1984 was the year the Atari 2600 boom ran out. Strong games still appeared: Activision’s H.E.R.O. and David Crane’s Pitfall II: Lost Caverns came out in March, and arcade conversions such as Crystal Castles, Millipede, Parker Brothers’ Star Wars: The Arcade Game and Sega’s Spy Hunter kept arriving. On 21 May Atari announced the 7800, a new console that could also play 2600 cartridges.
Then, on 2 July, Warner sold Atari’s consumer business to Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore, and he halted 2600 game development soon after. By the middle of the year only Atari and Activision were still making 2600 games. Several projects from this year were never finished or never sold, and this page holds a number of them, including Garfield, Dune, Tempest, Sinistar and Peek-A-Boo, a game for young children made with the psychologist Lee Salk. Rare small-label cartridges such as River Patrol and Color Bar Generator are here too.
Cosmic Commuter is filed under 1984, but its release is usually dated to 1985.
Play the 1984 games and prototypes below in your browser.
Pitfall II: Lost Caverns is David Crane's 1984 sequel to his own Pitfall!, published by Activision. Pitfall Harry leaves the jungle and goes underground into a huge cave system below Machu Picchu in Peru. With no time limit,…
Play ▸Peek-A-Boo is an unreleased Atari 2600 game for young children, made at Atari in 1984 by programmer Kevin Sacher and graphics artist Jerome Domurat. It was developed together with the child psychologist Dr. Lee Salk and is described…
Play ▸Montezuma's Revenge is a platform adventure in which explorer Panama Joe works his way down through the chambers of an Aztec emperor's fortress, collecting keys, tools and jewels. Robert Jaeger created the original game, and Parker Brothers published…
Play ▸Motocross Racer is an off-road motorcycle racing game from Xonox, the cartridge label of K-tel. It packs three short races into one cartridge, each seen from a different angle: behind the bike in the desert, from above on…
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