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.
Astro Grover is a counting game for young children from the Children's Computer Workshop, starring Sesame Street's Grover as an astronaut. Atari finished this Atari 5200 version in 1983 but never released it; CBS later published it for…
Play ▸Star Raiders is Atari's 1982 Atari 5200 version of Doug Neubauer's 1979 space combat game, the title that sold many people their first Atari computer. You fly a starship through a galaxy map, hyperwarp between sectors and hunt…
Play ▸Pole Position is Atari's 1983 Atari 5200 version of Namco's arcade racer, programmed by Mike Horowitz and Betty Ryan Tylko at General Computer Corporation. You drive a qualifying lap to earn a place on the grid, then race…
Play ▸Ms. Pac-Man is the maze game with four layouts, bouncing fruit and a ghost called Sue. General Computer Corporation, the team behind the 1982 arcade original, programmed this Atari 5200 version, and Atari released it in 1983 with…
Play ▸Space Invaders was one of the cartridges on sale when the Atari 5200 launched in October 1982. Atari's version of Taito's 1978 arcade game adds twelve game variations, four different sets of invaders that mutate in the final…
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