Atari · 1977–1992

Atari2600

Woodgrain, joysticks and the start of it all. Activision labels, Sears variants and the classics.

[n] Atari 2600 games available

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Why it mattered

The wood-grain box that put the arcade in the living room

Atari shipped the Video Computer System in September 1977 with six switches, two joysticks, a Combat cartridge and 128 bytes of RAM. It was not the first cartridge console, but it was the one that won: Space Invaders in 1980 quadrupled sales, Pac-Man in 1982 sold seven million copies, and four Atari programmers who wanted their names on the box walked out and founded Activision, inventing the third-party publisher. By 1982 the machine was so dominant that Atari finally gave it a proper name — the 2600 — and kept selling it until 1992.

The library is somewhere north of five hundred licensed carts, most of them cheap, a few of them worth more than the console. Loose carts are the norm here, so check the label: Atari's own went text, picture, silver and red over the years, and a clean label with no end-label tear matters more than the box for most titles. Boxes were flimsy gatefolds early on and rarely survived. Original manuals, packaging, and label condition can make a meaningful difference to collectors. Every cart is photographed and tested on real hardware.

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Fast facts

ReleasedSeptember 1977 (North America, as the Video Computer System)
Launch price~$199 with Combat, two joysticks and paddles
MediaROM cartridges — 2K at launch, 32K with bank-switching
Units sold~30 million worldwide over a 15-year run
Best sellerPac-Man — ~7 million sold, millions more unsold
Did you know?It was not called the 2600 until 1982. For its first five years Atari sold it as the Video Computer System, or VCS; the number is just the model code, CX2600, and it was promoted to a name only when the 5200 arrived and Atari needed to tell the two apart. Boxes and manuals that say VCS are the early ones.
Did you know?Atari's own labels changed four times, which is how collectors date a loose cart: text labels from 1977, picture labels from around 1981, silver labels from around 1983 and red labels on the 1986 reissues for the 2600 Jr. The same game can exist in three or four of them, and the text-label first print is usually the one worth more.
Did you know?Activision was founded in 1979 by four Atari programmers who wanted credit and royalties, making it the first third-party console publisher. Atari challenged Activision in court, and the companies reached a licensing settlement in 1982. The agreement helped establish independent console publishing. Activision's early manuals invited players to mail in a photo of a high score for an embroidered patch — the patches now sell for more than most of the carts.
Did you know?Atari made roughly twelve million Pac-Man cartridges in 1982 for an installed base of about ten million consoles, betting the game would sell systems. It sold about seven million and was still the console's best seller, but the flickering port and the unsold millions are usually named as the start of the 1983 crash.
Did you know?E.T. was programmed by Howard Scott Warshaw in about five weeks to make Christmas 1982, after Atari paid a license fee usually reported in the low tens of millions. Unsold stock really was buried in a New Mexico landfill — a 2014 dig found it — which is why a cart most people expect to be rare is one of the cheapest on the shelf.
Did you know?Swordquest was a four-game contest with $150,000 in jeweled prizes. Earthworld and Fireworld shipped normally, Waterworld went out only through the Atari Club and is scarce, and Airworld was canceled in the crash and never made until Atari finished it for a 2022 compilation. Two of the four prizes were never awarded.
Did you know?Sears sold the console as the Tele-Games Video Arcade with its own cartridge labels and its own names: Combat became Tank Plus, Star Ship became Outer Space, Indy 500 became Race. Three Sears titles — Steeplechase, Stellar Track and Submarine Commander — were never released under the Atari name at all.
Did you know?Air Raid, a 1982 shooter from Men-A-Vision in a blue cartridge with a T-shaped handle, is the 2600's most famous rarity: only a dozen or so are known, and a boxed copy sold for more than $30,000 in 2012. The AtariAge rarity scale runs from 1 to 10, and Air Raid, Red Sea Crossing and Gamma-Attack are the tens.

Find your next Atari 2600 game

Start with a familiar favorite, explore a theme, or browse by what’s included.

Counts are listings in stock — the same game can appear more than once in different packaging.

