Atari’s fourth and final game from July 1980 follows in the footsteps of games like Night Driver, Outlaw, Indy 500 and numerous others in being a home conversion of a 1970s arcade game that is much, much better known today by its VCS counterpart. And much like Outlaw before it, Circus Atari – or […]| | Atari Archive
3-D Tic-Tac-Toe, by Carol Shaw – yes, the same Carol Shaw who would write seminal classic River Raid – is in some ways the most ambitious of the four games Atari published in July 1980 – a group that includes Night Driver, Golf, and Circus Atari – though it certainly doesn’t seem like it at […]| | Atari Archive
It’s been over a year, but Atari has returned to the world of sports with the company’s take on plain old, windmill-free golf.| Atari Archive
These days, nearly every racing game published is designed around the player’s viewpoint being either behind the car or in the driver’s seat itself. While Night Driver did not originate this perspective, it without question popularized it both in arcades and in Atari’s home conversion. Yes, Night Driver is a return to the realm of […]| | Atari Archive
Warren Robinett’s BASIC Programming may be the oddest fit for the VCS out of any cartridge released on the platform – certainly it’s the oddest first party release. It’s not really a game in any sense of the word; rather, it’s a version of the BASIC computer language designed to run on the VCS. I’ll […]| | Atari Archive
Of all the original games Atari put out for the VCS, Adventure may be the one that most people are familiar with today. Warren Robinett’s third and final VCS game – though seemingly the second to actually be released – serves as a counterweight to the arcade action of its March 1980 brethren Space Invaders […]| | Atari Archive
The Atari VCS was supported commercially on the market for a mind-boggling 14 years, starting in 1977 and ending its run in 1991. There are a handful of incredibly notable moments in time during the system’s life on the market, and March 1980 might be the most important one for the console’s fortunes – and […]| | Atari Archive
The final VCS game from the 1970s was a long time coming. Video Chess is a technical feat in several ways, and it’s also a game that owes its existence in part to a marketing decision dating back to the VCS launch back in 1977, and to the joint efforts of one of the […]| | Atari Archive
While not nearly as obviously exciting as Superman, the last two VCS games to come out in 1979 push boundaries in their own technical ways. Backgammon and Video Chess are both attempts to bring their respective strategy board games to a platform not suited for the necessary thought processes or even displaying the game boards. […]| | Atari Archive
We’ve come to the first of three VCS games published in the fall of 1979, and it’s a doozy. Superman is an incredibly ambitious game completely unlike anything seen up to this point on the VCS or its competitors; indeed, it’s an experience more in line with the games one would find specially made […]| | Atari Archive
Robert Leedom spent his career working as a radar systems engineer for aircraft at Westinghouse, but in the 1970s he developed computer game programs on...| Atari Archive