Top 10 Atari 2600 Games

The Top 10 games for the original home console

The Atari 2600 console was one of my earliest video game experiences as a child growing up in the 80’s, having several friends who owned one, but I never had one myself until around 10 years ago, when I started collecting retro video games. I now have well over 100 boxed games, and my latest collecting obsession is a boxed copy of every major 2600 release, so I’ve had plenty of time to make up my mind.

As an early arcade manufacturer, Atari were able to produce some classic home conversions of their popular coin-ops, allowing gamers to experience the “arcade at home” that we all longed for at the time. That’s not to say that the Atari 2600 didn’t have it’s share of exclusive titles, with some fantastic original games being produced for the console.

Atari “Heavy Sixer” Console

The graphics on the Atari 2600 were fairly basic, and the gameplay restricted by the design of the processor, but it supported a surprising array of titles, and skilled programmers were able to work around its limitations to produce some amazing games. So much so that a list of the 10 best games barely scratches the surface of the little wooden Atari’s excellent back catalogue.

The Atari 2600’s popularity was also its downfall, suffering from an avalanche of “shovelware”, with a huge volume of poor quality software released as companies jumped on the video game bandwagon. Ultimately this contributed in a crash that took the games industry several years to recover from.

This list isn’t about the shovelware though, far from it. These are the games I think are the best the Atari 2600 has to offer. Here’s the countdown at a glance, if you want to skip straight to the arguments:

1. Pitfall!
2. Ms. Pac-Man
3. River Raid
4. Space Invaders
5. Defender II
6. Missile Command
7. Adventure
8. Combat
9. Kaboom!
10. Asteroids

10 - Pitfall

Pitfall holds a special place in my memory, not least because it was unlike anything that had come before it. Remember this was a time when video games consisted mainly of Pong and Space Invaders clones, and the idea of controlling a character who could run, jump and swing across the screen was something completely new. The term “platformer” hadn’t even been invented yet.

Designer David Crane had a smooth running-man animation working on the 2600 long before he had a game to put him in. Drop him on a jungle path, with Raiders of the Lost Ark fresh in everyone’s minds, and Pitfall Harry was born.

Pitfall Harry in Action

It played like a Saturday morning adventure serial, one “flick screen” at a time: pits, rope swings, scorpions, alligator-filled lakes and rolling logs, as you hunted down 32 treasures before the 20-minute timer ran out. Crane generated the jungle from a number sequence rather than storing it, which is how 255 screens fitted into a 4KB cartridge.

That 20-minute game was a big change from the “quick fix” arcade conversions of the time, and Pitfall became one of the best-selling 2600 games.

9 - Ms PacMan

The story of the original Atari 2600 PacMan is well known: a horrific conversion that is held up as the beginning of the end of the first era of videogames, heralding the great crash of the early 80’s.

The original 2600 Pac-Man (left), flickering ghosts and all, beside Ms Pac-Man (right)

The original game was made in huge volumes, on the expectation that everyone (pretty much anyone who owned a 2600) would want a copy, but it was so poor that many of them ended up in a New Mexico landfill which was rediscovered in 2014.

The sequel Ms PacMan was effectively a PacMan 2, and second chance for Atari to perfect the format on the 2600, and the result was indeed perfect. All of the horrible screen flicker of the original was banished, replaced with a detailed (if condensed) maze, characters that actually looked like the original arcade version, and some decent sound effects. Most importantly it was fun to play, which is more than you could say for the original 2600 version.

8 - River Raid

The vertically scrolling shooter has been a hugely popular video gaming genre, but the Atari 2600 had relatively few of these games due to the difficulty in creating the scrolling effect on the limited graphics hardware.

River Raid however managed to work around these limitation to create a hugely playable shooter that is a firm favourite with Atari 2600 fans.

River Raid Screenshot Atari 2600

The game featured some novel risk / reward elements, such as the need to refuel your ship on a regular basis by flying over fuel depots, which often required you to fly perilously close to the canyon walls. There were also multiple enemies to be avoided or destroyed, from fighter jets to helicopters and warships, and bridges that needed to be taken out before you crashed into them.

River Raid was famously banned in Germany due to the level of aggression and destruction on display, only being permitted many years later to allow its inclusion in a PS2 anthology. They missed out on a great Atari 2600 game!

