By 1981 the Atari VCS was selling in the millions: Atari sold an estimated 3.1 million consoles that year. Cartridges grew too. In August Asteroids became the first 2600 game to use bank switching, a trick that let a cartridge hold 8 KB instead of 4 KB. Missile Command, Rob Fulop’s version of Atari’s own arcade game, came out in April, and Carla Meninsky’s four-player castle battle Warlords followed the same year.
Activision was now in full swing, and much of this page comes from its early catalogue: Kaboom!, Freeway, Tennis, Ice Hockey, Laser Blast and Stampede. Smaller publishers were arriving as well. Games by Apollo from Texas started with Skeet Shoot, and CommaVid’s Video Life brought John Conway’s Game of Life to the console. You will also find Activision’s Venetian Blinds Demo, a test program that was never sold.
Some dates here are approximate: Activision’s Bridge came out in December 1980, while Apollo’s Spacechase and Racquetball are usually dated to 1982.
Pick a game from the list below and play it in your browser.
Bloody Human Freeway is David Crane's early version of Activision's 1981 hit Freeway, made before the chicken was invented. Here a man tries to dodge ten lanes of traffic instead. Activision changed the hero before release, so this…
Play ▸Venetian Blinds Demo is not a game. It is a short Activision test program credited to David Crane, from the company's early years, that shows a window with a pair of Venetian blinds. It was never sold as…
Play ▸Video Life is a CommaVid cartridge from the early 1980s that brings John Conway's "Game of Life" to the Atari 2600. It is not a game you win or lose: you draw a pattern of dots, start it,…
Play ▸Spacechase is a space shooter from Games by Apollo, a small company from Richardson, Texas, that made games for the Atari 2600. It was designed and programmed by Ed Salvo and came out in early 1982. You fly…
Play ▸Skeet Shoot is a simple target-shooting game from 1981 and the very first cartridge released by Games by Apollo. Ed Salvo programmed it on his own before the company even existed as a game studio. You stand at…
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