Release date: 1982

1982 was the peak of the Atari 2600, and it is one of the biggest years in our archive, with around 150 games. Pac-Man arrived in March and, despite the complaints about it, became the console’s best-selling cartridge. Activision released David Crane’s Pitfall! in September and Carol Shaw’s River Raid, while Atari had Howard Scott Warshaw’s Yars’ Revenge and Raiders of the Lost Ark. E.T. followed in December. In November the console got the name it is known by today: the VCS became the Atari 2600, to sit next to the new Atari 5200.
Other companies poured in. Third-party games made up half of all VCS game sales that year, and the list below includes cartridges from Imagic, Parker Brothers, Coleco, Mattel’s M Network, U.S. Games, 20th Century Fox, Apollo and Starpath, whose Supercharger add-on loaded games from cassette. Atari itself tried new ideas, such as the dark, tense Haunted House. On 7 December, though, Warner warned that Atari would grow far less than expected, and its share price collapsed.
A few games filed under 1982 reached shops later. Tax Avoiders, for example, carries a 1982 date but only went on sale in December 1986.
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