Though it may be difficult for some youngsters to believe, there was actually a time when the dominant form of console gaming in America was what you can experience these days on one of the various Atari collections which exist for nearly every platform. Those blocky, nigh-unreadable graphics, blurpy sound effects, non-existent music...once upon a time, these were home gaming at its finest. And if you were born before 1985, there's a good chance that your first exposure to video games came at the hands of the Atari 2600.
Originally released in 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (or Sears Video Arcade, due to a pre-existing distribution deal with the retail chain), the 2600 was hardly a technological marvel, but various factors conspired to make it the most popular of all early programmable consoles. Its official lifespan was an incredible 14 years, with units being produced in some form or fashion until 1991. During its life, the console spawned one of the largest game libraries of any in history, several groundbreaking and unusual periphrials, and some of video gaming's most enduring legends. Long after its official death, the 2600 still has a vast network of devoted fans. Its software is still collected for nearly every new console that comes along, and a handful of talented homebrew programmers are still pumping out new software on a regular basis. While most people attribute the 2600's life after death purely to the nostalgia of aging Gen-X'ers who grew up with the system, this is an unfair assessment of its true value and historical importance.
History
You may be familiar with the video game crash of 1984 when, due to a market clogged with the output of "me too" developers and some major missteps on Atari's part (like the abysmal licensed game for E.T.), consumers lost interest and confidence in video games and the bottom fell out of the market. What fewer people realize is that in 1976, a smaller version of the same phenomenon was about to take place. The popularity of home Pong machines had opened the floodgates to hardware manufacturers looking to get rich quick, leaving a saturated market and consumers who were tiring of the single game that even the most sophisticated Pong consoles (which often attempted to dress Pong up as tennis, volleyball, hockey, soccer, or any other sport that might involve a ball being bounced from one end of a field to the other) offered. The games industry desperately needed something to recpature the waning interest of gamers: something like a home system with the technology to offer games besides Pong. Then, in the summer of 1976, a brand new console appeared, boasting of its ability to run various games simply by switching between different cartridges. It was a concept that made dedicated gamers and industry figures stand up and take notice. It was...
...the Fairchild Channel F.
No, the VCS was not the first programmable console on the market. While Atari was already hard at work on their "Stella" project (the codename for the 2600 during its development) when the Channel F hit shelves, Atari head Nolan Bushnell made the decision to sell the company to Warner Communications in order to raise the money to rush their own machine through the R&D phase and into stores before the same companies who had flooded the market with cheap Pong machines charged into the programmable console arena. By the next Christmas, the Atari Video Computer System and its nine launch titles were sitting comfortably alongside the Channel F, and the video game market was officially collapsing under its own weight. It was obvious that the real competition was now between the two programmable consoles, and so the Pong merchants began slashing prices in an effort to get out of the business as quickly as possible. As a result, the gaming industry experienced its first crash, and sales were disappointing even for the first-ever "next gen" machines. Fairchild, daunted by poor sales figures and the obvious technical superiority of the VCS (which actually ended up benefiting from coming out later, as the legendary MOS 6502 CPU came out in 1976 and was quickly incorporated into the VCS's design), discontinued the Channel F, and just like that there was only one viable gaming console left.
The rest is (much more widely known) history. Atari reversed the fortunes of the 2600's inauspicious launch by getting the rights to port Space Invaders (then all the rage in arcades) to their machine, and suddenly people were shelling out the $199 cost of the console just to be able to play the hottest arcade game of the day in their homes. In the early years of the console, this strategy worked again and again (and regardless of the quality of the ports, as evidenced by truly horrid renditions of Pac-Man and Donkey Kong). As the novelty of arcade ports waned, Atari inadvertently ushered in yet aother new phenomenon. A group of Atari's in house programmers, disgruntled over not being publicly credited for their work, left to start their own company--Activision--which became the world's first third party developer, churning out scores of great, original games, and showing others that doing so was a viable business model. Meanwhile, the games industry had become so popular that several other progromable consoles, including the Intellivision, the Vectrex, and the Colecovision, had hit the market, though none came close to challenging Atari's dominance. This was yet another first for Atari, as most of its competitors boasted technological superiority--setting a trend that has been repeated throughout the years, with systems like the original PlayStation and the Wii handily outselling their technological betters.
