Games That Defined The Atari 2600 From 1980 & 1981

[@brandong.1857]

The first time I played adventure was at a K-Mart display in our small town, I was about 7 yrs old. That Dragon was scary as heck. Thanks for another good video, NSG.

[@danruff3007]

Great list, I was 8 when I got my 2600 for Christmas in '80 so many hours playing Asteroids.

[@sandal_thong8631]

I forget whether I got my Atari along with Space Invaders, or picked that and Dodge 'Em later.

[@marccaselle8108]

When i was 6 my parents got me a atari 2600 junior for christmas and my journey into video games started from there. Missile command was one of my favorites and i remember playing it with a bowl of cereal next to me.

[@crazyjohnt8012]

I missed the first video of yours like this. This is a really fun idea

[@jyutzler]

Adventure is one of my favorites of all-time and the bat is one of my favorite video game characters. Asteroids was frustrating for me. I could never find a game mode that had the right level of challenge (mostly too easy) and lack of repeat fire was a turn-off. The hidden feature of holding down the select button when starting Space Invaders was great. It was still hard to roll the score over, but at least possible.

[@catsaregovernmentspies]

What? Holding Select when turning Space Invaders on gave you rapid fire? Wish I knew that 40 years ago.

[@jyutzler]

@@catsaregovernmentspies Double fire, not rapid fire.

[@adm712]

Great job. This video certainly got me looking forward to my 2600+ delivery. Some mentions from this time period- Skiing Basketball Defender Breakout

[@gateroozeink5061]

My list from those years: * Adventure * Pele's Soccer * Asteroids * Missile Command * Kaboom * Stampede

[@mcorleonep]

Now these were the games I grew up with. I could only be envious of my friend’s Atari games in the late 70’s. Asteroids was my jam from this list but a lot of great games here. And yes back then my friends & I would say “Fries are done!” when you earned an extra life…

[@JohnSegerclucka]

Why "fries are done?"

[@mcorleonep]

@@JohnSegerclucka the beeping sound in the game was similar to the one you always heard at McDonalds (fryer when fries are done).

[@Scotty-Z70]

video pinball was unbelievably fun.

[@sandal_thong8631]

My Atari broke, so I couldn't use the flippers, but could only "nudge" the ball. I learned to do that effectively and rollover the score multiple times. I liked real pinball, and wished it could have been more like that or had multiple screens like the Miniature Golf cartridge.

[@danestegman155]

Good video! I played all these classic Atari 2600 games on my system! Always like the Tennis by Activison and the Hockey on by them too!

[@FrameRater]

Great video subject!

[@catholicactionbibleonlyist1813]

My elementary school friend had the arcade cabinet of Asteroids This list covers the 1980's Not in order 1. Chopper Command 2. Seaquest 3. Adventure 4. Barnstorming 5. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial 6. Fast Food 7. Enduro 8. Frostbite 9. Haunted House 10. Keystone Kapers 11. Kaboom! 12. River Raid 13. Pitfall 14. Freeway 15. Crackpots

[@thenosweargamer1449]

Several of those games will appear in future videos

[@sandal_thong8631]

@@thenosweargamer1449 There's so many great games in 1982, it deserves its own video without 1983's games (which had a lot too).

[@sandal_thong8631]

Atari had two logbooks you could send away for, the second blue book being available in 1982. For each cart it told you what variation/game to play and the difficulty switches. There were three levels, which in the (1979?) green book were named pro, master and wizard, but were changed to cart-specific ones I could never remember. Space Invaders: Play game 9 (invisible) on difficulty b. Pro: 4500; Master: 6700; Wizard: 9000 Missile Command: Play game 6 with difficulty b. Pro: 90,000; Master: 160,000; Wizard: 200,000 Asteroids: Play game 8 with difficulty a. Pro: 50,000; Master: 75,000; Wizard: 90,000 Circus Atari: Play game 6 with difficulty b. Pro: 4800; Master: 6400; Wizard: 8300 Video Pinball: Play game 1 with difficulty b. Pro: 280,000; Master: 340,000; Wizard: 400,000 Adventure: Play game 3 with difficulty b (both?). Pro: Deliver the Chalice to the Gold Castle ---------------->Play game 3 with difficulty a (both?). Master: Same as above. __________>Play game 3 with difficulty a (both?). Wizard: Find the Magic Dot and enter the Secret Room. Night Driver: Play game 2 with difficulty b. Pro: 60; Master: 68; Wizard: 76 Warlord: Play game 14 with difficulty b. Pro: 3 wins; Master: 4 wins; Wizard: 5 wins. For Asteroids and Missile Command I only made Pro (probably because I played them on game 1 before I got the logbook); for Space Invaders I only made Master (they're invisible!); and all the rest I made Wizard (Night Driver just in 2017).

