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.
Thunderground is a 1983 Atari 2600 cartridge from Sega, programmed by Jeff Lorenz. You drive a digging vehicle called a core capsule through the earth, tunnelling towards six enemy bases while two tanks hunt you through the passages you create. It borrows the tunnelling idea from Sega’s 1981 arcade game Borderline and adds a hidden bonus item to find in every round, which turns a simple shoot-out into a small treasure hunt. You can play it here in your browser.
Thwocker is an unreleased Activision prototype for the Atari 2600, programmed by Charlie Heath, the designer of Reactor. It was worked on in 1984 and has been described as “Joust with musical instruments”: you guide a bouncing little conductor through a maze, collecting notes to build a song. The game was never finished, but it is an odd and charming glimpse of what Activision was working on as the market collapsed. You can play the prototype here in your browser.
Time Pilot is Coleco’s 1983 Atari 2600 version of Konami’s arcade shooter, licensed from Konami. You fly a “Timeship” through five periods of aviation history, from wooden biplanes in 1910 to flying saucers in 2001, and in each era you must shoot down a squadron of enemies before its giant boss aircraft shows up. According to AtariAge, the 2600 cartridge was programmed by Harley H. Puthuff, Jr. It is a quick-to-learn dogfighting game, and you can play it here in your browser with nothing to install.
Tomarc the Barbarian is an action game for the Atari 2600 from Xonox, the video game label of the K-tel company. You guide the barbarian Tomarc through a series of caves to rescue Senta, who is held in a magical cage, and the unusual twist is that you look after both characters at once. Original cartridges are hard to find today, so an emulator is the easiest way to try it. You can play it here in your browser.
Track & Field is Atari’s 1984 Atari 2600 version of Konami’s 1983 arcade hit. It was programmed at General Computer Corporation (GCC) by Seth Lipkin, Jacques Hugon and Allen Wells. You compete in six athletics events, from the 100-metre dash to the high jump, and you must reach a qualifying mark in each one to carry on. It is a button-mashing game at heart, with timing that matters as much as speed. You can play it here in your browser.
Treasure Island is a little-known PAL cartridge for the Atari 2600, sold under the Suntek label with the model number SS-026. It is not an original title: it is the same game that the company Home Vision released in Europe as Treasure Discovery, and that the German mail-order company Quelle sold as Kampf um die Schatzinsel (“Battle for Treasure Island”). You can play it here in your browser.
Trick Shot is a pool and billiards game for the Atari 2600, designed by Dennis Koble and released by Imagic in April 1982. It was one of the new company’s first three cartridges, alongside Demon Attack and Star Voyager. You aim, set the power and add spin on a table seen from above. It is the only pool game on the 2600, and you can play it here in your browser.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a 1983 Atari 2600 game based on the 1974 horror film. It was developed by VSS, Inc., designed by Ed Salvo, and published by Wizard Video Games, a home video label that also released a 2600 game of Halloween. Unusually for its time, you play the film’s villain, Leatherface, rather than the people trying to escape. The game is better known for the controversy it caused and for being hard to find than for its gameplay, which makes it an interesting piece of video game history. You can play it here in your browser.
The Year 1999 is a PAL cartridge from Rainbow Vision (Suntek), model SS-008, sold in Australia. It is not an original game: emulator databases identify it as Ultravision’s shooter Condor Attack under a new name, like several other Rainbow Vision titles. You can play it here in your browser.
Threshold is a space shooter that Tigervision released for the Atari 2600 in 1982. It is a conversion of Warren Schwader’s 1981 Apple II game from On-Line Systems, the company later known as Sierra. Waves of six alien ships attack you, and each wave is tougher than the one before. Unlike most shooters of its type, it lets you fly up and down as well as left and right. You can play it here in your browser.