Release date: 1981

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.
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