Recommend me Atari 2600 games!

I made a complete impulse purchase on the weekend when my buddy foolishly took me to a sweet indie game store just north of Seattle. If you're in the area, check it out - it's called Another Castle, has friendly staff, a good selection of retro and current stuff, and even has a retro arcade on-site with about 15-20 cabinets. Bring a pocketful of quarters!

So anyway, I came home with an Atari 2600 and a bunch of games. I was sweating bullets the whole way home not knowing whether the wife was going to be pissed at me for dropping $90 on a completely unnecessary purchase, but bless her cotton socks, her face lit up when she saw the machine, jaw dropped when she saw Breakout, and she literally jumped up clapping when she saw the paddle controllers.

So here's the games I came home with:
Breakout
Warlords
Empire Strikes Back
Combat
Asteroids
Phoenix
Crystal Castles
Centipede

On my to-get list are:

Dig-Dug
Galaxian
Space Invaders

What else am I missing to round out my collection? For the record, I don't care much for Pitfall or Adventure, iconic though they both might be. I'm tempted to pick up an E.T. cart, just so I can experience how awful it is. Likewise, I'm going to pass on Pac-Man because it's an awful version, and I've got good versions on XBLA.

Pitfall
Joust
Hero
Adventure
River Raid
Haunted House

These are some favorites. Too bad Desert Falcon came out for the 7800, because that game consumed a month of Saturdays for me and will always be awesome.

Yar's Revenge. Adventure (if you don't like it, you're wrong). Maze Craze. Pretty much any Imagic game, but especially Cosmic Ark.

A lot of great picks so far.

Oh 2600, how I loved thee.

Definite repeats here, but no collection should go without.

Missle Command
Defender
Donkey Kong (yes, Nintendo Donkey Kong!)
Pac-Man (for lol's)
Maze Craze
Adventure
Pitfall
Berzerk
Superman
Indy 500
Haunted House
Asteroids
Combat
Space Invaders
Video Chess
E.T. (for lol's)
Night Driver
Yar's Revenge

Ms Pac Man is pretty good. I'd also go with Asteroids, Yar's Revenge, Warlords, and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Only ever had a colecovision, which supported atari games, so some may not be applicable:

Q-bert
Carnival
Frogger
Zaxxon

and some of the one's mentioned above.

Star Raiders.

Chopper Command!

I have about 140 or so 2600 games. I need to haul them out, it's been a while.

Bowling

Until my nieces got a Wii it was our family tradition every Christmas to dust off the 2600 (the very one my parents bought for me and my sisters waaay for the Christmas of '78), hook it up to the big screen, and play Bowling. We even roshamboed to see who would get the crappy controller with the exposed wires...

I need to dig mine out too. Off the top of my head, a few others that haven't been mentioned I don't think:

Video Pinball
Stargate (better than Defender)
Pitfall II (a different experience than regular Pitfall, definitely worth playing)
Vanguard
Kaboom!
Kangaroo
Demons to Diamonds
Dragonfire
Popeye

Also, +1 on:

Berzerk
Dig Dug
Joust
Raiders of the Lost Ark (this one really has a WTF factor to it, much moreso than E.T. in my opinion)

Also, even if you don't like Adventure, it's worth picking up just to find the secret room - IIRC, it's the first gaming "Easter Egg". I remember checking out a book at the library when I was about 10 years old that described how to access it.

*MIND BLOWN*

Don't pick up E.T., whatever you do. It's not funny-bad or even so-bad-that-it's-hilarious-to-play-ironically-bad. It just sucks.

My list of recommendations:
Yar's Revenge
River Raid
H.E.R.O.
Keystone Kapers

Also, I've never played it before but, from a sheer technical standpoint, it's probably worth checking out Solaris, which has ridiculous 3D-esque scrolling graphics that look better than some of the NES games that would come out years later:

Yars' Revenge and Warlords were probably two of my favorite. I had California Games as well and spent tons of time with it, although I'm not sure if it was really any good.

Laser Blast

What was that game called where you caught bombs in a bucket of water? It was a Paddle Game - I loved that game.

lordpolish wrote:

What was that game called where you caught bombs in a bucket of water? It was a Paddle Game - I loved that game.

