This is Tic-Tac-Toe played on a isometric 3x3x3 grid.

Top-down perspective. Considered the first action RPG game, and a predecessor to Legend of Zelda, although there are no RPG elements. It is inspired by the Collosal Cave adventure text game.

Shoot enemy planes from a first-person perspective.

Two-player simultaneous play. Shoot items flying by in a side-view perspective using your cannon mounted at the bottom of the screen.

Escape a flooding submarine.

Plays like arcade

Like tanks in Combat, but not as good. The battlefield has realistic objects on it, as opposed to the simple mazes of Combat.

Artillery Duel has two players taking turns setting the angle and power of their cannons to try to shoot the other player's cannon. The terrain is randomly generated, and there is wind to contend with that changes direction and speed between turns. This could be considered a predecessor to Scorched Earth and Worms. This game was often included on a rare double-ender cartridge from Xonox. One side had Artillery Duel. The other had another game, such as Spike's Peak.

Gameplay like arcade, but with solid instead of vector graphics.

Port of Intellivision Astrosmash.

Kind of like Missile Command on steroids.

Backgammon and acey-duecey games. The board is rotated 90 degrees from how I'm used to playing it. FYI, backgammon has been played in some form since about 3,000 BC. It's one of the oldest games around!

Fly your plane through barns in a side-view perspective. Kind of boring. Nice graphics, though.

One-on-one basketball. You can shoot the ball and block the other player. No stealing or fouls or anything else.

Drive a tank in first-person perspective, plays like arcade

Plays like arcade

Casino is better, since it has slightly better graphics and two other games included.

This game has you wandering around town searching houses to find the parts to a cannon that you piece together and use to shoot the villain. If you go in a house without a cannon part, you end up with a bomb that you must diffuse. It's pretty complicated, and requires memorization of which house contains the cannon parts.

Pretty basic bowling game viewed from the side of the lane.

Two boxers duke it out from an above-view perspective.

You must use a 12-key keypad for this game, which was bundled with it. The main game is basically Simon. Another game has you deciding which shape doesn't belong. Finally, you can play music badly using the keypad.

This is the original ball and paddle game. It uses the paddle controllers. Sears called it Breakaway IV, which leads you to wonder about Breakaway I-III.

Pretty good arcade port. Race along, bumping the other cars off the road, taking huge jumps, and possibly landing on other cars.

Plays like arcade, but the graphics are pretty terrible.

Great party game with "Californian" activities, such as surfing, skateboard half-pipe and hackey sack.

Kind of like a reverse Breakout, where you bomb your way through a canyon floor.

Plays like arcade

Blackjack, 5-card stud and poker solitaire

Plays like arcade

a.k.a. Pele's Championship Soccer, a.k.a. Pele's Soccer, a.k.a. Soccer. This is an over-head view, vertically-scrolling game. You have 4 players (forward, two backs and a goalie). You only control the player with the ball. The computer controls the other players for you.

Defender with helicopters

Bounce two clowns on a teeter-totter to break balloons overhead

Like Kaboom!, but you avoid the coconuts being thrown rather than catch them, and it uses the joystick.

Plays like the board game Mastermind

Play various 2-player combat games with tanks and planes from an overhead or side-view perspective. This game was a pack-in for many years. Tank pong rocks.

Pretty good one-man-army game, but the game just loops forever. There is no ending.

Shoot down incoming planes and paratroopers

Fun sequel to Atlantis. Totally different gameplay, though. It has two screens. One has you defend your cosmic ark against incoming meteors, and the other has you slipping through planetary defenses to beam-up a lifeform from a planet surface. Very fun!

Plays like arcade. It uses an isometric perspective. It also supports the trackball, just like the arcade game, but it doesn't work the way it should, so just use the joystick.

Port of Intellivision Night Stalker.

Kind of like Gauntlet, but very slow-paced.

a.k.a. The Activision Decathlon. Great party game. You will make your arm sore waggling your joystick.

Plays like arcade, but easier, and without vector graphics.