[@PinkyJujubean]

When my grandpa came over he loved watching me play Circus Atari because he got a kick out of watching the guy go splat

[@sandal_thong8631]

That was the one game I regretted not having. If I thought I could return Canyon Bomber for that I might have. I ended up getting Clowns (or whatever it was called) for the Vic-20.

[@vodkatonic814]

I loved how you mentioned being excited about getting to the colored screens on Missile Command. I totally remember that feeling. Just like getting to the different fruits in Pac-Man. Simpler times indeed. Cheers.

[@LITTLE1994]

Lot of good games from that period.

[@Scotty-Z70]

Have you ever played Geekwads of the Galaxy? it was a Computer group of parody games: Asteroids was Steroids, Froggers was Grogger's Greasy Spoon Cafe, etc. They were funny and just different enough to not anger the license owners of the games that spoofed.

[@JustMe99999]

I had most of these games as a kid - thanks for the memories. My parents bought me a VCS so I could play Space Invaders at home. This system will always be known as the VCS to me, not the "2600".

[@WWJD85]

I had a 7800 with a bunch of 2600 games.

[@Coyotek4]

I would argue that this two-year stretch produced the best that the Atari 2600 had to offer.

[@pinebarrenpatriot8289]

I liked the Silver Era Atari cartridges like Joust, Milipede, Kangaroo which was after the Black label Era but that Era had great games as well (Berzerk being one of my fav's)

[@sandal_thong8631]

Not quite. Frogger, Centipede, Ms. Pac-Man, Cosmic Ark, and The Empire Strikes Back were all top-selling Atari carts that had not been released as of 1981. Three of those listed here for 1980-1 were in the top 10 most-selling, with Night Driver, Warlords and Adventure said to have sold over a million each. I wasn't a fan of Activision games, having only bought Pitfall! new, but they didn't hit their stride until 1982. Then we had Imagic! and Parker Bros. that produced a couple games that sold a million copies.

[@urbanknish]

I'm almost up to 200 Atari games, and when my atariage purchase finally ships, I'll be there!

[@billkendrick1]

IIRC both the VCS and arcade Warlords were developed around the same time, based on the same game concept. (It looks like the arcade one beat it to market. Though I never saw it until decades later, so as a kid I thought it was a 2600 exclusive!)

[@Heike--]

Really? The arcade version is so much better. Multiple balls, the dragon, etc. Though I guess the 2600 version keeps the important parts.

[@jamesvalvis1131]

Great stuff, NSG. Dodge ‘Em, Kaboom!, and Stampede would all make my list. Boxing would not.

[@oceanman6672]

6:42 For a second, I was worried that it was one of the Froggo games

[@eriknakamoto2647]

Video Pinball is still my favorite and I play it once in a while on my old 2600 that still works!

[@fuzzywzhe]

Every video game written for the Atari 2600, will fit in a zipfile that is less than 4MB.

[@kennethtaylor3467]

1. space invaders was awesome. always wanted to break five-digit scores and even named each row of alien, like the top row bees, two below them the pretzel men and below them the crabs. 2. adventure was a favorite always play. warm up with 1 and 2 and then try 3 to see how many times to beat it 3. night driver... drive drive crash! drive drive crash! beep beep. simple but quick fun 4. circus atari. very fun back in the day for the whole family. very difficult now using anything but the paddle controllers for any other method 5. boxing. it was okay, tough to beat the computer. 6. fishing derby. good two player game. tough to beat the computer here as well. blame it on the shark 7. video pinball. another we tried to get super high scores and up the multipliers. just had to worry about the tilt. also worry when the ball would whiz back and forth with the lower bumpers and then shoot straight into the hole to end the turn. fun! 8. tennis. great to play and enjoyable for a while 9. missile command. was enjoyable to around round 10-12 when everything went crazy. think as a kid i was a bit scared of that final explosion that ended the game. very hard to go through all stages to warp around to the first round colors. 10. warlords. hilarious as one player (usually that or with my brother. one warlord always knocked itself out and had a good chance to win if blue went out early 11. asteroids. found that if i moved the ship from its spot especially the hyper drive, wouldn't have much chance for a good score 12. ice hockey. very hard to fight the computer but loved to thwomp the opponent's legs out :) think the most fun of them was Adventure, Circus Atari, and Space Invaders. could always grab a controller and be entertained for a while

[@The_Badseed]

I'm happy you didn't list Dragster! I still have nightmares about playing that game, all I ever did was blow the f**kin engine.

