Image via Creative Commons
If you’ve been dying to relive the early days of video games, you’re in luck: the Internet Archive uploaded all Atari 2600 games for internet play. The database, called The Console Living Room, also includes games from the Atari 7800, The ColecoVision, Magnavox Odyssey², and Midway’s The Astrocate consoles. The 8-bit revolution comes full circle.
As I was never lucky enough to get my calloused thumbs on anything but Atari systems (until NES rolled around), what follows is a short list of the essential, the groundbreaking, the weird, and otherwise notable Atari games. With hundreds of games between the two systems, many crucial games won’t make this list. A few, if not all, of these selections will be familiar to gamers. The real goal here is to introduce some great 8-bit games to the uninitiated. Games in need of some serious retro love from the internet hordes.
Videos by VICE
Pitfall!
We take the side-scroll of early video games for granted, but Pitfall!, an adventure game, featured an early iteration of this type of gameplay. Though it technically didn’t side-scroll, Pitfall! led directly to it, laying the foundations for the groundbreaking Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog gameplay. For that reason alone, Pitfall! deserves to be on this list.
Released by Activision in 1982, it went on to become the second best-selling Atari game of all time. Sales figures aside, it’s a wonderfully entertaining game. Players take on the role of Pitfall Harry, and are tasked with negotiating a variety of digital environments and obstacles, including quicksand and crocodiles, all in an effort to accumulate points. And underneath the jungle, a tunnel exists that would have made Jules Verne smile.
Atlantis
If there is a game on this list that few know, it might be Imagic’s Atlantis. Designed around that most mythical of civilizations, the goal here is ultimately a futile one. Game designer Dennis Koble tasked players with delaying the civilization’s downfall for as long as possible. Gameplayers therefore fight for Atlantis against the relentless Gorgon hordes.
Gamers expect to actually beat games. Atlantis upends this very idea, although it does ultimately foreshadow the sequel Cosmic Ark. A bit New Age-y? Sure, but the game is also a rich, 8-bit fantasy world worth more than a brief gander. This game was also made available on the Magnavox Odyssey² and Commodore VIC-20.
Frogger
I’m partial to Frogger, mostly because it was the first video game I can remember playing. Sure, I played Donkey Kong and Space Invaders, but Frogger had great cross-generational appeal, while proving as addictive as that other 80s cultural phenomenon—crack. The game was deceptively difficult to master. In fact, I’m not sure that I ever beat it as a kid, though I never stopped trying.
It’s worth noting that Frogger isn’t just an Atari game. Developed by Konami, it was ported to various other systems such as the ColecoVision and Commodore 64 computer. Also, Atari had a similar game that it developed around the same time called Freeway, which wasn’t nearly as successful as Frogger.
What’s really notable about the game is that it’s popularity inspired a number of clones and sequels. Call it the Hollywood blockbuster of video games. For better or worse, Frogger, like Indiana Jones and Star Wars before it, forever changed gaming, becoming a lucrative franchise that only waned once Nintendo Entertainment System hit the market.
Solaris
Published in 1986 by Atari, Solaris was designed by Douglas Neubauer. It’s a spaceship action simulator, in which the goal is to reach the planet Solaris and save a colony. Could it have been inspired by Stanislaw Lem’s novel of the same name, as well as the Andrei Tarkovsky film adaptation? Superficially perhaps, as this game isn’t about mind-bending inner landscapes, but action and interstellar adventure.
Apart from its cosmic ambition, Solaris is also credited with having some of the most outstanding graphics of any Atari 2600 game. The game’s universe is spread across multiple planets, quadrants, and sectors, with players using a tactical map to plan their attacks on enemies. Also, Solaris features wormholes that players can negotiate.
Even now, Solaris graphics and gameplay are breathtakingly beautiful and hypnotic to behold. If there is one game that should be played straight away on The Console Living Room, let it be Solaris.
Adventure
Credited as one of the first games to feature an Easter egg, Adventure also stands tall as the first ever action-adventure video game. Gameplayers could also accumulate a cache of items, another significant innovation in gaming. It was also the first “questing” game designed specifically for a console, and would light the way toward the Final Fantasy and Zelda game franchises.
The Easter egg was an invisible 1-pixel gray dot, which players could carry down a corridor to render a wall invisible, allowing them to pass into a room with the name Warren Robinett written on it. Robinett was the game’s designer. Like dragons and labyrinths? In Adventure, you have the chance traverse various labyrinths, and battle three dragons. What could be better?