Phoenix clone

Using paddle controllers, you shoot the demons that match the color of your paddle. If you shoot the wrong color, the demon starts shooting in both directions. The players are separated to the top and bottom of the screen, so you can shoot the wrong colored demon to try to cause your opponent to be shot.

Plays like arcade

Race cars moving in opposite directions on concentric tracks. You can switch tracks to avoid crashing into the other car. Your goal is to collect all of the dots in each of the tracks without crashing.

Only vaguely like arcade. Ugly graphics. Only has two levels. Still fun to play, though. Coleco ported this game to the 2600, and it has often been assumed that they made it ugly on purpose so it wouldn't compete with their nice-looking Colecovision version. At least the 2600 version is better than the Intellivision version.

Vaguely like arcade, only two levels. Ugly graphics, no fruit. This is another Coleco game that may have been made bad on purpose to avoid competition to the nice Colecovision version.

Dodge the dragon's fire breath and collect treasures. Better on Intellivision.

This game shows two cars in side-view perspective. To play, you use the button for acceleration, and you shift gears with the joystick. That's it. Not much to it.

Considered to be the poster child of the 1983 video game crash, which resulted from a glut of lack-luster games that flooded the market. I actually enjoy this game, and find its action-adventure gameplay to be interesting and fun, especially compared to the high-score based arcade games that make up most of the Atari 2600 library. But the gameplay can be confusing if you don't know what you are doing. The game was programmed in only 5 weeks so it would release by the Christmas buying season. Atari produced 4-5 million cartridges, and it was a best seller during Christmas. But by Christmas 1982, the Video Game Crash was in full effect, so they only sold 1.5 million of them. Atari ended up taking a $100 million loss, crushing the remaining cartridges, and burying them in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico.

First-person racing in various environments. Easily the best racing game on the 2600.

Vertically-scrolling maze

Sort of like River Raid, but you are travelling through a blood vessel shooting blood clots to save the patient. It's based on the old movie.

This game is played across several screens. In the air you fly as a bird to collect the trident pieces. Below the water you are a dolphin. Once you collect all the pieces, you go to the bottom of the ocean and rescue the girl.

Put out the fire of a burning building and rescue the survivors.

Two players on opposite sides of the screen try to catch the most fish in a side-view perspective. When you reel in fish, you have to avoid predators that will snatch the fish off your line.

This game plays sort of like Minesweeper in Windows, but it came out in 1978.

In this single-screen, overhead-view, vertical football game, each team has 3 players. You choose your play before the ball is hiked. Then, depending on the game setting, you can control the players as much or as little as you want to perform the play you selected.

Get your chicken across the road. Great for 2 players. My kids like this one.

Plays like arcade. It lacks the in-game music, but the graphics are nice and the gameplay is intact. Unlike the arcade, you can choose to let your frog wrap around the screen when riding a log instead of dying.

This is a Starpath cassette game, so I've only played it in emulation. It has much-improved graphics compared to the cartridge version, and it has in-game music.

This game starts you underwater avoiding fish and other hazards, then moving to land to avoid hazards there, and finally moving up to the sky. It's not as good as the original game.

See who can catch the most flies while jumping in a side-view perspective between two lilly pads. The Intellivision version is better.

This is better than Commando in many ways. But what is up with that big blue block? That's supposed to be a tank?

Make your way across floating ice to cross a river while avoiding bad guys. As you jump on each piece of ice, a block of ice is added to your igloo. You must jump on every ice block to beat the level. Kind of like Frogger and Q*bert combined.

Plays like arcade. Nice graphics.

This action adventure game plays across 5 different screens, each with unique gameplay. You can play as a boy or girl, and you are trying to rescue your friend that has been capture by Dracula. This game was often included on a rare double-ender cartridge from Xonox. One side had Ghost Manor. The other had another game, such as Spike's Peak.

This above-view golf game plays like modern golf games, in that you choose your club, aim, and then hold down the button to increase the amount of strength you want to use in your swing. When you get close to the hole, the game switches to a close-up view.

4 different stages, but the arcade had 5.

Horizontally-scrolling racing

Plays like arcade

Make your way through a cave full of traps in a side-view perspective to rescue the person at the bottom. The hazards are always in the same place, though, so once you memorize your way though each level, you are pretty much done with the game.

