Treasure Island
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…
Play ▸Release date: 1983
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.
Trick Shot
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…
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
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…
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The Year 1999
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…
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Survival Island (cassette)
Survival Island is a 1983 action-adventure by Starpath, programmed by Scott Nelson. It was not sold as a normal cartridge but on cassette tape for the Starpath Supercharger, an add-on that plugged into the Atari 2600's cartridge slot,…
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Survival Run
Survival Run is a first-person space shooter published by Milton Bradley for the Atari 2600 in 1983. You fly a starfighter through a maze of tunnels deep inside an alien planet, shooting guards and force fields while you…
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Sweat! – The Decathlon Game
Sweat! The Decathlon Game is an unreleased Starpath game from 1983, programmed by Scott Nelson. It was meant to be Starpath's answer to Activision's Decathlon, loaded from cassette tape into the Starpath Supercharger, an add-on that gave the…
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Sword of Saros (cassette)
Sword of Saros is a 1983 dungeon adventure for the Starpath Supercharger, the add-on that let the Atari 2600 load bigger games from audio cassettes. Programmed by Jon Leupp and Stephen Landrum, it sends you through an evil…
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Swordfight
Swordfight is a two-player duelling game for the Atari 2600, designed and programmed by Stephen Tatsumi at Mattel Electronics in 1983. Mattel finished it for its M Network label but never released it. The game finally came out…
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