1978 was a slow second year for the Atari VCS. Atari built 800,000 consoles but sold only 550,000, and Warner had to cover the losses. New cartridges came out in one batch for Christmas, and production moved to Asia, where a lighter version of the console, known to collectors as the “Light Sixer”, replaced the original “Heavy Sixer”.
The games on this page show Atari trying out many kinds of play. Breakout, programmed by Brad Stewart, came to the console in colour, while the arcade original was black and white. Codebreaker and Brain Games were made for the new keyboard controller. Sports fans get Home Run, the first baseball game on any Atari system, and a one-on-one Basketball. Warren Robinett’s first Atari game, Slot Racers, is here, and so is Carol Shaw’s first published game, 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe. Two unreleased prototypes are filed under this year too: Computer Chess and David Crane’s Boggle.
A few dates here are generous. Super Breakout is listed under 1978, the year of the arcade game, but the 2600 cartridge came out in October 1981, and Casino and Human Cannonball are usually dated to 1979.
Scroll down and play any of the 1978 games in your browser.
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…
Play ▸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…
Play ▸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…
Play ▸Basketball is one of the first basketball video games for a home console: a one-on-one match on a full court seen from the sideline, programmed by Alan Miller and released by Atari for the 2600 in 1978. It…
Play ▸Super Breakout is Atari's follow-up to Breakout, first released in arcades in 1978. The Atari 2600 version was programmed by Nick Turner and Carol Shaw and came out in October 1981, first as a Sears Tele-Games exclusive and…
Play ▸Slot Racers is a two-player chase game that Atari released for the 2600 in 1978. It was the first game Warren Robinett designed at Atari, before he went on to make Adventure. Two cars race around a maze…
Play ▸Outlaw is a 1978 Atari 2600 western shootout designed by David Crane at Atari. Sears sold the same game under its Tele-Games label as Gunslinger. Two cowboys face each other across the screen with a cactus, a wall…
Play ▸Hangman is Atari's 1978 version of the classic pen-and-paper word game, programmed by Alan Miller, who later co-founded Activision. Sears sold the same cartridge under the name Spelling. You guess a hidden word one letter at a time,…
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