A platformer is a game about running and jumping: over gaps, onto ledges, past enemies and obstacles, usually across a series of screens. On the Atari 2600 the genre had to work with one joystick and one fire button, so the button almost always means “jump”, and the challenge comes from timing that jump just right.
The console’s limits shaped these games heavily. With 128 bytes of RAM and a graphics chip that draws only a couple of moving objects per line, a 2600 platformer cannot fill the screen with enemies. Most show a hero, one or two hazards and a simple background, and many move from one fixed screen to the next instead of scrolling smoothly. Activision’s Pitfall! (1982) is the best-known example of this screen-by-screen style, and other companies borrowed its approach.
A few games from this list to try:
Bobby Is Going Home (Bit Corporation, 1983): a boy walks home past ponds, broken bridges and birds, in a game that plays a lot like Pitfall!
Bobby geht heim: the German release of the same game.
Garfield: Steve Woita’s unfinished 1984 platform game for Atari, which proved the 2600 could handle multi-screen scrolling before it was cancelled.
Elevator Action: an unreleased 1983 Atari version of Taito’s arcade game, riding lifts and escalators down a 30-storey building.
Browse the list below and start jumping right here in your browser.
Apples and Dolls (listed here as Apples and Dolles) is a South American release of I Want My Mommy, a children’s game that ZiMAG published for the Atari 2600 in North America in 1983. The Brazilian companies Tron, CCE and Polyvox sold it under this new name without changing the gameplay. You guide a little teddy bear up a six-floor building, past patrolling monsters, to reach an apple and then his mother. You can play it here in your browser.