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- Senior Editor, Features
- Space Invaders. One of the first shooting games ever, Space Invaders' lines of lurking aliens appeared in arcades before it became the first arcade game officially licensed for a console.
- Kaboom! Activision's Kaboom! (1981) became another million seller. The game starred a mad bomber who dropped bombs, which the player caught with three buckets at the bottom of the screen.
- Combat. Combat (1976) was one of the first Atari games. It contained 27 games in one, each representing different forms of combat, but all using tanks, jets, or biplanes as vehicles with weapons capability.
- Demon Attack. Imagic—a company that started with an "I" before starting with an "I" was cool—released Demon Attack (1982) for several consoles and computers, including Commodores, TRS-80, and of course, Atari 2600.
- Breakout
- Asteroids
- Battlezone
- Centipede
- Missile Command
- Tempest
- Star Wars
- Marble Madness
- Paperboy
- Gauntlet
Designed by Steve Wozniak (later of Apple fame), who was duly ripped off by Steve Jobs (also later of Apple fame) over development bonuses, Breakout is one-player Pong. It’s basic fare, but tough and compelling. Play it with a spinner for best effect.
Arriving a year after Space Invaders, Asteroidsmade Taito’s title look archaic. In place of doddering and chunky foes was a field of asteroids you blasted to smithereens – and a sneaky saucer determined to turn you into so much space dust.
One of the earliest first-person shooters, Battlezoneplonked you in a tank and had you roam the landscape looking for other tanks to destroy. It was considered so realistic at the time that a version was worked up for the US Army.
Another title that reimagined Space Invaders, Centipede’swormy foes sped across the screen, inconveniently breaking in two when you shot them. The title’s breakneck pace and blink-and-you-die gameplay ensures it holds up today.
Released during the Cold War, Missile Commandtasked players with fending off waves of missile attacks. Chillingly and matter-of-factly stating ‘The End’ instead of ‘Game Over’ summed things up when all your bases were nuked.
More Space Invaders? Yep, but now in a tube and across varied geometric ‘webs’. Creator Dave Theurer’s additions (spikes, smart bombs, varied foes) ramped up the tension. Years later, Jeff Minter remade the game as Tempest 2000– aka the main reason to buy an Atari Jaguar.
Forget your Battlefronts and TIE Fighters (actually, don’t, because they were fab), because this vector classic made you feel like you were right there in the movie, blasting enemies to pieces, and making that famous trench run. “Use the force, Luke!”
The visually spectacular isometric levels in Marble Madnessbring to mind Escher-like landscapes as you attempt to coax your marble along narrow pathways and around plentiful hazards. Terrifyingly, experts can blaze through the entire game in three minutes.
British kids used to wonder what US newspapers were made of when they went through windows in this high-octane arcade game. It remains fun, though, not least when you reach the stunt course at the end of the street.
This dungeon crawler was a rarity at the time, in offering four-player co-op – and ratting you out if you kept shooting or eating all the health-replenishing food. The game itself ate coins, marking the start of pay to play.
- Craig Grannell
- Pitfall! One of the best-selling titles on the seminal console, Activision's Pitfall! put the publisher on the map and showcased just how entertaining these downsized arcade ports could be.
- Combat. A pack-in title that shipped with almost every Atari console released before 1982, most gamers who grew up with the console likely have fond memories of battling friends and siblings in the iconic multiplayer title Combat.
- Kung-Fu Master. Originally released in 1984, the Atari 2600's Kung-Fu Master was a loose adaptation of the Jackie Chan movie Meal On Wheels, which debuted the same year.
- Pole Position. Compared to its arcade counterpart, 1982's Atari 2600 rendition of the hit game Pole Position was pretty lacking. That said, attempting to portray a real-world environment with any sense of depth on the console was ambitious, and the port definitely deserves praise for maintaining the look and feel of the original title given the extremely limited hardware on which it ran.
Nov 29, 2023 · Wade Rosen. It acquired Nightdive Studios, which built its name remastering older games for release on modern hardware, titles like Rise of the Triad: Ludicrous Edition, System Shock: Enhanced...
- Managing Editor
Sep 12, 2022 · Thanks to a European retailer listing that emerged over the weekend, we now have an apparently final list of the Atari 50 selection of games: 103 in all, as spread across arcade cabinets, six...
Atari Games Corporation was an American producer of arcade video games, active from 1985 to 1999, then as Midway Games West Inc. until 2003.
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Nov 1, 2021 · Because the innovations it introduced to the world represent the building blocks of the gaming universe we love today. Here are ten innovations and ideas that Atari pioneered. Each one made a...
