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.

Combat Two

Combat Two is the unreleased sequel to Combat, the tank duel that came packed with the Atari 2600 for years. According to AtariProtos, it was programmed in 1982 by Alan Hodgkinson and Tom Calderwood at General Computer Corporation…

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Computer Chess

Computer Chess is an unreleased 1978 Atari prototype by Bob Whitehead and Larry Wagner. It is the early version of the program that Atari later shrank and sold as Video Chess. It never reached the shops, but it…

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Centipede

In Atari 2600 Centipede, the main objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede as it winds its way down the playing field. The centipede moves horizontally across the screen, and when it hits a mushroom…

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Pelé’s Soccer AKA Championship Soccer

Pelé's Soccer, first sold as Championship Soccer, is Atari's own football (soccer) game for the Atari 2600, designed by Steve Wright. It was planned for the 1980 holiday season and reached shops in early 1981. Each side fields…

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Circus Atari

Circus Atari is a 1980 paddle game from Atari, programmed by Mike Lorenzen. You slide a seesaw along the bottom of the screen so that two acrobatic clowns can take turns flying up to pop rows of balloons.…

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Bowling

Bowling is one of the early Atari VCS (later Atari 2600) cartridges, released by Atari in January 1979 and also sold by Sears under the same name. It was designed and programmed by Larry Kaplan. It is a…

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Breakout

Breakout is the Atari 2600 version of Atari's 1976 arcade classic: one paddle, one ball and a wall of coloured bricks. It came out for the console in November 1978, was programmed by Brad Stewart, and became one…

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Bugs Bunny

Bugs Bunny is an unreleased Atari 2600 game from 1983, designed and programmed by Bob Polaro with graphics by Alan Murphy. Atari tested it and then shelved it, so it never reached the shops, but prototype copies have…

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Big Bird’s Egg Catch

Big Bird's Egg Catch is a 1983 Sesame Street game for young children, made by Atari with the Children's Computer Workshop and programmed by Christopher Omarzu. Big Bird wants to win the egg contest at the county fair,…

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Bionic Breakthrough

Bionic Breakthrough is an unreleased Atari 2600 prototype programmed by Paul Donaldson at Atari in 1984. It is a reworked version of Super Breakout, made to show off the MindLink, a headband controller that Atari never brought to…

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