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.
Mega Force is a 1982 scrolling shooter for the Atari 2600, based on the Hal Needham film Megaforce that reached cinemas in June of the same year. It was published by Fox Video Games, the game label of 20th Century Fox, and programmed by Doug Neubauer, who also made Alien and M*A*S*H for the company. You drive the Moto-Fighter, a combat machine that can race along the ground and take to the air, and your fuel is always running down. You can play it here in your browser.
MegaBoy is an educational quiz cartridge from the Brazilian company Dynacom. It came packed with Dynacom’s handheld system, also called MegaBoy. At 64K it is unusually large for the Atari 2600, where most games used 4K or 8K. You can try it here in your browser.
Megamania is a 1982 space shooter by Activision, designed by Steve Cartwright. Your blaster sits at the bottom of the screen while waves of hamburgers, steam irons, bow ties and other odd objects swoop down. It plays like Space Invaders with a sense of humour, and a draining energy bar keeps every wave tense. You can play it here in your browser, with nothing to install.
Meltdown is an unreleased Atari 2600 game that 20th Century Fox planned to sell in 1983. It was made for Fox by a small outside company called Videa and programmed by David Ross. You play the last scientist left in a nuclear reactor that is running out of control, and you have to hunt down the quarks that are heating it up. The game was never sold, but a copy survived, and you can play it here in your browser.
Miner 2049er is a platform game in which Bounty Bob, a mountie, explores an abandoned uranium mine full of mutant creatures. The game was created by Bill Hogue of Big Five Software, and this Atari 2600 cartridge was published by Tigervision in 1983. It is a cut-down version of the original, with three screens instead of ten, but the idea of claiming every piece of floor survives intact. You can play it here in your browser.
Miner 2049er II (the manual calls it Miner 2049er Volume II) is Tigervision’s second Bounty Bob cartridge for the Atari 2600, based on Bill Hogue’s game for Big Five Software. It works like the first Miner 2049er cartridge: walk over every section of the mine to claim it, dodge the mutants, and beat the clock. What is new are three different screens, built around a lift, a crusher and a pool of radioactive waste. You don’t need to have played the first cartridge. You can play it here in your browser.
M.A.D., short for “Missile Attack and Defense”, is a missile-defence shooter for the Atari 2600 published by U.S. Games, the video game arm of the Quaker Oats Company. The cartridge carries a 1982 copyright. Waves of missiles gather in the sky above your civilisation’s six energy stations, and a single ground cannon is all that stands between them and the ground. Its best trick is the two-player mode, where a friend takes control of the attacking missiles instead of the computer. You can play it here in your browser.
M*A*S*H is an Atari 2600 game based on the film and the long-running TV series about a US Army field hospital in the Korean War. It was published by Fox Video Games, the game label of 20th Century Fox, and programmed by Doug Neubauer. As Hawkeye Pierce, you fly a helicopter to pick up wounded soldiers and then operate against the clock, racing your rival Frank Burns. You can play it here in your browser.
Malagai is a 1983 maze game for one or two players and the first Atari 2600 cartridge from Answer Software (model ASC 1001). You are a starship commander held on an alien starbase, and you escape by catching the right aliens in the right order to collect the airlock keys. It rewards herding and timing more than fast reflexes. Original cartridges are very hard to find, but you can play it here in your browser.
Marauder is a 1982 maze shooter published for the Atari 2600 by Tigervision. It began as a computer game from On-Line Systems (the company later known as Sierra On-Line), and the 2600 version was programmed by Rorke Weigandt. You land on an alien planet, break into an enemy base guarded by armed robots, and race the clock to find and destroy its power center. You can play it here in your browser.