Publisher: US Games

U.S. Games was an American company that started out making handheld electronic sports games. In 1982 the cereal maker Quaker Oats bought it to make Atari 2600 cartridges and to compete with Parker Brothers, which was owned by its rival General Mills. Most of its games were made by outside studios, especially James Wickstead Design Associates and Western Technologies, and Quaker hoped to build a line of family-friendly cartridges. The first release, Space Jockey, came out under the Vidtec label in January 1982.
None of the 14 cartridges became a hit, and Quaker closed the division in 1983, during the video game crash. Several games lived on in Europe through Carrere Video. The site has all fourteen. Some to try first:

Gopher (1983): Sylvia Day’s farmyard game, with a farmer guarding his carrots.
Name This Game: a diver guards treasure from an octopus and a shark. The title was a placeholder for a naming contest that was never completed.
Space Jockey (1982): Garry Kitchen’s first video game, a side-scrolling shooter.
Entombed (1983): an endless scrolling maze whose maze routine puzzled researchers decades later.
Eggomania (1983): catch falling eggs with a paddle, then throw them back.
Word Zapper (1982): a spelling game that plays like a shooter.

Choose one below and play it in your browser.

Commando Raid

Commando Raid is a 1982 Atari 2600 shooting game published by U.S. Games, the video game division of the cereal company Quaker Oats. It was developed by James Wickstead Design Associates and programmed by Wes Trager. Helicopters drop…

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Name This Game

Name This Game is an underwater action game for the Atari 2600, created by James Wickstead Design Associates and published by U.S. Games around the start of 1983. You play a diver guarding sunken treasure from a giant…

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Word Zapper

Word Zapper is a 1982 Atari 2600 game that mixes spelling with a shooting game. It was designed by Henry Will IV at James Wickstead Design Associates and published by U.S. Games under its Vidtec label. A row…

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Towering Inferno

Towering Inferno is a firefighting game released by U.S. Games in 1982, based on the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno. It was programmed by Paul Allen Newell at Western Technologies. You send firemen up through a burning…

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Squeeze Box

Squeeze Box is a 1982 Atari 2600 action game from U.S. Games, developed by James Wickstead Design Associates and programmed by Henry Will IV. A gun-toting jailbird is trapped in a room whose walls keep growing in on…

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Sneak ‘N Peek

Sneak 'n Peek turns the playground game of hide and seek into an Atari 2600 cartridge. It was published by U.S. Games in 1982, designed by Wickstead Design and programmed by Paul Willson. One player hides somewhere in…

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Space Jockey

Space Jockey is a 1982 side-scrolling shooter for the Atari 2600 and the first game from U.S. Games, sold under its Vidtec label. It was the first video game by Garry Kitchen, who built it at James Wickstead…

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Raft Rider

Raft Rider is a one-player white-water game for the Atari 2600, published by U.S. Games and developed by Western Technologies. You steer a log raft down a fast river, dodging rocks, moose and falling trees, and you try…

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Picnic

Picnic is a 1983 paddle game for the Atari 2600, published by U.S. Games and developed by Western Technologies, with Tom Sloper credited as designer. You are about to eat your cheeseburgers when a swarm of bugs arrives…

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Piece o’ Cake

Piece o' Cake is a 1983 paddle game developed by Western Technologies and published by U.S. Games. You are a bakery chef who takes cake layers from the oven, drops them onto platters rolling along a conveyor belt…

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