On June 27, 1972, Atari Inc. was incorporated in the state of California. That makes today the 40th birthday of the company that pioneered coin-op gaming, and six years later Atari would unleash the Video Computer System, later renamed the 2600.
The console gaming industry was for all intents and purposes born with the Video Computer System, and home entertainment would never be the same. The console with the one-button joystick and the game cartridge changed everything and introduced some great interactive entertainment along the way. Here are my Top 10 Atari 2600 Games.
10. Realsports Football. Atari’s first football game was horrible. It was barely football at all. But with Realsports Football, Atari tried and mostly succeeded in creating a decent football sim. You only had a Pop Warner size team, but the players looked pretty good and you could do most of the things you could do in the real sports world: Breakaway runs, first downs, passes, interceptions, punts and so forth. The AI was pretty stupid, and before long every player had figured out how to blow it off the field 99-0. But Realsports Football and the other Realsports games foreshadowed the massive Madden, MLB, NBA and FIFA simulation franchises that dominate today.
9. Missile Command. Defend Cities. ‘Nuff said.
8. Star Raiders. This game required a pad separate from the joystick to control all the various functions of your space ship. It was way ahead of its time for its complexity and replayability.
*snort*
Empire Strikes Back was a complete knock-off of Defender. And not as good. Once you got over the novelty of Star Wars, Empire’s graphics and game play couldn’t hold up to Defender.
I was half expecting you to punk us at the end and call “ET” the best 2600 game. ;^)
I’m in full agreement w/ Adventure.
E.T. Heh.
I am disappointed that they used the video above for Adventure and not this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNK44eqvP38
My friends and I always thought that in Adventure that the dragons looked like chicken.
Also, beyond the easter egg of the magic dot, we had heard that you could use the dot to find the magic chain. Supposedly you could chain the bat up with it. Anyone ever hear of that? We never found it. I think it was a lie.
I’d heard the very same thing!
What about Tempest? Even ‘Tempest 2000′ is respectable.
I’d had a neighbor who’d had the arcade game Asteroids and cocktail-table arcade of Joust in their garage. Awesome.
I didn’t know Atari had adventure. I recall it as a UNIX text game thaty used up gobs of time from programmers. A full scipt of a successful game should be on line; I never got far myself.
You are in a series of twisty little comments, all alike.
So that’s where http://www.despair.com‘s “enter the dragon” T-shirt was showing. (Not sure if they still sell it.)
My goodness….I wasted soooo much time playing Adventure and now it sucked another 10 minutes from my life by watching the video.
I didn’t have an Atari, but later had a Commodore 64. I loved the C64 version of Pitfall, especially after discovering how to finish it.
Great list. Brings back a lot of memories. Pitfall was such an awesome game.
Superman was a great game too. Lots of fun.
Raiders of the Lost Ark was great too. My brother and I spent hours trying to figure that game out.
‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ was my favorite! My father cussed every time he played it. I ended up beating, though.
When my father brought home our Atari system, he and a buddy stayed up all night (literally) playing ‘Space Invaders’. I remember the sounds invading my dreams that night.
And oh, the sore wrists!
‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ was my favorite! My father cussed every time he played it. I ended up beating, though.
When my father brought home our Atari system, he and a buddy stayed up all night (literally) playing ‘Space Invaders’. I remember the sounds invading my dreams that night.
And oh, the sore wrists!
The Atari 400/800 had 4 joysticks. A great game called Dandy — rapid rapid multi shoot ‘em up, with tougher enemies the lower you went into the dungeon. We only made it to level W …
Great beer and chips and … play game. (I also had the C64, not the Atari)
I loved Star Raiders. I played it constantly on the 800. I can still see the stars streaming by, and hear the annoying and exciting hyperspace jump audio. I wish you had gameplay video so I could experience full-on nostalgia.
I had a 2600, and still have my C-64. I loved Pitfall and River Raid on the 2600. On the 64, my all-time favorite game was Ultimate Wizard. It came with 100 levels built-in, and had a level editor for building your own custom levels. Classic stuff.
What, no Yars’ Revenge? You’ve been paid off by Qotile’s partisans, haven’t you.
Yar’s Revenge was the very first video game I ever owned, and I could play it for hours.
I have to give credit to the late, great Atari. My neighbor had a VCS/2600, and I was really jealous, coming over to play it. (Not quite as much when Dad sprang for an old Atari 400 computer, but still.)
The thing is, while Atari had some great games and gave us ’80s kids some marvelous memories, it definitely was no friend of the pioneering, hard-working, producing innovator that PJ Media seems to uphold.
The #1 and #4 games came frome the fruits of burned employees. Adventure’s Easter egg was sneaked in by programmer Warren Robinett, because Atari didn’t want to give any public credit out of fear that competitors would try to lure him away with better offers.
Turned out lots of other Atari programmers got exasperated with no credit, too. Or royalties, or decent pay either. And that’s why they left Atari, and struck out to form third-party game companies like Imagic and “Pitfall!”‘s Activision.
Whether it’s a game company and its programmers and designers, or a government and its producing citizens, the same rule is in play: if you keep burning the folks that keep your ship afloat, don’t be shocked if they grab the lifeboats, sail off on their own, and leave you to sink.
( More of this on GameSpy’s readers’ suggestions to “The 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming.” http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/readers/index5.shtml )
How could you leave out Demon Attack? I played that game until it ran out of levels.
COMBAT!
I built a console for Star Raiders. Still have it, but sans the Atari. Use it as a show-and-tell addition to my professional resume as a hardware engineering tech.
A Scientific Atlanta “keyboard” aluminum cabinet. A dozen keys for the most-common functions, custom-positioned for ergometric match to my left hand. More keys and an industrial-grade joystick for my right. “D” connecter to interface the key lines into the Atari 400 (parallel with its normally-open lines.)
Seldom did I have to take my eyes off the TV screen to find a key. It upped my skill-level one bracket.
*grin* When showing it to a new or potential client, I introduce it as a study in Obsession. “Men from the boys….”
Where’s Kaboom!?
+1
I’m really surprised you’d put Pac Man on the list, when it’s generally held to be among the worst of the 2600 games (not ET bad, of course, but then nothing is). I think “Combat” belongs on the list more than it does.
The licensed Superman game was a lot of fun, as was Circus Atari. If we’re including Activision games the Defender clone “Chopper Command” was great.
Defender and Demon Attack were my favorites.
Now they have those joysticks you can buy and hook into your TV, and they come preloaded with 50 or so Atari 2600 games. Some of them (but not all) are still fun to play.
I’ve got their new version of Asteroids for the iPhone
Ok, who else played the sound of swinging over the lake in their head when they read the word “Pitfall”? And I second the mentions of Yars Revenge, Combat, and Kaboom – and would add the Olympic games as well. We also had E.T. – oh the hours we wasted trying to figure that one out. I recently enjoyed schooling my kids on River Raid after hooking up the old atari to our flat screen tv. Only requires a cheap adapter you can buy at amazon, so go up into the attic, dust off the system and start reliving the memories!
The paddle-controlled “Warlords” was one of my favorites, and more fun that the law should have allowed.
Atari’s “Ms Pac-Man” port was better than the regulation Pac-Man. Activision ruled, however. I think I still have my Space Shuttle cart somewhere.
I remember when the Intellivision sports games were licensed to the 2600 under the “M Network” nameplate. Baseball was a riot. Everything was either a ground ball or a homerun, and it was impossible for the third baseman to throw out a runner at first. And it was still the most fun ever… at least, until we got the 7800 and I spent a million hours of my life playing Xevious.
Centipede??