[@mattsmedley.onehandedgamin9029]

Asteroids,rocks. Yes, yes they are 😂

[@Blindgenxgamer]

Adventure was my favorite!

[@dineshmohan2207]

Is it available now

[@Jolt7800]

The ball was a square but we were glad to have it.

[@stormchaser419]

The Activision games took this system to a whole other level. How many hours did many of us play Pitfall? I must have put in thousands of hours in that game.

[@lurkerrekrul]

Tennis - I used to be able to beat the computer every time. My memory is hazy now, but I seem to recall that there was something you could do that would cause the computer player to miss the ball every time.

[@sandal_thong8631]

Sad to hear that's glitchy. I read a tips-and-tricks to exploit the glitches in Realsports Football and Baseball in Atari Age magazine but didn't buy them in 1982-3. I think sports games on Atari missed an opportunity to have two human players versus the computer player. I could see that for Basketball, Hockey, Tennis, Football, etc.

[@sandal_thong8631]

I really wasn't much of a fan of the Activision games, though some of them looked good. Nice to hear Tennis had a one-player option. When I heard Intellivision sports games were only for two players, I lost whatever envy I had of it. Space Invaders propelled the Atari to 70% market share and the competition had limited options. It's funny how Atari could ripoff arcade games for home versions, but called the lawyers when someone tried that with their games or games they licensed like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. I think Space Invaders and Night Driver were the only 1970s games I put quarters into. After Atari saw the flight of their programmers that they didn't want to lose but didn't want to reward, they didn't put out many games in 1981. I think if other third parties had released games for Atari in 1981 (like Mattel's M-Network conversions of Intellivision games) then they might have beaten the rush or glut of games in 1982 and been best-sellers. Atari in 1980-1 also removed some of its lower-selling games from its catalogs, but perhaps should have done more as there were a lot of stinkers from 1977-9 still taking up catalog and shelf space (though I didn't see new catalogs after Pac-Man and Berzerk in mid-1982).

[@ImaFnT-Rex]

I use to have almost all of those game

[@midimusicforever]

Then came a defining moment after...

[@CSanykdotCom]

Who knew the system's best years were still ahead of it?

[@basketballsteve54]

I can't say the games I enjoyed on this system as a child because I was an adult already graduated from college when the system came out, but anyway, tennis, boxing, hockey, defender, asteroids, and adventure those were the games I played with family and friends. Today I regularly play the first 4 but not adventure anymore. Tennis and boxing are games I can beat still today and the mastery of hockey still eludes me. P.S. To this day I still want my money back for nightdriver, a ripoff!

[@Heike--]

10:39 100%. Warlords is still, to this day, one of the best, if not THE best, 4 player games out there. GTFO of here with Mario Kart. Friendly to new players who never played before, it takes 10 seconds to learn, the rounds go by fast, and if you have a crowd who wants to play it's easy to rotate out players. It's got enough strategy to be interesting while enough luck to stop from being boring. Recommended as a party game if you have a VCS.

[@DennyT123]

Just to let you know NSG, Tommy finally sold his house on 9/25 for 2.7 million.

[@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145]

Circus Atari comical? 😂 That was the guy's head splatting open when hitting the ground! It was the first violent depiction of death in a home video game 😂 Although many can't tell these days due to the Atari's limited graphics.😅

[@johneygd]

Astroids was technically very interesting and veru ahead of it’s time with the use of bankswitching to get around the limitations of the 2600,who had ever tout that to be possible, Am mean for years and years,i always tout that nintendo invented bankswitching,but nope as bankswitching already existed back in 1971🤣

[@klaceekoolstra2658]

Great ✨✨ 👍🍉🤣

[@ryerichards4885]

MISSLE COMMAND IS HOPI PROPHECY/ NAVAJO RUG GRAPHICS --- ATARI symbol is DEVILS TOWER not MT. FUJI

[@biostemm]

I played so much yar's revenge back in the day, and moon patrol's music is one of my faves! Many 2600 games are a bit arcane unless you know what to do...

[@JustMe99999]

That's why they came with manuals, which were generally excellent.