7 - Space Invaders

The original “must have game”, Space Invaders was the title that led many people to purchase an Atari 2600 in the first place, such was the interest in owning a home version of the classic arcade game from Taito.

Space Invaders Atari 2600

All of the features from the arcade were there, including the descending alien ships, bonus mothership, defensive shields and sound effects that increased in tempo as the on screen action became more frantic.

The number and shape of the aliens may have been different, but Atari compensated for any cosmetic variations by introducing multiple variations in the game, with features such as 2 player, moving shields, invisible aliens and zig-zagging missiles. In fact there were so many variations of the Space Invader format that up to 112 unique game types could be played.

The standard game however is still the best, and the reason that the game sold in the millions.

6 - Defender 2

Much like PacMan before it, the original Defender game on the Atari 2600 had a number of key differences with the arcade original that made it less than perfect, most famously your ship vanishing from the screen every time you fired.

The second game fixed most of that. It was released as Stargate, after the arcade sequel to Williams’ classic horizontal shooter, and later reissued as Defender II.

Defender Atari 2600 Screenshot

All of the key features were there in the game, which focused on a lone pilot defending the surface of a planet that was several screens wide, and preventing aliens from picking up the inhabitants and converting them into hideous mutants. Your only guide to the location of the aliens was the radar at the top of the screen, allowing you to locate the aliens before they kidnapped the humans, or rescue any humans that had already been accosted.

The arcade machine used a joystick and a whole bank of buttons, and the 2600 had one button and much simpler graphics, so this had no business being as good as it was. Stargate is the version of Defender I’d play on the 2600, not the original.

5 - Missile Command

Much has been written about this seminal game, a smash hit for Atari and one of the most fondly remembered from early 80’s arcades. There was huge gamer demand for a home conversion for the 2600, and it was a very passable effort. It was always going to be difficult to replicate the original, given that it used a trackball and 3 different fire buttons compared to the joystick and one button of the 2600, but the programmers managed to replicate the feel of the game if not the actual look and control scheme.

Missile Command Screenshot Atari 2600

But putting aside the differences, it is a great game in its own right and very playable. My review of the Missile Command arcade game covers the original.

4 - Adventure

Adventure was for many their first taste of an “open world” game, albeit one contained in a cartridge that wouldn’t be big enough hold the code for your toaster today. The objective of Adventure was to locate a chalice and return it to it’s home in the Yellow castle, and along the way battle dragons, avoid troublesome bats and solve problems using items found along the way. Swords kill dragons, keys unlock doors, magnets drag items from inaccessible areas, everything has a purpose which is automatically revealed when you carry the item into the right location.

The Yellow Castle in Adventure, with the blob (that’s you) and the gold key

Adventure was unique at the time, and the cartridge had one more trick up its sleeve. Atari didn’t credit its programmers, so Warren Robinett hid an invisible dot that, carried into the right room, revealed a secret room with his name on the wall: one of the first video game “Easter eggs”.

It was a game where you had to use your imagination, not least because your character was a blob. The dragons stood out the most: whether or not you thought they looked like ducks, I’d always get excited when I found one. And then there were the bats, which drove me mad by flying off with whatever I was carrying, but the extra tension they added was key to the game’s appeal.

3 - Combat

Combat - Tank Battle

Taking the very simple premise of a dogfight, 2 players start in different parts of an arena and have to position themselves so that they can shoot the other player before they shoot you. The arenas in question vary from aerial battles in the sky between 2 pilots, to land based battles between rival tanks, but always with the same objective. The aerial battles differ in that your planes have to keep moving and require deft control to get into an attacking position, whereas tanks can remain stationary and rely on walls for cover - more a game of cat and mouse.

There were 27 different variations in the game, including jets as well as bi-plane battles, different types of terrain and cloud cover and different missile types including guided missiles controlled by the joystick once fired.

I only got to play Combat at a friend’s house as a kid, but as one of my earliest video game memories it will always represent what is best about 2 player video gaming, where the competition is fierce but fun, and what starts out as a quick game becomes “best of 3” then “first person to 10” and ends up in an all night gaming marathon. There’s more on why in my Combat review.

