Panic, makers of fine Macintosh software, commissions an illustrator to work with the concept "What if we were around in 1982, and our apps were early Atari 2600 games?" Awesomeness ensues.
posted by porn in the woods on Dec 9, 2009 - 59 comments

TheSmartAss.info's suite of Java emulators allows smooth, in-browser playback of literally thousands of old-school video games: 517 Atari titles, 148 for DOS, 636 Game Boy games (and 410 for Game Boy Color), 2,019 (!) NES titles, 238 GameGear games, 802 Sega Genesis titles, and 284 for the Sega Master System. Highlights include Space Invaders, Frogger, Galaga, Pitfall!, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, SimCity, Zero Wing, Duke Nukem, Sonic the Hedgehog, Aladdin, Earthworm Jim, Pokemon, and Metal Gear Solid. Use the search function to find your favorites! You can also register an account to save games on emulators that support it. Make sure to check the purple bar below each game for control info and links to alternate emulators in case the default one is buggy or slow.
posted by Rhaomi on Nov 30, 2009 - 54 comments

The newly launched Atari.com includes the Atari Arcade, wherein you may play Adventure, Asteroids, Battlezone, Crystal Castles, Lunar Lander and Yars' Revenge in your browser.
posted by jbickers on Nov 23, 2009 - 37 comments

"So why bring up this sore spot in 2009, roughly 16 years after the Jaguar's ill-fated launch? Because as an artifact of video game history, the Jaguar speaks volumes about where we've been, where we are, and where we're going." Linking the past, present, and future: The Atari Jaguar as console artifact [more inside]
posted by joedan on Oct 10, 2009 - 33 comments

I Went Left Instead Of Right In Pitfall And Kept On Tickin' And Now I Believe In Miracles: An absurdist play.
posted by NoraReed on Jul 9, 2009 - 13 comments

(NSFW) The Angry Video Game Nerd (taking a cue from seanbaby's lead) has been producing video reviews of some of the most notoriously awful NES games, from Top Gun to Bible Games. (Can't miss: The Power Glove.) Not content to go after one system, he's upgraded his range to take on other colossal failures like the Atari Jaguar, Superman 64, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (the movie). His newest series of videos, You Know What's Bullshit?, takes on everyday nuances like DVD box sets. He may be vulgar and his vignettes silly, but damn straight he's got a point. Enjoy all his archived videos here, spanning five years of obscenity-laced love/hate for his greatest passions.
posted by Christ, what an asshole on Jun 23, 2009 - 18 comments

David Lee Roth Assteroids. (Flash, URL may be NSFW) [via]
posted by eyeballkid on Jan 27, 2009 - 25 comments

In 1977, Nolan Bushnell allowed Gene Landrum to bring Chuck E. Cheese [yt] to life as a family-friendly access point to Atari games. This, perhaps, explains the pizza. [more inside]
posted by batmonkey on Dec 31, 2008 - 17 comments

The video games of the 1983 Sears Wishbook
posted by empath on Dec 21, 2008 - 74 comments

Homesoft's Disk Images. 354 disks full of 8-bit Atari games. Click on game titles for screenshots. [more inside]
posted by milquetoast on Sep 23, 2008 - 13 comments

A most legendary find. Alex Handy likes to collect old video games. A few weeks at ago at a flea market, he bought what he thought were some old ColecoVision EPROMs for $2 each, got them home, and realized that some of them could contain the never published Cabbage Patch Kids Atari 2600 game. If the data on the chips had survived, it would be an unprecedented discovery. A friend helped him dump the ROMs, which you can download for free from Alex. Identifying the other games was an adventure in itself. [more inside]
posted by bugmuncher on May 5, 2008 - 37 comments

The Retroist is a veritable treasure trove of 80's (and 70's) goodness. TV commercials, catalogs, and of course the poetry of Mr. Leonard Nimoy. The Youtube channel alone is worth the price of admission-- Tobor! Diet Rite! Candyland!
posted by dersins on Apr 24, 2008 - 15 comments

"So I hit up a garage sale over the weekend and bought a genuine, working-condition Atari 2600, with a huge stack of games nearly mint in their boxes, for a song. I thought I’d scan the box covers and give you all a look back into the fun of yesteryear."
posted by sveskemus on Apr 21, 2008 - 74 comments

It's the 1981 Atari product catalog!
posted by mr_crash_davis on Apr 13, 2008 - 39 comments

Dadhacker started his game programming career, like many people, by making a freeware knockoff of a popular arcade game. This got the attention of Atari, who hired him to do the official conversion of Donkey Kong, then Super Pac-Man. After the crash of 1983, he survived a round of layoffs, and was pushed into the development of the Atari ST along with a group of programmers and executives from Commodore.
posted by CrunchyFrog on Mar 17, 2008 - 18 comments

Retro Sabotage is a collection of recreations of classic video games. Or is it? [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Feb 23, 2008 - 20 comments

Thule Trail is a cute modern remake of The Oregon Trail.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 25, 2007 - 17 comments

Adventure II (a sequel to Adventure, here's a playable version of the original)
posted by bardic on May 11, 2007 - 23 comments

