walls while snakes slither in towards you. Unlike most shooters, you fire outwards from the middle of the screen, which gives it an unusual feel. You can play it here in your browser.
Stampede is a 1981 Activision game designed and programmed by Bob Whitehead, the author of Boxing and Skiing. You ride a horse across a scrolling prairie and lasso runaway cattle before they slip past you. It looks gentle, but keeping a whole herd in front of you while picking out the valuable calves is a real juggling act. Play it here in your browser.
Star Fox is a 1983 Atari 2600 space shooter from Mythicon, programmed by Bruce de Graaf with sound by Bill Bryner. You fly a lone ship over a hostile planetoid, collecting energy crystals while enemy fighter drones hunt you down. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with Nintendo’s Star Fox series, which started ten years later. 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.