Every story has to start somewhere. The Atari 2600 was my introduction to the world of video games, and the beginning of my journey.
I was born in 1979, eight years after my brother. Being the younger sibling meant I got to enjoy all the things my older brother had, which included the black and wood-grain console hooked up to our General Electric television set in the living room. Three shoeboxes were crammed to the point of bursting with cartridges of various shapes. Some were wedge-shaped with simple blue text on black labels. Others had shiny silver reproductions of the game’s box art or a thin plastic handle. Still others had slightly rounded edges and bold, bright colors. There were even a few carts that were double the size of the others, with a game on each side.
I don’t know exactly how old I was when I first played the family Atari, but from my family’s accounts it was pretty much as soon as I possessed the motor skills to operate the joystick. I quickly fell in love, and in the intervening years a fourth shoebox was added as Atari games hit clearance bins. I played the 2600 well after we had upgraded to the Nintendo Entertainment System, albeit with less and less frequency.
My next door neighbor Carl, who was a year or two older than me, also had a 2600. We quickly became good friends and began swapping games. Eventually he grew out of gaming and moved on, bequeathing his carts to me, including Activision’s Enduro – one of my favorite games on the console. This endless racer requires you to pass a certain number of cars “per day,” which meant it also had a day and night cycle. At night, cars would become harder to avoid as only their headlights could be seen in the darkness. There were even rudimentary weather effects such as fog, which made cars even harder to see and avoid. It was simple, like most of the 2600’s games, but it was incredibly addictive.
Activision were easily the best developers for the system, outside of Atari themselves. In fact, the company was started when a group of former Atari employees left the company to form their own. Nowadays Activision is best known for churning out repetitive cash-in sequels, but back then they created some of the most exciting games you could buy. MegaMania was a Galaxian-style shoot ‘em up with fast-moving oddball targets like hamburgers and bow ties. In Keystone Kapers you played a police officer chasing a criminal through a multi-level mall filled with obstacles like shopping carts and bouncing balls. Seaquest took place underwater as your submarine blasted away all kinds of dangerous marine life, while Plaque Attack took place literally inside of someone’s mouth and it was your job (as a tube of toothpaste) to defend a set of teeth against various foods that would rot them away.
Many games were variants on a simple formula. Spider Fighter wasn’t altogether different from most other shoot ‘em ups, but each one was just different enough to make it fun in a unique way. Nearly all the games that required the use of a paddle were either Breakout clones or object catch games such as Kaboom or Oink, though there was a very serviceable port of Tac-Scan for the system.
The Atari was also a major leap forward for sports games. PCs of the era focused mostly on management aspects and statistics, but the Atari was a more arcade-like experience. The representations of most sports were spotty at best, especially early on, but they were generally more exciting and interactive than staring at a bunch of numbers on a screen. Some of them bore only a passing resemblance to the actual sport, such as Basketball which is limited to one-on-one on the world’s smallest court. Activision’s infamous Decathlon was murder on your joysticks because it forced the player to wiggle them back and forth to gain speed in nearly every event.
What really helped the 2600 succeed were ports of popular arcade games. In spite of its notoriously poor quality, the 2600 port of Pac-Man was my introduction to the game and it would be several years before I saw the original game in my local arcade. Likewise, I played copious amounts of the far more faithful Ms. Pac-Man port, as well as Berzerk, Kangaroo, Jungle Hunt, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., and Crystal Castles. As arcade games became more complex, the 2600 struggled to keep up. The console’s port of Double Dragon is as unplayable as it is unrecognizable.
No conversation about the Atari 2600 would be complete without mention Pitfall!. Activision’s early platforming adventure is a classic in every sense of the word – challenging, addictive, and fun. The graphics were some of the best the system had to offer, at least until its underrated and innovative sequel, Pitfall II: Lost Caverns. Lost Caverns was a revolutionary game in many ways, with a large open world that scrolled both horizontally and vertically and puzzling gameplay. Figuring out how to obtain all the treasures needed to beat the game required careful planning. It also featured the first soundtrack on a home cartridge, which changed dynamically depending on your performance.
Just as they proved that home video game consoles with interchangeable cartridges were a viable market, Atari’s lack of quality control was the major contributing factor the industry crash of 1983. Not only did their hastily-made E.T. movie tie-in game flop, leaving thousands of unsold cartridges on shelves and in warehouses (that were eventually buried and, later, unearthed in a New Mexico desert), the lack of licensing meant that anybody could create games for the console. This led to a glut of poor quality titles that ultimately confused consumers and drove them away, and even the rare and oft-discussed pornographic games. Atari tried to rekindle interest with more powerful consoles likes the 5200 and 7800, but most of the games were slightly enhanced ports of 2600 games and did little to convince consumers that video games were more than just a fad.
For me, the Atari 2600 was revelatory. It wasn’t just fun – it enflamed my imagination. I found myself imagining a far-away kingdom in Adventure or creaky floorboards and cobwebs covering the mansion in Haunted House – details the system itself couldn’t provide due to technological limitations. I thought up backstories for characters like Pitfall Harry, and I even used GI Joe and Star Wars figures as stand-ins for their continuing adventures in the real world. Video games weren’t just blocky graphics and buzzes and beeps – they were whole new worlds to explore, and the 2600 was my doorway.
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