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.

Brain Games

Brain Games is a 1978 Atari cartridge of memory and puzzle games, programmed by Larry Kaplan. It packs 19 game variations into six activities: repeating sequences of tones or numbers, remembering pictures, spotting the odd one out, adding…

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Atari Video Cube

Atari Video Cube is a puzzle game for the Atari 2600 based on the cube puzzle that was a craze in the early 1980s. Doug Macrae, one of the founders of General Computer Corporation, programmed it for Atari.…

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Alpha Beam with Ernie

Alpha Beam with Ernie is a 1983 Sesame Street learning game for children aged 3 to 7, made by Atari together with the Children's Computer Workshop. Michael Callahan programmed it and Preston Stuart did the graphics. Ernie is…

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Taz

Taz is a 1983 Atari 2600 game starring the Tasmanian Devil from the Looney Tunes cartoons. It was programmed by Steve Woita and published by Atari. Taz spins across the screen as a small tornado and tries to…

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Asterix

Asterix is a 1983 Atari 2600 game starring the Gaulish hero of the French comic series. It is Steve Woita's Taz with new graphics: Atari swapped the Tasmanian Devil for Asterix and Obelix and sold the game mainly…

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Casino – Poker Plus

Casino is an early Atari 2600 card game cartridge programmed by Bob Whitehead and released by Atari in 1979. Sears sold it under the name Poker Plus. It puts three card games on one cartridge: blackjack, five-card stud…

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Miniature Golf

Miniature Golf is one of Atari's early cartridges for the Video Computer System, programmed by Tom Reuterdahl and released in 1979. It offers nine holes of top-down mini golf with walls to bank shots off and obstacles that…

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Flag Capture

Flag Capture is a 1978 Atari 2600 guessing game designed by Jim Huether and published by Atari (Sears sold it as Capture). A flag is hidden under one square of a grid, and you move an explorer around…

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Dodge ‘Em

Dodge 'Em is a 1980 driving maze game for the Atari 2600, programmed by Carla Meninsky and published by Atari. Sears sold it under the name Dodger Cars. You drive round a four-lane track collecting dots while a…

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Telepathy

Telepathy is an unreleased Atari 2600 prototype programmed by Dan Oliver at Atari in 1983. It was written to show off the MindLink, a headband controller that Atari never released. The cartridge is a string of seven short…

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