Collect 3 pieces of an urn and escape the house while avoiding monsters.

An above-view baseball game. The gameplay is very primitive. You have complete control of pitches, and there can be two or three outfielders in addition to the pitcher depending on the game settings.

Try to shoot the guy into the water tower by adjusting the angle and power level.

a.k.a. A Game of Concentration, a.k.a. Memory Match

Best sports game on Atari 2600

Overhead perspective, the only game to use the racing controller

Move between levels using elevators, collect all the documents, and avoid or shoot the assassins.

Best soccer game on the 2600

Plays like arcade, except eggs keep bouncing along instead of landing on platforms.

Like arcade, much better than Atari 2600 Pac-Man.

Plays like arcade, with all 4 stages: vine-swinging, swimming with crocodiles, jumping over falling rocks (although this takes place on a horizontal plane instead of an inclined plane like the arcade), and then jumping over spear-weilding natives to rescue your girl.

Catch the bombs as they fall using the paddle controller. Simple, but fun!

Plays like arcade

Catch the thief before he gets away. Nice graphics and gameplay.

Fly around in a UFO trying to bomb canons that shoot lasers at you from the ground. The lasers appear instantly, so it's kind of unfair. You can't dodge.

Sort of like Pac-Man, but with cops and robbers. You play the robber. You can drop barricades behind you, which is your only defense against the cops.

Has little to do with the TV show. Fly a helipcopter to rescue soldiers. Occasionally you perform surgery on a soldier, like the board game Operation.

Plays like arcade, including co-op play, but it loses the ability to bump the other player from underneath.

Solve math problems to move forward.

Race through randomly-generated mazes with various obstacles and enemies chasing. 2-player simultaneous play.

You control a flying motorcycle that shoots forward and down on the ground and forward when in the air. You have to fly in the air to take out flying enemies, and you must land to hit ground targets.

Simple single-screen shmup where you shoot at strange moving targets above you. By strange I mean hamburgers, irons, bow ties and so on.

Best pinball game on 2600.

Plays like arcade. Better graphics than Centipede.

a.k.a. Arcade Golf. Viewed from an above-view perspective, you move your putter to adjust the angle and strength of your swing. The graphics are very primitive, but the gameplay is good.

Plays like arcade, except there is only one base instead of three, and it won't work with the trackball.

This is a fun, but challenging, early action adventure platformer. You move from one screen to the next, avoiding bad guys, getting keys that open doors, and grabbing weapons. It's pretty difficult.

Plays like arcade, although there is no ending.

Land on a moon, then ride along its surface rescuing people and shooting ground and air targets.

Locate a key, steal a crown, and bring it to the top of the mountain, all while avoiding enemies and collecting gold. The game screen scrolls in all 4 directions, which is kind of unusual for an Atari 2600 game.

Plays like Pac-Man instead of the arcade game it is named after. There are no doors to control. You just eat the cheese (dots) with your mouse while avoiding the cats. When you eat a bone, you transform into a dog that can attack the cats. So it's just Pac-Man. At least it has better graphics than Pac-Man.

Plays like arcade

Like arcade, minus the intermissions. Much better than Atari 2600 Pac-Man.

a.k.a. Octopus. There was a contest to name the game and win $10,000. But the game crash happened, so the contest never completed. It was released later as Octopus. In the game, you play as a scuba diver that has a giant octopus between him and his boat. The octopus's tentacles grow toward you, so you must shoot them off. Occasionally your friend in the boat drops an oxygen line to you. Without it, you will die.

Race your car at night in a sort-of 3D third-person perspective.

Plays like the arcade. Requires the bundled Booster Grip, which adds a thrust and fire button to the joystick, or you can use a Colecovision controller.

Yep, it's Othello (which is sometimes referred to as Reversi) for one or two players.

There is a cowboy on each side of the screen, and they must shoot each other for points. Depending on game settings, you can have a cactus or a moving wagon between you.

