Games

With about 440 Games made for the Atari 26000 just what do we have of interest?

There are plenty of sites with extensive reviews, so I'm going to keep this short. Hopefully I'll find out some new information, or maybe a game or two that slipped under the radar for me.



Still Worth Playing

I'll have to break this out into solo games, and those that you need a friend and two joysticks. This is the Atari 2600. A computer AI opponent is just not a thing. I'm also going to separate out the paddle games as I've not found a good method to use paddles.

Solo Games
All you need is a Joystick and some time.

  1. Adventure
  2. Asteroids
  3. Battlezone
  4. Berzerk
  5. Chopper Command
  6. Frogger
  7. Galaxian
  8. HERO
  9. Ice Hockey
  10. Missile Command
  11. Phoenix
  12. Pitfall
  13. Space Invaders
  14. Stargate
  15. Venture

With a Friend
These are 2 player only games that require a second joystick.

  1. Air and Sea Battle
  2. Armor Ambush
  3. Combat
  4. Flag Capture
  5. Football
  6. Maze Craze
  7. Sky Diver
  8. Surround

Paddle Games
These are 1 and 2 player games that require a Paddle Controller

  1. Breakout
  2. Super Breakout
  3. Video Olymics (Pong)


The Games

Both those that are worth playing, or have some interesting story.

