Games by Apollo, usually just called Apollo, was a small publisher from Richardson, Texas, founded in 1981 by Pat Roper, head of an educational film company. It was one of the first third-party companies to make Atari 2600 games after Activision. Its first cartridge, Skeet Shoot, was written by Ed Salvo, who became Apollo’s director of development and went on to make Spacechase, the company’s best seller, as well as Racquetball and Lost Luggage. Roper hoped to match Activision’s early sales and built up stock to match, but the sales never came. Apollo filed for bankruptcy in November 1982 and closed in 1983, leaving several projects unfinished.
The site has 14 Apollo titles, from finished games to early prototypes. Some places to start:
Spacechase (1982): Apollo’s best-selling shooter, above a slowly turning moon.
Lost Luggage (1982): catch the suitcases flung from a runaway baggage carousel.
Wabbit (1982): Van Mai’s game about a farm girl defending her carrots, the earliest surviving console game with a named, playable female hero.
Space Cavern (1982): fight on two fronts by shooting upwards and to the sides.
Guardian: a paddle shooter, the last game Apollo finished and the rarest of its releases.
Kyphus: an unfinished pseudo-3D prototype that surfaced in 2006.
Choose any game in the list below and play it in your browser.
Lost Luggage is a 1982 catching game for the Atari 2600 from Games by Apollo, a small studio in Richardson, Texas. An airport baggage carousel goes haywire and starts flinging suitcases into the air, and your skycaps have to catch them before they burst open on the floor. It is a light-hearted change from the space shooters of the time, with planes landing in the background. You can play it here in your browser.
Final Approach is an air traffic control game released in 1982 by Games by Apollo, a small Texas company that made games for the Atari 2600. You work at a busy airport, steering up to four planes around a radar screen and then talking each one down onto the runway yourself. It is a game of planning and juggling rather than shooting. You can play it here in your browser.
Pompeii is an unfinished Atari 2600 game from Apollo, announced in 1983 as one of the company’s last titles. It was never released: Apollo went out of business in the video game crash before the game was done. The only version found, discovered in 2001, is an early test build rather than a playable game. You can try it here in your browser.
Wabbit is a 1982 Atari 2600 game from Apollo, a small publisher based in Richardson, Texas. You play Billie Sue, a farm girl whose carrot patch is being raided by rabbits, and your only weapon is a supply of rotten eggs. It is a relaxed, cartoon-style shooting game, and it has a place in history as the earliest surviving console game with a named, playable female hero. 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.
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.
Space Cavern is a 1982 shoot-’em-up for the Atari 2600 from Games by Apollo, designed by Dan Oliver. Your spaceman stands on the floor of an underground cavern on a strange planet. Above him hover horned creatures that rain energy blasts down on him, and from the caves on either side furry beasts charge in to attack. What sets it apart from other shooters of its time is that you fight on two fronts at once: you shoot upwards and to the sides. You can play it here in your browser.
Skeet Shoot is a simple target-shooting game from 1981 and the very first cartridge released by Games by Apollo. Ed Salvo programmed it on his own before the company even existed as a game studio. You stand at the bottom of the screen, launch clay pigeons and try to hit them as they fly past. It is rough, but it is a piece of early third-party Atari history. You can play it here in your browser.
Shark Attack is an underwater maze game for the Atari 2600, designed and programmed by Steve Stringfellow and published by Games by Apollo in 1982. It first appeared under the name Lochjaw before Apollo renamed it, so Shark Attack is the version most players owned. As a diver you gather diamonds from a sunken treasure while sharks patrol the water and the Loch Ness Monster sleeps in the caves. You can play it here in your browser.
Racquetball is a 1982 sports game for the Atari 2600, programmed by Ed Salvo and published by Games by Apollo, a small company from Texas. Two players share an indoor court and try to keep a fast ball in play as it bounces off the front wall, the side walls and the ceiling. Shadows show where the ball is in the air, an ambitious idea for 1982. You can play it here in your browser, against the computer or a friend.