The Atari 2600 was more than ten years old in 1988, yet new cartridges kept coming, mostly from Atari Corporation, Activision and Absolute Entertainment. Activision released the arcade conversion Commando in June and Dan Kitchen’s River Raid II in November, which adds altitude to the original’s fuel-juggling river run. Absolute’s Tomcat: The F-14 Fighter Simulator crams an unusual number of cockpit instruments onto the screen.
Atari’s own games on this page are mostly sports and racing: Doug Neubauer’s Super Football, Bob Polaro’s Sprint Master and Super Baseball, a reworked RealSports Baseball. Dark Chambers is a maze shooter based on Dandy, the computer game that inspired Gauntlet. Crack’ed is an unreleased prototype, Defender II is Stargate under a new name, and Froggo’s Sea Hawk and Task Force are re-releases of older games. The PAL-only compilation 32 in 1 is listed here as well.
Dark Chambers is filed under 1988, but Atari Archive dates it to May 1989.
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Ballblazer is a futuristic one-on-one ball game designed by Lucasfilm Games and released for the Atari 7800 by Atari Corporation in 1988. Two hovercraft chase a floating ball on a split-screen checkerboard field, and the cartridge carries an…
Play ▸Barnyard Blaster is a light-gun shooting game that Atari published for the 7800 in 1988, made for the XG-1 light gun. You clear a farm of pests and bottles with a limited supply of bullets, so accuracy matters…
Play ▸Desert Falcon is a diagonally scrolling shooter set in ancient Egypt, designed by Bob Polaro, developed by General Computer Corporation and published by Atari for the 7800. You fly a falcon over the sands, gather treasure, collect hieroglyphs…
Play ▸Donkey Kong is Nintendo's 1981 arcade game in which Mario climbs a steel fortress to rescue his girlfriend from a giant ape. Atari Corporation released this Atari 7800 version in 1988, programmed by ITDC. It has three of…
Play ▸F-18 Hornet is a one-player jet fighter simulator for the Atari 7800, released by Absolute Entertainment in 1988 and designed by John Van Ryzin. You fly four missions from a cockpit view, with take-offs, bombing runs, dogfights and…
Play ▸Mario Bros. brings Nintendo's 1983 arcade game to the Atari 7800: Mario and Luigi flip pests from below and kick them off the floors of a pipe-filled screen. ITDC programmed this version and Atari Corporation released it in…
Play ▸Summer Games is Epyx's Olympic-style sports collection, brought to the Atari 7800 by Atari. Up to eight players pick a country and compete in six events, from diving and gymnastics to sprinting and swimming, with medals for the…
Play ▸Super Skateboardin' is a 1988 Atari 7800 game from Absolute Entertainment and a follow-up to its Atari 2600 Skate Boardin'. You skate through a huge factory switching off machines and lights before the clock hits 5:15 pm, which…
Play ▸Tank Command is a vertically scrolling tank game for the Atari 7800, published in 1988 by Froggo, a small company that released games for Atari's older consoles. You drive through three increasingly hostile levels to capture the enemy…
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