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.

Garfield

Garfield is an unfinished Atari 2600 platform game starring Jim Davis's lazy, lasagne-loving comic strip cat. It was programmed at Atari in 1984 by Steve Woita, with graphics by Mimi Nyden, but it was cancelled and never sold.…

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Golf

Golf is a nine-hole golf game for one or two players, released by Atari for the Atari 2600 in 1980. It was the first game Michael Lorenzen made at Atari, and he had to squeeze it into a…

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Gravitar

Gravitar is the 1983 Atari 2600 version of Atari's 1982 vector arcade game, programmed for the console by Dan Hitchens. You pilot a small ship through solar systems full of hostile planets, fighting gravity and a shrinking fuel…

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Frog Pond

Frog Pond is an unreleased Atari 2600 game from 1982, programmed at Atari by Nick Turner. You play a frog on a lily pad that leaps up and flicks out its tongue to catch passing insects. Atari showed…

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Galaxian

Licensed by Namco Galaxian Game Instruction Manual GALAXIAN: NOTES FROM THE COMMANDER Welcome aboard the missile laser base. I’m Commander Champion, your training instructor. These laser bases are used to protect our Universe from alien attack. Each laser…

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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…

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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,…

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Dune

Dune is an unreleased Atari 2600 prototype that Atari worked on in 1984 to tie in with David Lynch's film of Frank Herbert's novel. It was planned as an action-adventure in the style of Atari's classic Adventure. The…

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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…

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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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