xTitleRateNotes


Adventure5Still a Classic. And I finally was able to get to the Easter Egg! Somehow I had never got around to actually finding this one myself. Figured I would fix that. Still my favorite Atari game and the one that stands the test of time best. Also when playing this as an adult I realized that your true antagonist in the game are not the dragons but the bat.
Air and Sea Battle3.5*2 Player Only. 10 minutes of fun if you have a Friend. This is about as basic of a game as you get.
Armor Ambush4*2 Player Only. 20 minutes of fun if you have a friend.
Asteroids4Fun, but one of the "flicker" games. Hard to remember but a lot of games on the Atari 2600 flashed. Stolen from the internet "Well, back in 'the day', due to the VERY small memory these games had to work with, the programmers couldn't put a whole bunch of objects on the screen at once. That made for some pretty boring games. So they came up with a trick which allowed them to put several objects on the screen at the same time. They programmed the objects to flicker. When there were multiple moving objects on a screen, they programmed the game to make each object turn visually on and off for a split second. This freed up the screen to have other objects. The vanished object would be replaced with a different one, which would also flicker on and off, and the game would cycle through each object, turning each one on, then off, then on again in a rapid cycle."
Battle Zone4Really impressive visuals and extremely tight and responsive controls. I'm just massively impressed at the quality of this one.
Berzerk4Still fun if a bit simple. Run around and shoot people. It's what the 2600 does well. I'm also impressed while they had lots of moving sprites, they didn't have the flicker. From the manual "The Astro Date is 3200 and you are the last survivor of a small group of earth people who came to explore the planet Mazeon."
Bobby is Going Home3.5A Pitfall clone. After the player passes seven scenes, he then can get Bobby into the house, and there the next level will show. The game has 32 levels but doesn't seem to have anything unique at the end. The song that plays in the background will start to drive you bonkers as there is something not quite in key about it.
Chopper Command5Fun and so much better than Defender. Again more fun with a joystick, but this one stands the test of time well.
Combat4*2 Player Only. 30 minutes of Fun if you have a Friend. Shipped with every Atari Console, everyone has played this one with their family and both loved and hated it. It's so incredibly easy to just spam the other player giving them no chance once you have hit them the first time. Still fun for a few minutes and a beer.
Crypts of Chaos3.5A first person dungeon crawler. I had no idea that the Atari 2600 had some first person mazes games. This is one of a few and it's an RPG to boot. It also has a horrible control scheme making this game incredibly hard to play while not to screwing yourself over by mistake. The manual is a must if you want any idea of what you are supposed to do. But it is a First person 3D dungeon crawler on the 2600 which is really impressive.
Dark Chambers3.5Similar to Gauntlet. It's a fine game but really slow. From the site Atari Protos "At first glance it's easy to pass Dark Chambers off as a mere Gauntlet clone. However did you know that it's Gauntlet that's the clone? For you see, Dark Chambers is actually based off an 1983 APX (Atari Program Exchange) game by John Palevich called Dandy. Two years later Ed Logg created his arcade mega hit Gauntlet, using Dandy as inspiration. John was none too happy about this and planned to file a lawsuit, but later settled out of court (rumor has it he received a free Gauntlet machine). A few years later in 1988, Atari re-published Dandy for the 2600, 7800, and XE under the name Dark Chambers. This time however Atari gave John proper credit and no lawsuits were filed."
Dragon Stomper3Be a pixel. Play a very long RPG. A Supercharger game. I didn't even know there was an add on cartridge you could purchase to add more memory to the Atari. From Wikipedia "It adds 6 KB to the Atari 2600's 128 bytes of RAM increasing it 49-fold". While it is an excellent technical achievement, I personally found it to be to slow and to random. From the reviews it also takes over an hour to complete and there are no saves. Be a pixel and play a very long RPG.
ET3.5Considered one of the worst games of all time, this one is pretty bad, just not for the reasons people expect. Most importantly you have to read the manual to figure out what you are supposed to be doing (collecting phone parts and calling your ship) and what the strange symbols along the top are. Secondly, getting out of the pit is counter intuitive in that you get out of the pit by pressing up, but the second you get out you have to go almost any direction except up. I also found this very difficult with a joystick. Third, the game has 3 difficultly levels but they are on the cartridge backwards with 1=Hard, 2=Still Hard, and 3=Reasonable.
Escape from Mind Master3.5First Person 3d Maze game. Find parts to the puzzle and place them on the right spots on the walls. Another Supercharger game. Pretty fun for a quick play. Another impressive achievement.
Flag Capture4*2 Player Only. 30 minutes of Fun if you have a Friend. Run around the maze finding clues as to where your flag is. Try and beat your opponent to be the first.
Football3.5*2 Player Only. 15 minutes of Fun if you have a Friend. Unfortunately another "flicker" game.
Frogger3.5Just barely getting into the fun category. The game play is good, but the graphics. Just get Mame and play the orginal.
Galaxian4"Namco's answer to Space Invaders." A good port fluid and responsive with no flicker. I also didn't realize this was to later become Galaga.
Gravitar4Good, but omg this game is difficult.
HERO5Just plain Excellent. Simple to understand, fun to play. Another classic from Activision.
Ice Hockey4As a general rule, Activision games always seemed a setup in quality. This is no different from the more lifelike graphics to having actual AI you can play against.
Maze Craze3.5*2 Player Only. 15 minutes of Fun if you have a Friend. Find your way out of the maze before your friend. While they have options to add people to avoid, or to black out part of the maze, given the system limitations there is only one maze layout so it's limited.
Missile Command5Still very good. One of the better arcade ports. Also much better with a joystick than with the keyboard.
Montezumas Revenge4Impressive. A multi screen platformer. I would give it a 5 but I found it difficult to time the jumps and kept waiting to long to press the button. Something about the spacing and or timing for me. Your mileage may vary.
Phoneix4Another Impressive Arcade conversion. Tight controls and simply plays well.
Pitfall4Still Fun for a bit. I didn't know that the game actually has an ending. Find all 20 treasures in under 20:00. This is also almost impossible and there are 256 unique screens to the game. The person with the best walkthrough of how to finish the games says "This is very hard. It is possible but you will probably only have about a minute to spare after you collect them all."
Riddle of the Spinx3Think Myst for the Atari 2600. It's more of a puzzle than a game an arcade game. It requires you to read the game manual to figure out the puzzles. There are a couple of other games similar to this including the more well-known Sword Quest games. So in the game manual it might say "The fire bird, newly risen from its ancient ashes, can provide you with a key to the riddle you seek to solve. You will know what gift to offer if you unroll and read the writing on your heart." so the solution is to Offer the Scroll to get a Key, and offer the Tannis Leaf to get past it. And if that is not bad enough it's a single player game, but requires two joysticks. It would also really help to know what items exist (Key, Scroll, Crown, Ankh, Tablets, Staff) I mean just trying to figure out what they are from the min icon is super difficult even if you know what to do.
Sky Diver3*2 Player Only. 10 minutes of Fun if you have a Friend. Very Hard to figure out for such a simple game. So push the red button to leap from the plan but DOWN to open your chute.
Sky Jinks3Fun for a couple times and it's very responsive. But there isn't really much replay.
Space Invaders4Still Fun. Again this is about as basic a game as it gets, but addictive.
Stargate4This is what defender should have been. No flicker and as true to the original as you are going to get with only a 2600.
Surround4*2 Player Only. 20 minutes of fun if you have a Friend. A "Dueling" snake game. Or maybe Tron light cycles. Either way it's fun for a bit.
Survival Island3I really want to like this game but If I could only get to the damn island a single time. Way to much luck.
Swordquest2This is a really odd game. It seem it was made as a puzzle game with anyone that finished the game being able to submit their name for a prize. There are a total of 16 objects in this game (one of them is actually your goal, thus in reality there are really 15 useable objects). These objects will accomplish certain things depending on the situation. Leaving objects in certain rooms will yield clues that will help you complete the game. You get clues in game and also have to find the clues in the comic book. Earthworld sold around 500,000 copies, and around 5,000 players ended up submitting their answers to the final tournament. Of all those, only eight submitted the correct words, granting them access to the competition.
Venture4Fun. Another little maze shooter. It starts to repeat rather quickly so there is limited replay.