Steem is an Atari ST emulator for Windows and Linux that is very simple and user-friendly. More details on installing are in a helpful beginner's guide, but you're probably most interested in the games, of which there are lots [more inside].
posted by greycap on Apr 1, 2007 - 22 comments

An old dog learns new tricks The venerable Atari 2600 may no longer be at the forefront of high-end gaming, but that won't keep it down for long. Its new career? Drum & Bass synthesizer(warning: ugly, ugly site), complete with MIDI.
posted by lekvar on Jan 30, 2007 - 15 comments

Friday Flash Fun: Play a Missile Command clone in a somewhat-hidden section of Ryan Adams' redesigned web site. (So this is why he released so many albums last year...)
posted by emelenjr on Sep 8, 2006 - 17 comments

Skatefall. It's what happens when you jam a copy of Thrasher Magazine into an Atari 2600. via
posted by Smart Dalek on Aug 21, 2006 - 12 comments

Nerds travel to the infamous Atari 2600 E.T. video game landfill, dig up hundreds of carts, play them and make a music video of it. (Quicktime video.)
posted by loquacious on Jul 28, 2006 - 37 comments

The Dot Eaters. A dauntingly comprehensive history of video games, beginning with proto-PONG and Spacewar!. If it's difficult to navigate through Captain O's prize matrix, use the handy timeline/scape (the dates don't work, so don't try). It's an interesting site, for sure, but if it doesn't pique your interest maybe the links page will, since it's the largest I've ever seen. In just minutes I found the First Church of Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros fanfiction (@), and a great Robotron shrine. Plus, this noise (wav).
posted by BlackLeotardFront on Apr 27, 2006 - 16 comments

Nes Micro To go along with your portable snes, playstation, and Atari 2600 of course. Want to do it yourself? buy the book. Lots more stuff on Ben Heckendorn's home page (how quaint!). (found all this googling for pictures of NES cartages)
posted by delmoi on Apr 19, 2006 - 8 comments

In the ancient year 1982, Atari tried an unusual promotion strategy for their SwordQuest series of games. Using clues found in the included comic books, players competed for a chance to win actual jewel-encrusted treasures [geocities link] worth tens of thousands of dollars apiece. The competitions for the first two titles (Earthworld and Fireworld) were held, and the winners took home their gaudy prizes, but then came the infamous console crash. The third contest (Waterworld) was cancelled, the fourth game (Airworld) was never officially produced, the promotion was called off, and to this day, no one knows for certain the fate of the remaining treasures.
posted by Durhey on Apr 3, 2006 - 19 comments

Children review classic games- some more. Back in November '03, 1up.com rounded up some kids from the 8-12 age range and had them play video and arcade games from the 70's and 80's, including Pong, Donkey Kong, and Tetris. The resulting commentary was mostly along the lines of "Tim: They could've just as easily called this game anything—Baseball, Bowling, Escape From the Monsters. EGM: Did you score? Kirk: I bumped into a dot." In December 2004 they brought them back to review Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and the 1983 Arcade version of Star Wars, among others. "EGM: What do those TIE Fighters look like? ...Are they scary? Anthony: No. It feels like they're trying to give me flowers."
posted by Meredith on Feb 16, 2006 - 44 comments

So it's you, ninja-endo! I'll be Atari, I'll be back!!. From this thread, but I felt it needed an FPP of it's own
posted by delmoi on Feb 11, 2006 - 11 comments

Video games pioneer Atari fears plug set to be pulled. Hope is fading at Atari, a company that has existed in many forms over the years, but was founded in the United States in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Now might be a good time to take a walk through the Atari Museum, ponder the Zen-like instruction: AVOID MISSING BALL FOR HIGH SCORE, see the world's first video game 'Easter Egg' and pay your respects at the E.T. Landfill. But whatever you do, don't lose hope.
posted by Otis on Feb 10, 2006 - 25 comments

distellamap is a series of graphical representations of the code and data in Atari 2600 game cartridges, created using the Processing programming language. The results are rather pretty. Also by the same author: mario soup, a representation of the sprites in Super Mario Brothers. (via artificial.dk)
posted by whir on Dec 23, 2005 - 17 comments

Back in April, Carmel Andrews and Charles F. Gray claimed that Commodore reverse-engineered Atari's 8-bit hardware. Bob Yannes (creator of the SID chip and co-founder of Ensoniq) responds. What results is a brief, informative history on the concept of "sprites" and the idea of reverse-engineering. More drama, reviews, and retro computing at The Atari Times. (See also this collection of links at atari.org. Happy holidays.)
posted by milquetoast on Dec 14, 2005 - 14 comments

Rick Dangerous remade in Flash.
posted by mr.marx on Nov 7, 2005 - 15 comments

Play "Kaboom!" (1981) by Activision's Larry Kaplan. [both links feature loud noises] And because you didn't ask, here's a 1984 article about the not-so-legendary 30 secrets of Atari.
posted by Kleptophoria! on Mar 17, 2005 - 21 comments

