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.
Philly Flasher is an adult-themed game for the Atari 2600. The gameplay is similar to Beat ‘Em & Eat ‘Em, as players control two men and move them back and forth to catch breast milk from a witch on a rooftop. Due to its explicit content, the game was not widely distributed and is considered … Read more
Pick ‘n Pile is a Tetris-style puzzle game released for various platforms, including the Atari 2600. The objective of the game is to clear the playfield by matching and removing identical symbols. While the game shares some similarities with Tetris, such as the falling blocks and the need to create matches to clear the playfield, … Read more
Pick Up is a shooting game programmed by Mark Klein in 1983 for 20th Century Fox’s video game label. It was finished but never released at the time, and it first reached players as a limited cartridge sold at the Classic Gaming Expo in 2002. The game has an adult theme: you play a young man trying to win over a woman by shooting down the gifts she wants, and a level ends with the couple heading into a hotel. Nothing explicit is shown. You can play it here in your browser.
Picnic is a 1983 paddle game for the Atari 2600, published by U.S. Games and developed by Western Technologies, with Tom Sloper credited as designer. You are about to eat your cheeseburgers when a swarm of bugs arrives to get to them first, and your only weapon is a swatter. It is a quick, simple reflex game built around one tricky timing rule. You can play it here in your browser.
Piece o’ Cake is a 1983 paddle game developed by Western Technologies and published by U.S. Games. You are a bakery chef who takes cake layers from the oven, drops them onto platters rolling along a conveyor belt and finishes each cake with a cherry. It is a simple idea that turns frantic as the belt speeds up. The cartridge (model VC2005) was sold in North America and is now rare. You can play it here in your browser.
Panda Chase is a little-known Atari 2600 cartridge sold in Europe under the Home Vision label. Home Vision was a Belgian brand that distributed games made by Gem International Corporation of Taiwan, and Panda Chase came out only in the European PAL format. You guide a hungry panda through huts, tunnels and a bamboo forest in search of food, and you have to keep an eye on his energy the whole time. You can play it here in your browser.
Parachute is a 1983 Atari 2600 game made in Taiwan by Gem International and sold in Europe on the Home Vision label, as a PAL-only cartridge. You guide a parachutist down through a crowded sky and try to land on a small podium at the bottom. It is a simple dodging game with a nice twist at the end: the better your landing, the bigger your bonus. You can play it here in your browser.
Party Mix is a 1983 collection of five paddle games for two or four players, programmed by Dennis Caswell and published by Starpath. It came on cassette tape for the Starpath Supercharger, an add-on that plugged into the Atari 2600’s cartridge slot and loaded games from a cassette player. There is no computer opponent: the manual’s whole idea is that other people are more fun to beat. You can play it here in your browser.
Pete Rose Baseball is a baseball game for the Atari 2600 from Absolute Entertainment, designed by Alex DeMeo and released near the end of the console’s life, around 1988–89. Instead of the usual top-down diamond, it shows pitching and batting from behind the pitcher, then cuts to close-up views of the infield and outfield when the ball is in play. Choosing the speed and type of every pitch is the main reason to try it. You can play it here in your browser.
Peter Penguin is a European PAL release by ITT Family Games from 1983. It is not an original game but a relabelled version of Frisco, a block-pushing game in the style of the arcade game Pengo that Home Vision also sold in Europe. The title screen carries only the credit “R.J.P.G.” and the year 1983. You can play it here in your browser.