Kaboom

My recommendations...

Yars' Revenge
Pitfall 1 & 2
River Raid
Atlantis
Defender
Superman
Berzerk
Battlezone
Secret Quest
Jungle Hunt
Pole Position
Video Pinball

Vanguard was a good shmup.

Combat was great fun multi-player, also second for H.E.R.O., Yars' Revenge, and Berzerk. Taz was a lot of fun. I haven't played it since I was about 12, but I remember Night Driver being fun too.

peterb wrote:

Yar's Revenge. Adventure (if you don't like it, you're wrong). Maze Craze. Pretty much any Imagic game, but especially Cosmic Ark.

Good advice. Oh man, I loved Cosmic Ark. Probably my favorite 2600 game, though I loved the pants off of Yar's Revenge as well. I loved Atlantis as well, though I think that was one of the few games that was somehow better on the Odyssey2.

I never played Maze Craze. I can't even remember it; did it come out later, or was that just a gap in the cartridges owned by me and my friends?

Puce Moose wrote:

I never played Maze Craze. I can't even remember it; did it come out later, or was that just a gap in the cartridges owned by me and my friends?

It was a mid-cycle release and a relatively humble game, all told.

I remember the facination coming from the random-maze generator. It was a first of its kind, creating limitless replay value in an age of primarily static game boards and levels that could be beaten/mastered quickly.

From Atari2600.com:

"Maze Craze: A Game of Cops ‘n Robbers, Atari, Complete in box, 1978, Maze, 1or 2 players. Maze Craze boasts 256 game variations (wounded players, fake barriers, invisibility, and more) and a maze generator algorithm for creating a new maze playfield each time the game is played. Gamers, as cops, run around each maze (called city blocks), trying to capture or avoid (depending on the mode of play) up to five robbers. In the highly entertaining two-player mode, each gamer controls a police officer."

All you need is Joust.

Joust Joust Joust.

OzymandiasAV wrote:

Don't pick up E.T., whatever you do. It's not funny-bad or even so-bad-that-it's-hilarious-to-play-ironically-bad. It just sucks.

My list of recommendations:
Yar's Revenge
River Raid
H.E.R.O.
Keystone Kapers

Seconded. Especially H.E.R.O.

Maze Craze was a great game that didn't seem to get a lot of notice. The optional ability to place fake sections was a lot of fun.

There are a lot of great games mentioned here, but one that hasn't been mentioned that my friends and I played for years was Decathlon. We may have had some sore hands after, but we had a heck of a lot of fun.

Raiders of the Lost Ark was kind of amazing for its time. It's an adventure game that actually does quite well with its cryptic graphics.

Adventure is a must play because of its place in history.

Space War and Combat are great couch competitive games.

Finally, ET. Just so you know when people talk about it.

I'm surprised you don't like Adventure. It's the one 2600 game I will still play occasionally.

I'm going to second the votes for Vanguard and Cosmic Ark as standing up fairly well; and Yar's Revenge as being iconic.

Some of the other suggestions (QBert, Zaxxon, Joust...) are certainly good but you can easily have better versions.

Heh. My wife to this day has Adventure memorized, to the point that she can just up and beat it at will. We were messing around with some emulators at a (really rocking) party a few years ago, and when she saw somebody playing Adventure, she was like, "Give it here," and proceeded to flip the game, to all around astonishment as she's not the biggest gamer ever put forth on this earth.

My votes are for:

Combat for timeless fun
River Raid for a game that you can chase high scores with your friends, which manages to actually be fun.
Pitfall (run to the left)

Who said they don't like Adventure? I love it.

Time to upgrade to a Colecovision, that's what I say.

I think Adventure was the first game I ever played that had randomised locations for stuff in the advanced game, unless my memory is faulty.

I also remember playing the Space Invaders cart just before it came out on general sale - as someone who'd only seen the bat and ball style TV consoles before, that was a complete revelation.

My first boxing game. I spent more time than I care to admit play this and Stampede.

Reactor