Of course in the end, the same fly-by-night companies that overburdened the early home gaming market with worthless Pong clones eventually returned to flood the third party software market. For every great game from publishers like Activision and Imagic, there were a hundred derivative, boring and often flat-out broken offerings from some "here today, gone tomorrow" developer. Since Atari had no way of regulating their third party developers (thus the existence of numerous porno games from companies such as Mystique, and controversial, "ultraviolent" licensed horror movie games from Wizard Entertainment), they had no way of preventing this huge influx of shovelware. Along with the appearance of more and more competing consoles (including Atari's own 5200, the ill-received successor to the 2600) and a new wave of low-cost home computers, almost all of which played video games, the 2600 suddenly found itself the king of a desperately oversaturated market.
And of course, there was E.T. While this 1982 release can't be realistically blamed for the entire 1984 crash, its importance as a catalyst shouldn't be overlooked, either. Atari and Stephen Spielberg's eagerness to get the E.T. game out as quickly as possible resulted in a disastrous and borderline broken game which was designed in two days and coded in under six weeks. Consumers were already gunshy due to all the shoddy third party games clogging store shelves, and when Atari began putting out products not much better than their fly-by-night competitors, the market began to crumble. Thousands of E.T. carts collected dust on store shelves--along with just about every other piece of entertainment software--until retailers decided to jettison the dead weight, leading to massive clearance bins with some legitimately great games being pushed out for next to nothing. Interest in gaming collapsed across the board, killing off almost every console besides the 2600, which was itself able to survive only because of its massive install base.In the interest of fairness, it should probably be noted that E.T. programmer Howard Scott Warshaw was responsible for two other exemplary 2600 titles: the fondly-remembered space shooter Yar's Revenge; and the ambitious (if incredibly complicated) Raiders of the Lost Ark licensed game. Warshaw has taken a lot of abuse for, supposedly, being the man to single-handedly bring about the 1984 crash, but this is neither fair nor remotely true. If anyone is to blame for the crash, it's the companies whose insatiable greed and non-existent quality control created a market bursting at the seams with worthless products, and not a programmer put in the unenviable position of having to create a game for one of Hollywood's most powerful directors in six weeks.
Of course it would be less than two years before Nintendo began the revival of home gaming machines by bringing the Famicom to America as the Nintendo Entertainment System. Next to the NES's flagship game, Super Mario Bros. (which came bundled with the system) and even its lowest quality offerings, 2600 games fared about as well as cave paintings next to the Mona Lisa. But Atari had dealt with market crashes and technologically superior rivals before, and showed no signs of bowing out gracefully. The 2600 received a facelift, becoming the sleeker, smaller 2600 Jr., and games continued to be produced. It was 1991--when Sega had already ushered in the 16-bit era in America with the Genesis--when Atari finally took the 2600 off life support, though development for the system continues to this day in the form of homebrew games created by diehard 2600 fans.
Games
These days, it is customary for many gamers to write off most of the 2600's software library as unappealingly simple, unable to hold one's attention for more than a couple of minutes at best. Consequently, it would be easy to say that nostalgia alone has kept the 2600 in the public's imagination and given rise to the huge fan community which exists to this day. And honestly, given exposure only to certain games, that can be a tough charge to refute. Many 2600 games are terribly simplistic by today's standards, with controls and, subsequently, objectives, which can feel very confining. However, there are still some games that, while not terribly involved, are nonetheless involving; and, surprisingly, there are a few more complex titles which paved the way for the far deeper gaming experiences subsequently provided by the NES.
Ironically, few of the best 2600 titles make it onto the classic games compilation of the week. With the exception of the great Activision Anthology (which you owe it to yourself to buy if you've never played Pitfall or River Raid), most of the VCS's real gems and weird historical curiosities can still only be experienced (at least legally) in their original form. What follows is a very brief attempt to highlight a few games with which you might not be familiar if your only exposure to the 2600 has come in the form of compilations for modern platforms.