Gameplay like arcade, minus the intermissions, but with terrible graphics, sound and music. Even the programming is sloppy. Still, it manages to be a fun game. In 1982 when it was released, it was the closest thing to the arcade that you could experience. At least until they released the Atari 5200 version later that same year. That was far more accurate. This game was packaged with Atari 2600s starting in 1982. It is generally felt that the poor quality of this game began a long spiral downward for the reputation of Atari, and that it was a contributor to the video game crash of 1983. Ms. Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man are much more faithful to their respective original arcade games.

Plays like the arcade. Play through 4 waves of birds before facing the mother ship.

One of the first action/adventure platformer games. It has very nice gameplay and graphics.

Best music on Atari 2600, and best overall action/adventure. The cartridge contained a custom chip called DPC that provided music with 4-part harmony (a first for the 2600) and improved the graphics capabilities of the 2600. The chip was designed by David Crane, the game's creator, and he hoped that it would be used in other games, but sadly that never happened, mostly due to the video game crash of 1983.

With a little more polish, this would have been a good game, but the graphics are choppy, and the gameplay is glitchy.

Third-person racing, like the arcade. The controls are a little weird, though. It accelerates automatically. The button is for brakes, and up and down change the gear.

Plays like arcade, but only has 3 screens.

Fun action game where you assemble hamburgers from ingredients coming down a conveyer. The needed ingredients are listed at the bottom of the screen. Very nice graphics and sound.

Plays like arcade, although with lesser graphics and audio. Q*bert doesn't say anything like the arcade's random gibberish "bad word" when he dies.

Must have the manual in order to understand the gameplay. Once you understand it, there is some fun gameplay.

The game is represented in a third-person 3D view, using shadows to convey the distance to the ball, but it is very confusing and difficult to play.

Must have the manual in order to understand the gameplay. You have to complete a series of tasks, which the manual explains. The graphics are pretty bad, so without the manual, you don't know what some of the objects are supposed to be. But once you know what you are doing, it is a fun game.

Plays like the arcade game, but the controls are bad, and the gameplay is too difficult.

There are a lot of things wrong with this game. The computer player is broken, so you will need to play it with a human. Every pitch looks perfectly over the plate, but the player can choose a variety of pitches, such as curve balls and such, and those can't be hit, even though it looks like you can. The graphics are nice, at least compared to Home Run, but that's pretty much the only thing this game does right.

The game is played from an overhead view, and the action takes place horizontally. The game field scrolls back and forth. There are 5 players on each side. It is far too easy to tackle, since you don't have to actually touch the player with the ball, but just be near them. And the computer player is quite bad, so you need to play with a human. It's definitely better than Football.

This is a soccer game played on a horizontally-scrolling field. There are three players on each side, but no goalie, which is weird.

Definitely the best tennis game on 2600. Nice graphics and good gameplay, but it is almost too easy to volley back and forth, making for long games with little progress until somebody makes a dumb mistake.

The game is played from the side and above the court. There are two people per side, and they move together. But it is a bit too easy to volley, so the games are long with very little progress.

The gameplay is kind of confusing. You have to build walls around tomato plants to keep them from shooting at you.

Must use manual in order to understand the gameplay. The "riddles" you must solve are in the manual.

Fly a plane along a river, destroying enemy planes and helicopters. You must shoot fuel canisters to keep flying.

Like Battlezone, but not nearly as good.

Navigate a submarine in a side-view perspective to rescue divers from sharks.

It's a Pac-Man clone with underwater elements.

Jump ramps and ride through tubes. Repeatedly.

Played with an overhead view with the scenery scrolling from the bottom to the top of the screen.

Try to land on a pad while dealing with wind. The longer you wait to pull the rip cord, the higher your score. Two players can play simultaneously.

Slalom your plane between poles.

Plays sort of like Dodge 'em, but instead of collecting dots and avoiding collisions with the other car, here you try to shoot the other car. You also have more places to switch between the concentric tracks.

One person hides, the other finds them, terrible game.

Kind of like Galaga, Pac-Man and Q*Bert combined.

Nice graphics, but it has some gameplay flaws.

Port of Intellivision Space Battle. Fun game!

Shoot at aliens that come at you from the front and sides.

