Gamma-Attack is a 1983 Atari 2600 shooter from Gammation, a small company run by programmer Robert L. Esken Jr. You fly a hovering saucer over a planet and destroy the enemy tanks below. The game itself is simple, but the cartridge is famous among collectors as one of the rarest Atari 2600 games: only one original copy is known to exist. You can play it here in your browser.
Fathom is an action-adventure game designed by Rob Fulop and published by Imagic in 1983, with graphics by Michael Becker and Wilfredo Aguilar. You play Proteus, who can change between a dolphin and a seagull, and you search the sea and the sky for the three pieces of Neptune’s broken trident. Its smooth animation still looks lovely. You can play it here in your browser.
Fire Fly is a 1983 action game for the Atari 2600 from Mythicon, a small American publisher. It was programmed by Bruce de Graaf, with sound by Bill Bryner, and was Mythicon’s second cartridge (model number MA1002). You steer a mechanical insect through a string of screens, each with its own kind of enemy, from a guard bee to a flaming pumpkin and a fire-spitting sun. You can play it here in your browser.
Fire Spinner is the name of a 1983 PAL cartridge sold in Europe on the Home Vision label, but the game you can play on this page is really Spinning Fireball, an unreleased NTSC prototype marked “Vidco (c) 1983”. Collector databases list Fire Spinner as one release of the same game, which also appeared as Firebug from Suntek and under names such as Fire Ball and Fire Dragon. No copy of the Home Vision cartridge itself has been dumped, so the prototype is the closest you can get. You can try it here in your browser.
Dukes of Hazzard is an unreleased Atari 2600 game from 1983, programmed by Mark R. Hahn and based on the TV series about the Duke cousins and their orange car, the General Lee. It never reached the shops, but it got closer than most cancelled games: the code had already been burned onto production ROM chips when Atari called it off. What survives is an unfinished, buggy but playable version, and you can try it here in your browser.
Dumbo’s Flying Circus is an unreleased Atari 2600 game from 1983, based on Disney’s flying elephant. It was programmed by Peter Niday, with graphics by Jerome Domurat, and was planned as part of Atari’s range of games for children. The game was never sold, but prototypes survived, and the last one appears to be finished. You can play it here in your browser.
Eddy Langfinger, der Museumsdieb (“Eddy Lightfingers, the museum thief”) is the German PAL release of the Atari 2600 game A Mysterious Thief, sold by the mail-order company Quelle. You play a burglar raiding a four-storey building against the clock, dodging guard dogs and a security guard while you grab the treasures that appear in the windows. You can play it here in your browser.
Elevator Action for the Atari 2600 is an unreleased prototype. Dan Hitchens programmed it at Atari as a home version of Taito’s 1983 arcade spy game, but the cartridge was never finished or sold. The surviving version is largely playable, with a few rough edges. It is a rare chance to see a 2600 arcade conversion that almost made it. You can play it here in your browser, with nothing to install.
Enduro is a 1983 racing game by Activision, designed by Larry Miller. You drive in the “National Enduro”, a long-distance race where you have to overtake a set number of cars every day to stay in the competition. The race runs through day and night, snow, ice and fog, and the changing light and weather on a 4 KB cartridge are what still make it stand out among 2600 racing games. You can play it here in your browser, with nothing to install.
The Entity is an unreleased Atari 2600 game from 20th Century Fox, programmed by Mark Klein and based on the horror film of the same name. Instead of fighting the film’s invisible force, you push it: by sliding walls into place, you force a bouncing Entity up through a series of planes of existence. It is a small, unusual puzzle-action prototype, and you can play it here in your browser.