Top 20 Atari 2600 Games Worth Playing Today 

Honestly my fav game of all of these was combat, i remember me and my brother playing it for hours when we finished our chores in vacations

My mom brought me to a store I haven't been to before, and they let me test some games on their TV over the counter. I tested a few, but ended with Frostbite. I played that a few times and loved it. I asked my mom to buy me that game, and she did. I played that game for years. It is a great game and I have so may great memories with it.

Adventure is one of my favorite games of all time. I came up with the idea of randomized levels too add to replay ability but thought this would never happen. It actually happened with Atari Vault collection. Hero, Pitfall, River Raid, Berzerk, and a few others are still a blast.

One of my top games for the 2600 was Joust. Ms. Pac Man was also great. Kaboom is fantastic and I do play it from time to time.

Adventure was such a landmark game. First video game RPG. First open-world exploring game. First easter egg (the "secret room.") While it doesn't really hold up today, at the time it was completely revolutionary and groundbreaking; and hence remains one of my all time favorites.

Thank you for including the very end of the Adventure game! I was hoping you would show the complete game!! Great description, incredible game for the time! One of my favs!

The one I played over and over was pitfall, loved it! Thank you for the great video Mark!

Finally. I have seen so many RU-vidrs play space invaders by blowing away the bottom guys first it's shameful. Thanks for actually knowing how to play the game. Hahahaha subbed.

Thank you so much. You just brought me back to 8 years old!!!!! LOL!!! !980 is when I got my first Atari.

Gosh, this video brings back a lot of memories.

Ah im very partial to this system got it for my 6th birthday with super breakout and e.t. one of the best days of my life

Cool game reviews and list, thank you!

When I was a child I also loved "Jungle Hunt", "Tutankham", "Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi. Death Star Battle".

Amazing video, this took me back many many years, can't believe how many games I forgot about

I got Atari 2600 from 1980 and played until about 1985. Probably had about 30-40 cartridges so I’m always amazed by how many of the games on these “greatest hits” lists I’ve never played or even seen. Jungle Hunt is one of my favourites. Thanks for all the time and effort you put into this list. Very informative and fun to watch. 🎉

I loved Indy 500!!! It was a 2 player racing game and it came with special controllers that looked like paddles but instead would rotate all the way around with out stopping like the paddles did. Played the ice track for hours- so much fun!

Dodge 'Em, Yar's Revenge, Demon Attack which is similar to Phoenix, Cosmic Ark, Maze Craze, Tutankham, Venture, Mouse Trap, Keystone Kapers. There are some of the one that I still like to play.

Nice to see Combat and Video Olympics (almost) make the list. Some games I enjoy that you did not mention are Asteriods, Spy Hunter, Breakout, Omega Race, Q*bert, Montezuma's Revenge, and Wizard of Wor.

Played these games in the 80”s with my Brother. He saved the games and controller and dropped them back to me. Now playing with my 10 year old Son. What a blast today! Our favorite is HERO !

This a really solid list. I have most of these and played the heck out of them as a kid. Kaboom, somehow, has always been my favorite but you really need original hardware and a paddle.

Great video! I'd forgotten how good Phoenix looked.

Great Video. Thanks for introducing me to Aardvark

I've seen many of these lists. Thanks for including the Starpath games.

Great call out for putting berserk and combat towards the top. Space invaders was so awesome (i flipped score back to zero). I was really taken with Raiders of the Lost Ark. what a great title I never hear mentioned.

Great list and concise look at all of these, thanks.

That's a wonderful list I have not heard of many of those ones! My favourite games when I was a kid was: Dark Chambers and Quick Step. ❤

Beautiful list! Didnt know most of these good looking games existed!

Agreed on Phoenix and Berserk, as being the best arcade ports on the system and perhaps even more playable than the arcade versions, as you mentioned. I thought Enduro should have made the list for its groundbreaking technical achievement and replayability

Great list.

I got my atari 2600 in 1981 when Space Invaders was the big christmas hit. The base pack came with combat. I still fire up Space Invaders on my MiSTer FPGA on a regular basis. I loved that game as a kid 🙂 There is an "A.I." romhack for combat which allows you to play single player with a computer controller tank. pretty cool.

I loved all of them and you got the number order right too.

Raider of the lost ark, Dig dug, Enduro and Jungle hunt, 4 little gems.

I used to be able to play a game of space invaders forever - rolling the points over multiple times in one go. The only thing that would cause me to die would be mom calling for dinner. Good times.

It’s unfortunate that you you weren’t a fan of Yars. It was one of the first games that included evolving levels and difficulty that required more than just adapting to faster speed for higher levels. The enemy got faster and smarter while you had to concoct a new strategy using unboosted and unchanged skills. Imagine Bezerk where you could only fire to the right and the enemy robots fire could chase you around the screen. It was an early masterpiece.

