1983 is by far the largest year in our archive, with around 270 games. Toy makers, film studios, food companies and small firms that vanished within months all put cartridges on the shelves. It was also the year of the video game crash. Atari lost $536 million, and in September it buried unsold stock in a New Mexico landfill. In October it brought the console to Japan as the Atari 2800, where it made little impact.
Plenty of good games still came out. Activision released Dan Kitchen’s first 2600 game, Crackpots, and Parker Brothers brought Konami’s Tutankham and the lightsaber duel Star Wars: Jedi Arena. Atari continued its Swordquest series with Swordquest: Fireworld, and Starpath’s Sword of Saros showed how far the Supercharger could go. At the other end of the scale is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, better known for its controversy than for its gameplay.
Some titles on this page reached shops in early 1984, such as Private Eye and Track & Field, and Xevious is a prototype that was never released.
There is a lot to explore below, and every game plays right in your browser.
Strawberry Shortcake: Musical Match-Ups is a 1983 Atari 2600 puzzle game for young children, published by Parker Brothers and programmed by Dawn Stockbridge. The Purple Pieman has cast a spell over Strawberryland and scrambled the characters' heads, bodies…
Play ▸Spacemaster X-7 is a 1983 space shooter for the Atari 2600, published by 20th Century Fox and made by Sirius Software, with David Lubar as the programmer. You fly an assault ship against enemy bases, each wrapped in…
Play ▸Spitfire Attack is a 1983 air combat game for the Atari 2600, published by the board game company Milton Bradley. You look out from the cockpit of a fighter plane, with the horizon in front of you and…
Play ▸Snail Against Squirrel is a single-screen platform game from Bit Corporation, the Taiwanese company behind Bobby Is Going Home. This is the 1983 European (PAL) cartridge. You play a squirrel collecting nuts for the winter and carrying them…
Play ▸Snoopy and the Red Baron is a 1983 Atari 2600 shooter in which Snoopy, from Charles Schulz's Peanuts comic strip, flies his doghouse into battle against his old enemy, the Red Baron. It was made by Atari, programmed…
Play ▸Solar Storm is a 1983 space shooter for the Atari 2600 from Imagic, programmed by Dennis Koble. A nearby sun has exploded, and you steer a laser ship along the surface of your planet, shooting down the debris…
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