10 Games Of The 70's That Defined The Atari 2600

[atarifan88]

Post a list of the 10 Games of the 70's that defined the Atari 2600 for you.

Here is mine:

 

 1. Combat

 2. Air-Sea Battle

 3. Basketball

 4. Breakout

 5. Outlaw

 6. Bowling

 7. Football

 8. Human Cannonball

 9. Sky Diver

10. Superman

[JasperAK]

Of the only 30 or so games from the '70s, Combat, Air-Sea Battle, Basketball, Home Run, and Bowling are the only ones that screamed Atari for me and were ones I ever replayed. Breakout and Indy 500 would be on this list if I had them back in the day.

 

But truth be told, if it weren't for the next series of games, I would have gotten bored and rather played outside. So some more games that defined the Atari for me and more importantly hooked me into video games were (in approximate order of publication according to Wikipedia):

 

Space Invaders (1980) [Defined the Atari--all my friends loved it--, but it's one I hate with a passion to this day], Asteroids (1981), Missile Command (1981), Haunted House (1982), Pac-Man (1982), Yars' Revenge (1982), Chopper Command (1982), SW: The Empire Strikes Back (1982), Defender (1982), and Star Raiders (1982). I went more than ten, because I loved that with Defender I didn't have to hit a button to change direction, and I never found anything like Star Raiders (or Haunted House for that matter) in the arcades that I remember.

 

Both Warlords (1981) and Berzerk (1982) would have been my Ur-games for Atari if I had them back then. It pisses me off to this day that I never saw these.

[+jeremiahjt]

Just games from the 1970s, hmm.

 

1. Breakout

2. Combat

3. Indy 500

4. Video Olympics

5. Air-Sea Battle

6. Superman

7. Surround

8. Space War

9. Starship

10. Basic Math

[BassGuitari]

I don't know if there are ten games from the '70s that "define" the Atari 2600 because it didn't really hit its pop-cultural stride until the '80s, starting with Space Invaders in 1980. Even the console itself wasn't called "Atari 2600" until 1982. When we talk about definitive Atari 2600 games, we're talking about the Asteroids and Pitfalls and Demon Attacks and Froggers and Missile Commands; so if the question is "Which of the Atari's definitive games were released in the '70s?," it's probably a pretty short list. I think you have Breakout, Combat, Video Olympics (everybody seems to remember playing "Pong"), maybe something like Basketball or Superman, and not much else.

 

But I do think the Atari's 1977-79 lineup is emblematic of that period of videogames and solidifies it as arguably the definitive game system of the late 1970s. But it's tough to choose a Top 10 games that defined the Atari in the '70s, because they all offer something substantively different; even within genres, there isn't much overlap in gameplay design like there would be in the system's subsequent eras. Some personal favorites that immediately come to mind are: 

 

Air-Sea Battle 

Breakout

Canyon Bomber

Home Run

Indy 500

Miniature Golf

Outlaw or Surround (I can't decide!)

Star Ship

Street Racer

Video Olympics

 

Another way to look at this is to flip the question: Which Atari VCS games defined videogames in the '70s? Every console back then had a Tank game, a Pong game, a Space War game, a Race Car game, a Math game, a Blackjack game, etc. It was more or less a similar stable of games on every platform, just done differently, with a few unique titles interspersed. With that context in mind:

 

Air-Sea Battle - Shooting gallery-style ship/airplane, submarine, and anti-aircraft games were one of the cornerstone genres of the 1970s, and Air-Sea Battle covers a good cross-section of them

Basic Math - Not much else to say about this one except that every programmable video game platform in the 1970s had to have some kind of a math quiz game, and this was Atari's

Breakout - Perhaps the biggest arcade hit between Pong and Space Invaders, and a game concept that persists nearly 50 years later

Casino - "Blackjack" was an early gaming standard rarely seen on consoles past the dawn of the 1980s except as niche/specialty titles; Casino refined Atari's earlier, more perfunctory Blackjack game and added poker games

Combat - Tank was a defining arcade milestone, being one of the biggest-selling and top-earning arcades of the mid-'70s; the Biplane and Jet Fighter games are very of-their-era

Hunt & Score - "Memory Match" was a game genre widely endemic to the programmable consoles of the '70s that didn't really survive the end of the decade

Outlaw - The "Cowboy Duel" was another flagship game genre of the 1970s, pioneered in the arcade by Gun Fight and appearing in some form or another on most of the cartridge-based systems of the decade

Space War - Space War as a concept was iconic, widely imitated, and enduring, all the way back since its inception in the early 1960s

Street Racer - "Steer a vehicle side-to-side to avoid speeding obstacles descending the screen" was a ubiquitous gameplay conceit in the 1970s, found on programmable and dedicated consoles alike (not to mention arcades!)

Video Olympics - If there is a singular, definitive video game of the 1970s, it's undeniably Pong, and Video Olympics is arguably the most complete take on the game and its various permutations

 

 

 

 

[Rockymin]

Adventure

Breakout

Casino

Flag Capture

Surround

Night Rider

Combat

Space War

Air Sea Battle

Video Chess

[BassGuitari]

13 hours ago, Rockymin said:

Adventure

...

Night Rider Driver

...

These came out in 1980. 🙂

[Rockymin]

6 hours ago, BassGuitari said:

These came out in 1980. 🙂

 

They did?  I could have sworn they came out before that.  I got my VCS for my 11th birthday in 1978 and my 10 games were among the first I remember owning. Though, at 11, I wasn't getting games very often back then, like I do now, lol.  So it very well could have taken me 2 years to acquire 10 games.

[Rob Mitchell]

Back in 1977 we (family) bought all the Sears launch titles (x Math).  In 1978, we bought the keyboards to play Codebreaker.   (We were crazy about Mastermind).  Basketball, Space War and Home Run.

 

Biggest disappointments from 1977:  Star Ship (Outer Space)   As we drove home I was reading the instruction manual and thinking, "Lunar Lander can't be this bad!"   Same with Pong Sports (Video Olympics), "Where's Catch?"  a game on Super Pong (1976) which a neighbor had.

 

Funny how I was hitting the arcades from 1976-1980, I did not experience many of the games that Atari was bringing home to the VCS.  Played a lot of Computer Space, Death Race, Indy 800, Stunt Cycle, Tornado Baseball, Gunfight / Boot Hill, Breakout .. But No Tank, No Anti-Aircraft, No Dominos, No Star Ship, No Pong.

 

 

[davyK]

These sum the 70s up for me:-

 

Pong and its variants (Video Olympics)

Breakout/Super Breakout (1981 sadly, so the original will have to do even though Super is a 70s game).
Tank (Combat)

Night Driver  (1980 on 2600 unfortunately, but it's very much a game of the 70s) I remember playing the old "belt" racing games with back projection and Night Driver was marvellous step up from those.

Surround

Dodge 'em

Air Sea Battle (stands in for all those 70s timed shooting gallery style games)

Gunfight (Outlaw)

Space War

 

Something like Tailgunner would complete that lineup - Star Ship is the closest thing to that.

Edited January 17 by davyK