Publisher: Atari
Atari made the Atari 2600, which first went on sale in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System, and it also published many of the console’s games. Nine cartridges were available at launch, among them Street Racer, Surround and Video Olympics. Over the next years Atari’s programmers wrote original games and converted arcade hits, both Atari’s own, such as Missile Command, and licensed ones from companies like Taito, Namco and Williams. Sears sold many of the same games under its Tele-Games label, often with different names. The Atari name here also covers the later Atari Corporation, which kept releasing 2600 cartridges until 1990, among them Solaris, Radar Lock and Xenophobe.
This archive includes Atari’s released games as well as prototypes that never reached the shops. Some places to start:
Video Olympics (1977): 50 Pong-style games and variations for paddle controllers.
Video Chess (1979): a full chess opponent squeezed into a machine with 128 bytes of memory.
Warlords (1981): Carla Meninsky’s castle-smashing game for up to four players.
Missile Command (1981): Rob Fulop’s version of the arcade game about defending six cities.
Star Raiders (1982): first-person space combat with a galaxy map.
Solaris (1986): Doug Neubauer’s space combat and exploration game.
The full list is below, and every game on it runs in your browser.
Fatal Run (Europe)
Fatal Run is a post-apocalyptic driving and shooting game made by Sculptured Software, programmed by Steve Aguirre and published by Atari. This page runs the European PAL cartridge from 1990, the only version that was ever sold in…
Play ▸Dukes of Hazzard
Dukes of Hazzard is an unreleased Atari 2600 game from 1983, programmed by Mark R. Hahn and based on the TV series about the Duke cousins and their orange car, the General Lee. It never reached the shops,…
Play ▸E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is Atari's 1982 game based on Steven Spielberg's film, made by Howard Scott Warshaw in just over five weeks. You guide E.T. around a small world of forests, buildings and deep pits, collecting three pieces…
Play ▸Elevator Action
Elevator Action for the Atari 2600 is an unreleased prototype. Dan Hitchens programmed it at Atari as a home version of Taito's 1983 arcade spy game, but the cartridge was never finished or sold. The surviving version is…
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