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.

Haunted House

Haunted House is a 1982 adventure game from Atari, programmed by James Andreasen. You are just a pair of eyes in a pitch-black mansion, lighting matches to find the three pieces of a magic urn while a bat,…

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Holey Moley

Holey Moley is an unreleased Atari 2600 game by Atari, programmed by Bob Polaro in 1983. It is a home version of whack-a-mole: moles pop up out of holes and you hit them with a hammer before they…

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Home Run

Home Run is a baseball game that Atari released for the 2600 in October 1978. It was programmed by Bob Whitehead, who later co-founded Activision, together with David Rolfe, and it was the first baseball game on any…

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Human Cannonball

Human Cannonball is one of the earliest Atari 2600 cartridges, released by Atari in 1979 (Sears sold it as Cannon Man). Your job is simple to explain and tricky to master: set the angle and speed of a…

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Hunt & Score – Memory Match

Hunt & Score is Atari's 1978 memory game for the Atari 2600, the video game version of the card game where you turn over two cards at a time and try to find matching pairs. It was also…

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Gremlins

Gremlins is Atari's 1984 Atari 2600 game based on the film of the same year. As Billy, you first try to catch hungry Mogwai before they reach the hamburgers, and when that fails you have to shoot the…

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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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