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First third-party games for the 8-bit?


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You're right, of course.

 

Perhaps Tempest or Callipygous knows.

I would've guessed that either "Temple of Apshai" or "Zork" must've been amongst the first games released for the 8-bits (I think both have copyrights that are debatably 1979). Looks like it's time to peruse those old issues of "Creative Computing"! :)

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I'm pretty sure the Atari versions of Zork and Temple of Apshai were released in late 1981 or 1982. There was probably some very early educational stuff available from Dorsett or PDI and I'm pretty certain Dynacomp and Adventure International were the first big names to support the Atari. Now to find the first games...

 

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RC

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The year would definitely be 1980. The Atari computers were released very late in 1979 (Nov-Dec). Even Atari had only DOS and Basic released at that point, iirc. Maybe Assem-Ed too. Would be surprised at a 3rd party release that early.

 

The tricky thing is that a lot of basic programs were ported from other machines. The copyright sometimes reflects the earlier version. Also, copyrights aren't really release dates. Many titles are announced, but don't show up for months.

 

Dorsett titles was marketed under the Atari brand name in 1980, so it wasn't really a third party at first. At some point they parted ways and Dorsett sold their own stuff.

 

BTW- The first third party cartridge was K-Byte's K-razy Shootout.

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I don't know about disk based games, but K-Byte was definetly one of the first third party publishers for the 8-bit. They were located in Troy Michigan (about 20 min. from me), but I haven't been able to figure out what their address was. Anyone know?

 

Tempest

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