2 - Kaboom

Kaboom is one of those Atari 2600 games that you just had to be there to appreciate, the premise being one that would fail to shift a free to play iPhone game today, it’s that basic. Your job is to foil the evil plot of the “Mad Bomber”, identified by his stripy jumper, catching the bombs he drops from the top of the screen in your bucket. And that’s about it.

Kaboom! Miss and you lose a bucket

The secret of Kaboom on the Atari 2600 is the addictive nature of the gameplay, as you whizz around the screen in your paddle controlled bucket collecting explosives thrown by the increasingly erratic bomber. The game doesn’t end until you reach the high score of 999,999, by which you will have been steering your bucket for nearly 3 hours, and with no reward apart from the knowledge that you have mastered one of the Atari 2600’s best games.

1 - Asteroids

The original arcade asteroids used unique vector graphics and an oppressive soundtrack that ramped up as the titular Asteroids filled the screen.

Asteroids was an important game for Atari, another reason to own a 2600 console and play the game you loved in the arcade. Given the basic nature of the graphics the game had no right to exist (see my full review of Asteroids for the Atari 2600) but Atari managed to make it playable, if not graphically identical.

Asteroids Atari 2600

The Asteroids were solid blobs rather than outlines, and the ship could only fly in one of 8 directions, but it still played like Asteroids and it was great fun. It was the game I returned to the most, and that’s why it’s my number 1.

The best of the rest - Atari 2600 Games outside of the Top 10

Ten places was never going to be enough for a console with this many good games, so here are the ones that came close, and a few I have a soft spot for.

Yars’ Revenge

If you are after an original space shooter for the Atari 2600, you could do worse than try out the excellent Yars Revenge, which should maybe have been in my top 10 as Atari’s second highest selling game after Pac Man, and its highest selling original game. Rather than multiple enemies, you need to battle a single enemy through a force field by breaking through its defences and avoiding its homing attack.

Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

David Crane’s 1984 sequel swapped the 20-minute timer for one enormous cavern system, with checkpoints to send Harry back to when things went wrong (which they did, often). Activision put an extra chip in the cartridge to give it a proper musical soundtrack, something you didn’t hear very often on a 2600.

Enduro

Activision’s endurance racer gives you a quota of cars to overtake each day, while the day turns to dusk, then night, then fog and snow. There’s no finish line, so it carries on until you fail to hit your quota, which is either the point or a design flaw depending on how many evenings you’ve lost to it.

H.E.R.O.

You play Roderick Hero, who descends into flooded mine shafts with a helicopter backpack, a helmet laser and a supply of dynamite to rescue trapped miners. A job description nobody has ever advertised, but one of the best-looking games Activision made for the console.

Solaris

Released in 1986 by Doug Neubauer, the man behind Star Raiders, Solaris is a space shooter with a galactic map, planets to defend and a surprisingly convincing 3D surface view. By then most people had long since moved on from the 2600, which is a shame, as it’s one of the most ambitious games on the machine.

Frogger and Moon Patrol

Two arcade conversions that, unusually for the 2600, didn’t disappoint. Frogger had all the traffic, logs and crocodiles of the arcade, and Moon Patrol translated its jump-and-shoot buggy action surprisingly well.

Other arcade conversions

There are a few more games that deserve an honourable mention, including arcade greats Pole Position, Pong, Joust, Galaxian, QBert and Centipede, all of which were very popular on the Atari 2600. I also had a soft spot for Phoenix in the arcade which was replicated on the humble 2600, as well as Phoenix clone Demon Attack.

The Empire Strikes Back

Although ET was rubbish, there were some other successful film tie-ins, my favourite being The Empire Strikes Back where you get to take on an Imperial AT-AT Walker in a snowspeeder, just don’t try any of the other Star Wars games on the Atari 2600 as they were mostly terrible.

Haunted House

And no review of the top Atari 2600 games would be complete without a mention of Haunted House, an early example of “survival horror” which was as memorable for the disturbing box art as the game itself.

Atari’s arcade classics

The 2600 was only half the story. Atari was an arcade company first, and plenty of its most iconic games were coin-ops that the 2600 could only ever approximate. If you want the originals, my reviews of Missile Command, Battlezone and Tempest cover three of the best, Battlezone being one of the cabinets in my own collection (Atari’s Star Wars is another).