Plays like arcade. This is the game that launched the popularity of the 2600. If you hold Reset while turning the game on, you can shoot two bullets at a time instead of just one. Nice!

Pretty generic shmup.

Must use manual, very complex and challenging.

a.k.a. Space Combat, plays like arcade. Two space ships fly around and try to shoot each other.

This is a fun, but somewhat too easy, shmup.

Climb to the top of a building to put out a bomb planted by the Green Goblin.

Spike's Peak is a platformer across 4 screens that has you avoiding hazards (such as a bear or falling rocks) while climbing a moutain. This was usually included on rare double-ender cartridges from Xonox. One end would have Spike's Peak, and the other end of the cartridge would be a different game, like Artillery Duel.

Lasso cattle while riding a horse while the scenery scrolls from right to left.

Requires the use of the 8-button Touch Pad, which came with the game.

Shoot everything you can for 2 minutes and 16 seconds.

Fun game that includes a 2-player co-op mode.

Plays like arcade, nice graphics.

Side-view perspective of battle on Hoth against AT-ATs. No tow cables, though.

Like arcade. More faithful to the arcade than Defender.

Plays like Star Raiders, but without the keypad.

Travel along in your tank destroying everything in sight, and shooting fuel tanks to keep going.

Mix and match the Strawberry Shortcake characters. Not much fun, even for young kids.

This is a great overhead racing game that uses the paddles. It has several variations in addition to regular racing. It also has slalom skiing, a shmup-like game to see who can shoot the most targets, a game where you must match shapes that are falling from the top, a wagon-racing game, and a game where you must run over numbers, and the one with the most numbers wins. My kids like this one.

Summer Olympics, lots of joystick waggling, great for parties.

Not a whole lot different from the original Breakout, but generally better.

Port of Intellivision Baseball. It's better than the other baseball games on the 2600.

One of the best football games on 2600. Nice graphics. 5 players on each team. Horizontally-scrolling playing field.

Great action/adventure which has you catching all the criminals and Lex Luthor, continuously rescuing Lois Lane from said criminals, and putting back together a bridge that Lex Luthor blows up at the beginning of the game. All of which so you can change back to Clark Kent and go to work at the Daily Planet! Easily the best Superman game ever made.

Think Tron Light Cycles with plain, blocky graphics and primitive sound.

Requires comic book. Not very fun. This was the first of a four-part series. Only the first two games were released. The third game (Waterworld) was only available by mail-order (although a friend of mine somehow found one in a store). The fourth was never made.

Requires comic book. Not very fun. This was the second in the failed 4-part series.

Like arcade, but not as good. You can only shoot in three directions, where the arcade game let you fire at any angle in a 180-degree arc. The game uses the paddle controller, like the arcade, but since you only have three directions to fire, it was entirely unnecessary.

Realsports Tennis is much better

Fight your way through a room on fire to break through a door to rescue (apparently invisible) people before you escape yourself.

Pool/Billiards

Like Tempest in 2D.

Plays like the arcade, except you can only shoot to the side instead of in all four directions.

In many ways superior to the arcade version. Has horizontal and vertical scrolling sections. It has vertical and horizontal scrolling sections.

Plays like arcade, with a few key parts missing. For instance, once you beat a room, the map doesn't indicate it like the arcade does, so you just have to remember which ones you've done. The graphics are also pretty poor, which is shocking considering how poor the arcade's graphics are.

Awkward controls and long waits for the CPU to make its move.

Expect to wait a while for the computer to make its move, and apparently the CPU cheats.

Variations on Pong

Not nearly as good as Midnight Magic.

Defend your castle. Fun party game. I've played this with my kids, and they enjoyed it.

Winter Olympics. Great for parties. I play still this game with my wife and kids. The animation of the skier crashing is very funny.

This is a classic maze shmup, and it plays well on the 2600.

Think hangman, but you shoot down the letters to spell the word.

Shoot everything that moves while shooting fuel to keep going. Two players can play simultaneously.

This is a very well-known game where you must destroy a shield so you can shoot an alien inside, all while avoiding the attacks from the alien.

Plays like the arcade, except the game scrolls from the top down. It isn't isometric like the arcade.