Five Games You Should Play
Jungle Hunt: One of the more varied experiences to be found in any 2600 title, Jungle hunt has four different screens/levels that manage to wring quite a bit of graphical detail and gameplay variation out of the VCS. Its jumping controls can be a bit floaty, the hit detection is suspect, and the attack controls on the second screen aren't the most responsive, but the game remains fun and impressively dense despite these technical missteps.
Dolphin: One of Activision's less raved-about games, Dolphin boasts the usual good graphics, but also has some interesting, sound-based gameplay. You control a dolphin which has to avoid an onrushing octopus while swimming between holes in coral barriers. The game moves quickly, but your dolphin comes equipped with sonar to be able to predict what's coming at her. The game emits a high-pitched beep when the hole in the next barrier is near the top of the screen, a low beep when it will be closer to the bottom. Of course in today's world of surround sound and rhythm games, this won't impress anyone, but in its day, it was a pretty cool feature.Raiders of the Lost Ark: In the '80s, licensed movie games didn't always suck. Raiders of the Lost Ark is a prime example, a very primitive action-adventure game which requires the player to use two joysticks--one to control Indiana Jones, the other to cycle between items in his inventory. To finish the game (and see one of the earliest "cinematic" ending sequences in gaming history), you'll need to decipher what the items are and how to use them, all while avoiding some extremely persistent enemies. While the unbelievably abstract graphics artificially increase the game's challenge (approximately two items are immediately recognizable), this is still a pretty unbelievable example of the depth with which a good programmer could imbue a 2600 game.
Atlantis: Imagic's best-known title doesn't hold the position in gaming history that it probably should. A mash-up of Space Invaders, Missle Command, and Air Sea Battle, Atlantis may not seem like much today, but it does have its charms. Its graphics are neat and colorful, it controls nicely, and, from an historical standpoint, it is an early example of a game that took elements of other, better known titles, and refined them into an experience that was fun if not original. This may not be the highest honor that can be bestowed on a game, but it was certainly a precursor to what the industry has become today.
BMX Airmaster: This title came along in 1989, late in the 2600's life cycle, and it reaps the benefits of over a decade of collective programming knowhow. While the control-scheme shows just how limited the 2600's joystick and single-button set-up had become by the end of its life, BMX Airmaster does the best it can, allowing those who master its somewhat clunky controls to pull off tricks that make even those found in the SSX and Tony Hawk series look realistic by comparison. With three events--half pipe, quarter pipe and ramp jump--good graphics and smooth animation, BMX Airmaster is everything a latecoming title should be. Unfortunately, it can also be very difficult to track down. Atari's run of the game features an appropriately rad, full-color label, but is nearly impossible to find. You're more likely to run across the bland, white-label TNT Games version, but the contents of both cartridges are identical.
Names You Can Trust
Given that the 2600 is notorious for its parade of awful third party titles, it can be helpful for the beginning 2600 collector to know which developers were responsible for more hits than misses. Nothing takes the fun out of console collecting faster than picking up a new unit only to find out that all the available games are crap (trust me, I own a Sega Saturn).
In general, it's tough to go wrong with games by Activision, Imagic (the second-ever third party developer) and Parker Brothers (surprisingly enough, they were one of the best third parties making games for Atari's console). Activision games are particularly easy to find, as they were extremely popular in their time, creating genre-defining classics like Pitfall and River Raid, and a host of other technologically innovative and just plain fun titles. Imagic is less well known today, but their games are still pretty easy to find. Look for the distinctive silver-foil labels and unusual cartridge shape. Parker Brothers largely concentrated on making licensed games (including a great, early Spider-Man title, a good-looking Empire Strikes Back game, and at least one G.I. Joe offering), but they also had their share of originals, including the interesting puzzler Amidar.
Atari's first-party titles are probably more hit or miss, but this is mostly due to the huge quantity of games they released, and there is certainly no shortage of quality software in their back catalog. However, be wary of their arcade ports, especially Pac-Man (which you will find in huge quantities anywhere vintage games are sold, both because it was produced on a massive scale, and because everyone who bought it wanted to be rid of it). In general, though, Atari had the money and know-how to crank out quality titles. Coleco, Sega and 20th Century Fox are also worth checking out, though again proceed with caution where arcade ports are concerned--particularly Coleco's Donkey Kong, which is a slap in the face of one of the greatest games of all time.
[All screenshots from Atari Age]
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