Action is the largest category in the Atari 2600 library. It covers games where quick reactions decide everything: running, jumping, dodging and shooting, often all on the same screen. That suits the console well. The standard Atari joystick has one stick and a single fire button, so action games keep their controls simple and put the challenge into timing and movement.
The hardware shaped these games just as much as the controller did. The 2600 has only 128 bytes of RAM, and its graphics chip offers just two player sprites, two missiles and a ball to work with. Programmers got around this with flicker, repeated sprites and screens drawn one line at a time, which is why so many action games pit one hero against a small group of enemies. Here are a few good places to start:
Pitfall! (Activision, 1982): David Crane’s jungle run, with vines, tar pits, crocodiles and treasure spread over many screens.
Yars’ Revenge (Atari, 1982): Howard Scott Warshaw’s shooter, in which an insect-like Yar nibbles through a shield to reach its enemy.
Berzerk (Atari, 1982): the arcade robot maze, with Evil Otto chasing you out of every room.
Warlords (Atari, 1981): castle defence for up to four players on paddle controllers.
Frostbite (Activision, 1983): hop across drifting ice floes to build an igloo before the cold gets you.
Tutankham (Parker Brothers, 1983): a tomb-exploring shooter based on Konami’s arcade game.
Browse the full list below and play any of these action games right here in your browser.
Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 is Coleco’s 1982 conversion of Nintendo’s 1981 arcade game, designed and programmed by Garry Kitchen. As Mario, you climb sloping girders and dodge barrels to rescue a girl kidnapped by the giant ape. It keeps only two of the arcade’s four screens, but it gets the barrel-jumping right, and it was one of the most common cartridges of its day. You can play it here in your browser, with nothing to install.
Donkey Kong Junior is Coleco’s 1983 Atari 2600 version of Nintendo’s 1982 arcade sequel to Donkey Kong. This time the roles are reversed: Mario has locked Donkey Kong in a cage, and you play his son, who climbs vines and chains to set him free. The 2600 port was developed by Woodside Design Associates, with Harley H. Puthuff, Jr. credited as programmer, and Atari reissued it in 1988. You can play it here in your browser, with nothing to install.
Double Dragon for the Atari 2600 is Activision’s 1989 home version of Technos Japan’s 1987 arcade beat ’em up. It was programmed by Dan Kitchen and came out late in the console’s life, alongside a separate Atari 7800 version. Squeezing a scrolling street fight with several moves onto a one-button joystick took some compromises, but it is still a rare chance to play a late-1980s brawler on 1970s hardware. You can play it here in your browser.
Dark Chambers is a top-down maze shooter published by Atari in 1988 for the Atari 2600, and also released for the Atari 7800. It is a reworked version of Dandy, a 1983 Atari 8-bit computer game that John Howard Palevich wrote as a student at MIT, and the game that later inspired the arcade hit Gauntlet. You explore 26 underground levels full of zombies, skeletons and wizards, collecting treasure and looking for the way down. You can play it here in your browser.
Deadly Duck is a 1982 shooting game designed by Ed Hodapp at Sirius Software and published for the Atari 2600 by 20th Century Fox. You play a duck whose bill doubles as a gun barrel, defending your pond against crabs that fly overhead and drop bricks on you. It is a simple, slightly silly idea, but the floating bricks give it a twist that most fixed shooters do not have. You can play it here in your browser.
In the game, you play as a messenger tasked with delivering an important message to the Galactic Emperor. However, you encounter a giant ship known as IT, which wants to prevent the message from being delivered. Your mission is to destroy all three power generators of IT to escape. IT is protected by three shields, … Read more
Sears title: Defender Licensed by Williams Electronics DEFENDER ORIGINAL ATARI 2600 GAME INSTRUCTIONS ATARI DEFENDER is very similar to the Williams coin-operated DEFENDER game. However, you will find some differences in the game play as well as in the graphic images and game controls. For example, in the coin-operated DEFENDER game, two or more Alien … Read more
Cosmic Commuter is a 1985 Activision game for the Atari 2600, designed and programmed by John Van Ryzin. You drive the Astrobus, a space-age bus service of the year 2075: land it on a planet, fly along a scrolling route picking up passengers, and bring them back before the fuel runs out. It mixes a Lunar Lander-style landing with a shoot-and-collect run, and it is one of the rarer Activision cartridges. You can play it here in your browser.
Cosmic Creeps is a 1982 Atari 2600 game from Telesys, a small Californian publisher, programmed by Don Ruffcorn. A planet is falling out of orbit, and you have to fly an Orbinaut up to a space station and then protect the Cosmic Kids as they escape, knocking back the Creeps that chase them. The game comes in two quite different halves, a dodging section and a shooting section, and the sinking planet works as a clock that ties them together. You can play it here in your browser.
In Atari 2600 Crash Dive, you are tasked with scoring as many points as possible by destroying various enemy targets, including ships, helicopters, planes, giant sharks, stingrays, squids, angler fish, and lobsters. You must accomplish this before running out of fuel or crashing your flying submarine. Additionally, you can earn points by collecting treasures located … Read more