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.
Phantom-Panzer is the German release of Phantom Tank, a tank battle game made by the Taiwanese company Bit Corporation. The mail-order firm Quelle sold it through its catalogue as a PAL cartridge. You defend your base against a…
Play ▸Pharaoh's Curse is a little-known Atari 2600 cartridge from TechnoVision, a small label that released a handful of games in Europe in late 1983. It was a PAL release and never came out in North America. It is…
Play ▸Piece o' Cake is a 1983 paddle game developed by Western Technologies and published by U.S. Games. You are a bakery chef who takes cake layers from the oven, drops them onto platters rolling along a conveyor belt…
Play ▸Pigs in Space is a 1983 Atari 2600 cartridge based on the "Pigs in Space" sketches from The Muppet Show. Instead of one game it holds three short space games, each starring a different member of the starship…
Play ▸Pepsi Invaders is a promotional version of Atari's Space Invaders made in 1983 for the Coca-Cola Company. It was never sold in shops: Coca-Cola gave it to its own salespeople at a sales convention that year. Instead of…
Play ▸No Escape! is a 1983 Atari 2600 action game from Imagic, designed by Michael Greene. You play Jason of the Argonauts, locked in the Temple of Aphrodite by the gods of Olympus while flying Furies attack. The twist…
Play ▸Nuts is a simple shooting game from TechnoVision, a label of the Hong Kong company Video Technology (VTech), released in Europe in 1983. You play a squirrel whose winter food store has been stolen, and you throw at…
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