The 2600 versions make an interesting comparison. Missile Command lost its trackball and two of its three fire buttons on the way home, and still made my top 10, which you can’t say about every conversion of the era.

Atari 2600 Games FAQ

What are the most iconic Atari games?

Pong (1972) started it all, as Atari’s first arcade hit and, in its Home Pong form, its first console. After that the most iconic are probably Asteroids, Atari’s best-selling coin-op, and the 2600 conversion of Space Invaders, which gave people a reason to buy the console. Pitfall! and Adventure are the 2600’s best-known originals, and Missile Command is the one that still makes people of a certain age wince.

What are the best Atari 2600 games?

My top 10, counting down, is Pitfall!, Ms. Pac-Man, River Raid, Space Invaders, Defender II, Missile Command, Adventure, Combat, Kaboom! and, at number 1, Asteroids. Yars’ Revenge, Pitfall II, Enduro, H.E.R.O. and Solaris only just missed out.

What was the best-selling Atari 2600 game?

Pac-Man was the best-selling Atari 2600 game, shifting around seven million copies, though it’s also one of the most criticised conversions ever made. Atari’s highest-selling original game (not an arcade port) was Yars’ Revenge.

What is the rarest Atari 2600 game?

Among the most sought-after are Air Raid (with its distinctive blue T-handle cartridge), Gamma-Attack and Red Sea Crossing. Genuine copies of these can change hands for thousands of pounds, making them holy-grail items for serious collectors.

Are old Atari 2600 games worth anything today?

Common cartridges like Pac-Man, Combat and Space Invaders were produced in huge numbers and are worth very little, often just a pound or two loose. Value comes from rarity, boxed condition and complete manuals. A boxed, mint example of a scarce title is worth far more than a loose common one.

Why did the Atari 2600 contribute to the video game crash?

The console’s huge success led to a flood of low-quality “shovelware” as companies rushed to cash in. Poor titles like the infamous E.T. damaged consumer confidence, and the resulting glut of unsold games was a major factor in the 1983 crash that took the industry years to recover from.

How can I play Atari 2600 games today?

The most authentic way is on an original console, which can be picked up on eBay with a bag of cartridges for not much money. The Atari 2600+ is a modern replica that plays original cartridges over HDMI, and free emulators such as Stella run 2600 games on a PC, Mac or Steam Deck.

What was the first home video game with an Easter egg?

Atari 2600 game Adventure is widely credited with the first well-known video game Easter egg. Programmer Warren Robinett hid a secret room displaying his name, since Atari didn’t credit its developers at the time.

Playing the best Atari 2600 games today

I should probably be pointing out all of the different Atari 2600 emulators available, so that you can try out some of these great games, but that would miss the point of this console.

You need to experience tuning a TV to the right channel, blowing the dust out of the cartridge slot, untangling the wires and then hitting the power switch. You need to see the brightly coloured screen fizzle into life, select the right game mode and then bash the single big orange button on your joystick to start the game. Check out my own Atari 2600 renovation project if you want further inspiration.

On an original console

That’s how I still play them: on an original wood-panelled console, surrounded by over 100 boxed games. I’m working towards a complete set of every Atari, Activision, Parker Brothers and Imagic title, which is either a noble goal or a cry for help (possibly both).

My Atari 2600 and part of the boxed games collection

So get yourself onto ebay, and pick up a console with a bunch of mixed cartridges for less than the price of a new XBOX or PS5 game. Just like I did. You won’t regret it.

On the Atari 2600+

If you’d rather not hunt down a 45-year-old console and an RF lead, Atari’s 2600+ is a slightly shrunken replica that plays original 2600 and 7800 cartridges and plugs into a modern TV over HDMI. It means the cartridges are still the point, which I approve of.

On an emulator

I’ll admit I don’t always practise what I preach. For the screenshots and video on this site I use the free Stella emulator on my Mac, or EmulationStation on my Steam Deck, both of which run 2600 games perfectly well. If you just want to see what the fuss was about, the Atari 50 compilation for modern consoles and PC also includes plenty of Atari’s own 2600 games.