Adventure - based on the classic text game of the same name - was the first game ever to contain an easter egg. It seems laughably primitive these days, but when it first hit shelves, Adventure was a programming masterpiece. The text version of Adventure (by Willie Crowther and Don Woods) required hundreds of KB and a mainframe computer to operate, so much that Atari brass told Warren Robinett not to even bother with a 2600 version. He did anyway, and the results are near legendary. The 2600 version of Adventure went on to sell over a million copies at $25 a pop. For his effort Robinett recieved absolutely nothing beyond his $22,000/year salary. Play the 2600 Adventure. (Flash) If you're one of those who requires some eye candy, why not download the Quake 3 Adventure Map, instead?
posted by absalom on Jan 7, 2005 - 41 comments

The Atari Games That Never Were -- and then some. A community dedicated to rooting out prototype or unreleased titles such as Alligator People,Monstercise and -- hey cool -- a genre-busting color-field. While all this may seem a tad on the esoteric side, the glimpses into the the art is cool, hey?
posted by undule on Dec 1, 2004 - 15 comments

Project:Multiverse! AtariAge has a collection of scans of comics included with 1980's Atari console games.
posted by Snyder on May 2, 2004 - 6 comments

Asteroids marathon. Twenty-seven hours of game play and it's only good for fifth place. "In the history of recorded video game world records, no other record is as unique as that on the classic Atari game 'Asteroids' according to the Twin Galaxies Intergalactic Scoreboard. And the reason for that is simple. It is the oldest, unbeaten world record in our database, after more than 22 years of compiling and tracking world records on classic arcade, home console, pinball, hand-held and PC-based titles."
posted by cedar on Apr 4, 2004 - 17 comments

"The Band uses unique instrumentation: the music is performed using obsolete computer equipment for instruments. Currently they are using a 1977 Atari 2600 game console, a 1986 portable 286 PC, a 1983 Commodore 64 computer, and a 1985 Epson dot matrix printer."
posted by cody on Oct 28, 2003 - 14 comments

8-bit gaming forever! I've been thinking about the old days lately; back to when I was a young lad sitting in front of our families huge 19 inch TV and spending a good 10 hours or more with my trusty Atari 2600 playing Pong, Combat, Pac Man, and whatnot. I'd say I had a good 50 or more games for my 2600, and I played that thing until it just fried to death, begging for mercy as I whipped the joystick to and fro trying to find the chalice in Adventure.

So imagine my surprise when I head over to ThinkGeek and see a swanky little controller with 10 Atari games harcoded into it. Just, um, "Plug and Play". Heh heh... anyhow, they also have an Activision version as well. I love the idea of one of these. I think it'd be great if it could be upgraded to handle more games as well. I wouldn't mind playing some "E.T., the Extraterrestrial" right about now.
posted by crankydoodle on Mar 25, 2003 - 18 comments

atari adventure. for your friday afternoon pleasure (via suppose)
posted by oliver_crunk on Oct 25, 2002 - 25 comments

Interested in video game emulators? Yearning for the games of yesteryear? There is probably an emulator for any 'classic' game that you could wish to play. General arcade emulators, SNES, NES, Genesis, Atari 2600, et al. For the truly curious, listen to the story of the emulator that almost was, Silhouette, the emulator Nintendo almost released.
posted by patrickje on May 13, 2002 - 32 comments

What happens when you combine an Atari 2600, an 8-bit NES, an X-Box, a PS2, a GameCube, and a PC?
posted by emptybowl on Apr 24, 2002 - 8 comments

Get your Atari 2600 fix on the go! With six models, it beats the Game Boy Advance by a mile! Unfortunately, they're handmade and the backlog is fifty units long, so more impatient retro-gamers might want to stick with a Sega Nomad.
posted by tweebiscuit on Jul 9, 2001 - 6 comments

Yar's revenge: Mom plays video game with kids. Back when gaming companies advertised on TV, Atari was king.
posted by bison on May 14, 2001 - 9 comments

All you ever wanted to know about Pong, but were afraid to ask. Okay, I had no idea - none - that Pong has such a long, involved history. I'd always seen it encapsulated as a two- or three- generation buildup to the Atari 2600 home machine. David Winter has exhaustively researched the life & times of Pong (Internationally) for those interested.
posted by kokogiak on Mar 12, 2001 - 14 comments

"Atari is now a sophisticated computerized programmable unit...." Magazine ad for the 2600, back when TVs had handles and video games were blue, pink and magenta. (Obviously not the same meaning of "programmable" today.)
posted by bison on Oct 17, 2000 - 18 comments

And you thought the 2600 was dead... no way, baby. It's alive and kicking and oh-so-groovy. (Warning: link leads to big ass movie. Slow connections beware.)
posted by RakDaddy on Sep 26, 2000 - 9 comments

Atari Confidential Design Documents Now you too can read the hardware specification for Gauntlet. Add a C compiler or assembler and a dash of MAME and you can write your own game.
posted by plinth on Aug 15, 2000 - 1 comment

What do you get when you cross the greatest Atari 2600 game ever made with the greatest musical parodist of the 20th Century? Welcome to Weird Al's Great Adventure.
posted by jjg on Aug 15, 2000 - 10 comments