If you remember the early eighties, then you remember the golden age of video games, when stand-up versions of games were available at places known as arcades. However, when it came to playing video games at home, one gaming system was king, at least before Nintendo came along, and that was the Atari 2600. Atari has now bought 100 games to Steam in what is known as the Atari Vault, and here is a full list as well as a price.
If you head to the Steam Store now, you should be about to get $100 games for just $17. These were all games that Atari put out in their colorful boxes with box art that looked nothing like what was on the screen. Here is a full list of the games.
- 3D Tic Tac Toe - 2600
- Adventure - 2600
- Air Sea Battle - 2600
- Asteroids - 2600
- Asteroids - Arcade
- Asteroids Deluxe - Arcade
- Backgammon - 2600
- Basic Math - 2600
- Basketball - 2600
- Black Widow - Arcade
- Blackjack - 2600
- Bowling - 2600
- Brain Games - 2600
- Breakout - 2600
- Canyon Bomber - 2600
- Casino - 2600
- Centipede - 2600
- Centipede - Arcade
- Championship Soccer - 2600
- Checkers - 2600
- Chess - 2600
- Circus Atari - 2600
- Code Breaker - 2600
- Combat - 2600
- Combat 2 - 2600
- Concentration - 2600
- Crystal Castles - 2600
- Crystal Castles - Arcade
- Demons to Diamonds - 2600
- Desert Falcon - 2600
- Dodge-Em 2600
- Double Dunk - 2600
- Fatal Run - 2600
- Flag capture - 2600
- Football - 2600
- Golf - 2600
- Gravitar - 2600
- Gravitar - Arcade
- Hangman - 2600
- Haunted House - 2600
- Homerun - 2600
- Human Cannonball - 2600
- Liberator - Arcade
- Lunar Lander - Arcade
- Major Havoc - Arcade
- Maze Craze - 2600
- Millipede - 2600
- Millipede - Arcade
- Miniature Golf - 2600
- Missile Command - 2600
- Missile Command - Arcade
- Night Driver - 2600
- Off the Wall - 2600
- Outlaw - 2600
- Pong - Arcade
- Quadrun - 2600
- Race - 2600
- Radar Lock - 2600
- RealSports Baseball - 2600
- RealSports Basketball - 2600
- RealSports Boxing - 2600
- RealSports Football - 2600
- RealSports Soccer - 2600
- RealSports Tennis - 2600
- RealSports Volleyball - 2600
- Red Baron - Arcade
- Return to Haunted House - 2600
- Save Mary - 2600
- Secret Quest - 2600
- Sentinel - 2600
- Sky Diver - 2600
- Slot Machine - 2600
- Slot Racers - 2600
- Sword Quest Fireworld - 2600
- Space Duel - Arcade
- Space War - 2600
- Sprint - Arcade
- Sprint Master - 2600
- Star Raiders - 2600
- Starship - 2600
- Steeplechase - 2600
- Stellar Track - 2600
- Street Racer - 2600
- Stunt Cycle - 2600
- Sub Commander - 2600
- Super Baseball - 2600
- Super Breakout - Arcade
- Super Breakout -2600
- Super Football - 2600
- Surround - 2600
- Sword Quest Earthworld - 2600
- Sword Quest Waterworld - 2600
- Tempest - 2600
- Tempest - Arcade
- Video Cube - 2600
- Video Olympics - 2600
- Video Pinball - 2600
- Warlords - 2600
- Warlords - Arcade
- Yars Revenge - 2600
Some of those who remember the 80's might be disappointed that some of their favorite 2600 games are not on the list. For example, Activision's fun catalog that included Pitfall isn't there, as is any other games from Parker Brothers like Frogger. Atari used to have a catalog that came with games with their label on it, and they never included third-party brands in it.
Millennials will appreciate the nostalgic factor of these games, and they have support for a controller. They also have some self-hosted online multi-player and Steam leaderboard integration, as well as a 3D view of the classic box or cabinet for each game. Another audience that will appreciate it are all those who have been playing pirated ROMs on emulators, which have a tendency not to work at times.
So that is 100 games for $17, which averages out to about 6 cents per game. Considering that these games used to cost $20-40 per cartridge, that is a deal. Of course, most of these games have really bad graphics in comparison to today's standards, up to the point where the player is just a square or a rectangle.
However, some of these games are from the "silver days" back when Atari stopped using bright colors on their packages and shifted to silver. Those games had a quality of graphics that was a little bit better than their first efforts. It might be worth the purchase just to play those few games.
