Overview Victory Announcement: Spectra-warriors, rejoice! The long battle against the planet Spectra’s invaders, the Morpuls, has finally ended. These foes have retreated to Tzoris, but our quest for justice isn’t over. Now, armed with our secret weapon, the Spectron, it’s time to strike back and honor our fallen. Introducing the Spectron: Our latest arsenal addition, … Read more
Crackpots is a 1983 Activision game for the Atari 2600, and the first 2600 game by designer Dan Kitchen. You play Potsy, a rooftop gardener in Brooklyn, whose building is being eaten by bugs crawling up from the sewer. Your only defence is a row of flowerpots on the roof ledge, which you push over onto the bugs below. It is easy to pick up, and it gets surprisingly tense as the bugs speed up. You can play it here in your browser, with nothing to install.
Atari 2600 Condor Attack Overview By Ultravision Earth Base Command Directives In an advanced future, a million years ahead, Earth faces a catastrophic event. An intergalactic conflict has led to a massive space-time explosion, regressing civilization to the Stone Age. Humanity, now in its most primitive form, faces the resurrected Condor, a creature from a … Read more
Atari 2600 Chuck Norris Superkicks Instructions Embark on an adventure in an exotic Oriental setting as “Chuck Norris,” on a mission to rescue a prominent leader held captive in an ancient monastery. Begin your quest as a novice with a White Belt, striving to master karate and earn a Black Belt to gain entry into … Read more
China Syndrome is an Atari 2600 action game from Spectravision, one of the smaller third-party publishers of the early 1980s. An earthquake has damaged the nuclear reactor on Spectra Island, and in a training simulator you steer a robot arm through the reactor’s nine levels, collecting leaked fuel particles before the radiation gets out of hand. It is a simple, fast catching game with an unusual theme. You can play it here in your browser.
Cat Trax is a maze-chase game for the Atari 2600 made by UA Limited in 1983 and never sold as a normal retail cartridge. You play a cat running through a maze, eating catnip and dodging three dogs, in a style very close to Pac-Man. It began life on another console, the Emerson Arcadia 2001, and the 2600 version was only rediscovered years later. You can play it here in your browser.
In “Boing!” for the Atari 2600, you’re in control of a character known as BUBBLE, navigating through a game using the joystick plugged into the left port. The joystick allows BUBBLE to move up, down, left, or right, but not diagonally. By continuously holding the joystick in a direction, BUBBLE will keep jumping that way … Read more
Base Attack is a 1983 shooter sold in Europe on the Home Vision label and manufactured in Taiwan by Gem International. You fly a small craft over a city skyline and try to wipe out the enemy bases on the ground while they fire back. The same game was sold under several other names, most notably as Z-Tack from Bomb. You can play it here in your browser.
Spike’s Peak is a 1983 mountain-climbing game for the Atari 2600, published by Xonox. You guide a climber named Spike from the meadows at the foot of a mountain to its icy summit, dodging animals, falling rocks and avalanches while the cold slowly wears you down. Each stage asks for something different, from hiding and jumping to climbing and fighting, so the climb never feels like the same screen repeated. You can play it here in your browser.
Alpha Beam with Ernie is a 1983 Sesame Street learning game for children aged 3 to 7, made by Atari together with the Children’s Computer Workshop. Michael Callahan programmed it and Preston Stuart did the graphics. Ernie is flying home from Saturn when his rocket runs out of fuel, and the only way to refill it is to match letters of the alphabet. You can load it here in your browser, but please read the note on controls first.