The grails

Air Raid, Red Sea Crossing, Gamma-Attack, Quadrun, Music Machine, Karate, Eli's Ladder — the carts with a rarity number and a waiting list. If one appears here, it will not stay long.

ARCADE HITS ON ATARI

Arcade favorites like Asteroids, Joust, Pac-Man and Galaxian made the jump to Atari cartridges — with later reinterpretations keeping them alive.

The apostrophe shelf

Yars' Revenge. Pele's Soccer. Dodge 'Em. Skate Boardin'. Bump 'n' Jump. Sneak 'n Peek. The 1980s were not big on spelling things out.

Activision: the rainbow stripe

Pitfall!, River Raid, Kaboom!, Freeway, Chopper Command, H.E.R.O., Stampede — four ex-Atari programmers, one rainbow, and the best-looking games on the system.

Imagic: the silver box

Demon Attack, Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, Riddle of the Sphinx, Dragonfire, Moonsweeper — the chrome-boxed publisher that made the 2600 look better than it had any right to.

Parker Brothers

Frogger, Q*bert, Popeye, Super Cobra, Tutankham, The Empire Strikes Back, Spider-Man — the board-game company that bought every license in sight and ported them well.

M Network: Mattel crosses the aisle

Astroblast, Lock 'N Chase, Frogs and Flies, Tron Deadly Discs, BurgerTime, Kool-Aid Man — the Intellivision company's own 2600 carts, in the black boxes with the grid.

Coleco, moonlighting

Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Zaxxon, Venture, Carnival, Mouse Trap, Smurf — ColecoVision's owner selling its arcade licenses to the enemy's console.

20th Century Fox Games of the Century

M*A*S*H, Turmoil, Megaforce, Fantastic Voyage, Worm War I, Alien, Porky's, Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes — a movie studio's game label, and one of the strangest catalogs on the system.

FROM POP CULTURE TO PIXELS

Movies, television, comics and music all found their way onto Atari cartridges — from E.T. and M*A*S*H to Spider-Man and Journey.

THE THIRD-PARTY GOLD RUSH

CBS, Telesys, Data Age, U.S. Games and others joined the Atari boom with everything from arcade-inspired action to wonderfully strange experiments.

Sears Tele-Games

Tank Plus, Outer Space, Race, Steeplechase, Stellar Track, Submarine Commander — the same console, sold at Sears under different names, three of them never sold anywhere else.

Text label, picture label, silver, red

Four Atari label styles across fifteen years — the text-label first prints, the 1981 picture labels, the silver era and the red-label 2600 Jr. reissues. Same game, different decade.

The text-label years, 1977–80

Combat, Star Ship, Street Racer, Surround, Video Olympics, Blackjack, Outlaw, Slot Racers, Adventure — the nine launch carts and the first three years, all in text labels and gatefold boxes.

RealSports and the rest of the league

RealSports Baseball, Football, Tennis and Volleyball, Pele's Soccer, Home Run, Skiing, Decathlon — the sports shelf, from Atari's own to Activision's Olympics.

Grab the torch

From haunted houses and ancient riddles to lost arks and distant galaxies, these games rewarded curiosity, strategy and a little courage.

Rarity 5 and up

Cosmic Swarm, Mines of Minos, Stronghold, Piece o' Cake, Wall Ball, Springer, Mr. Postman — the AtariAge rarity scale from 5 upward: not grails, but not showing up in a box at a yard sale either.

Red label: the late shift, 1986–90

Solaris, Secret Quest, Dark Chambers, Midnight Magic, Jr. Pac-Man, Crossbow, Sprintmaster — the games Atari kept shipping for the 2600 Jr. long after everyone else had moved on, plus the 2023 comeback carts.

Titles that shout!

Kaboom! Oink! Boing! Mr. Do! Frogger II: Threeedeep! — the exclamation point was the 1982 equivalent of a marketing budget.

Everything is in space

Space Invaders, Space War, Star Ship, Star Raiders, Starmaster, Cosmic Creeps, Cosmic Ark, Moonsweeper, Solar Fox, Planet Patrol — if the box was black and had stars on it, it lives here.

Atari2600

The wood-grain box that put the arcade in the living room