Oh my word ...my stomach just turned when I started watching this The memories are deep :-)

Loved frostbite and enduro best, I have them on my Gameboy now...🌴🌴

These 2 player games were very good head-to-head with a friend: Tennis, Ice Hockey, and, for a nostalgic laugh, Basketball….

Turmoil was the most frantic shooter for that system for sure. That game got very fast. It was my favorite 2600 game as a kid. I used to wish the NES would have got an even faster sequel with bosses... no such luck. Some other good 2600 games are TOWERING INFERNO COMMANDO RAID TUNNEL RUNNER

Good list. It's astounding that they were able to make Pitfall 2 and HERO on the 2600 - those are relatively complex games. I would have put Superman on this list as well - quite a good game for the time.

This was a very solid list, I have to say.

Great list! I'd add Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of The Lost Ark, Haunted House, Missile Command and Defender as well.

In the show Clarence, Clarence and his stepdad play a game called "dragon's cusp" which is a nod to Adventure .

Everybody's list of favorite games have some that are different, mainly because they had a specific cartridge and not another. It's good to see Atari games before Space Invaders mentioned. I wouldn't mind watching a video about their "best" or favorite games before January 1980's Space Invaders release. Also Atari only put out 5 games in 1984 after the Crash, and other companies put out a few, like those you mentioned, but I bought no new games in 1984!

I had to rewind when you said, "Number 9" a few times. Reminded me of something :&)

Nice selection. Check out Beamrider, Snoopy vs The Red Baron, Fantastic Voyage and Laser Gate if you don't know these games. They're very good!

I was a big fan of Dark Cavern (also sold as Night Stalker for the Coleco system). While not an actual Atari release it, and Haunted House, were my favorite games from the 1980s.

Superman was also a great game. It doesn't get much love though. What I liked the most about it was that the better you got, the quicker the game was over. For a lot of other games, when you got really good it meant playing for hours which eventually gets boring.

Adventure was just mind-boggling when I popped that cartridge (label then were just some weird alphanumeric symbol and no graphical dragon yet) into my VCS. Multiple screen plays were incredible to me 45 years ago !! They captured the look-and-feel of the game Phoenix perfectly !! I couldn't believe they could do River Raid & H.E.R.O on such primitive 2600 hardware. Got a party? Put on that packing combat game & see how it drew in the crowd !!

Yar's Revenge is great. Good list!

Really great inclusions, some I would have added myself, some I didn't know much about. I came to Adventure relatively late and it's now one of my top games. You try the homebrew Adventure II? I feel like the base came can be improved by just adding a mixture of new elements but the basic game's mastery component, where if you learn how the world works you get better at it, is hard to get past.

My favorite on this list is Yar's Revenge. It was a fantastic game to spend a little or kill a lot of time! Battlezone was one of my favorites as well, and I still think it has some of the best graphics on the system. Combat was a fun one I used to play with my dad. The Atari had a lot of bad games that I would challenge as even being games, but, when it was right, it was sooo right! I had a lot of fun times with it!

I remember being able to rent the games from my local "video shop" and the likes of ET , Indiana Jones etc. But Combat and River Raid were our goto games. For years after getting rid of the 2600 (and moving onto computers) my mother would refer to us playig computer games as "ding dinging" - as a reference to River Raid.

Breakout with the paddle controllers was one of my favorites. The 2600 version was underrated.

My older brother lived at home forever and had a lot of disposable income so I got to play many of the ones listed here! The parachute game and fishing derby were funny to play when you got bored and purposely lose like the end of the Simpsons episode where Bart is choking on the Lee Trevino golf! Haha! My friends & I agreed in high school that the funniest characters in Space Invaders was the second to the bottom row with the little guys shooby doing their feet back and forth! Good #1 because Adventure was the one I played the most in addition to Othello.

Brings back all the memories of my childhood with my brothers. Oh and dont forgrt E.T. the game. I LOVED IT!

6:49--I think River Raid is the absolute BEST GAME EVER!

Asterix was my fav. I loved it.

Not a bad list. Completely missed Pitfall 2. Came out near the end of life for the 2600 and had an extra-large (for the time) memory chip in the cartridge. The playable "maze" of the cavern was huge for a 2600 game. Would not see games that size until NES, at least for my basement back in my childhood.

"Krull" and "ET: The Extra Terrestrial" are both severely underrated Atari 2600 games. The bad reputation of ET is undeserved and likely comes from people refusing to read the instruction manual that comes with the game. Krull is also easier to figure out if you read the instructions.

Yar’s Revenge!! Takes me back

Some great choices here. Bouncing bullets in Combat was the best!

I completely agree with your list. Greetings

Love that Adventure is #1!

Our generation is the best! We have seen the evolution of the video games industry from the pong and Atari days to what it is now! We are so lucky

I really enjoyed Activision Anthology on the GBA. I have a consolized Gameboy Advance and love playing in Pixel mode using my NES Online controller using the 8bitdo SNES dongle. Great games. Robo Tank is really my favorite. It's a Battlezone clone.

combat was great if u got in sum corners and kept going in a tight circle it would glitch and flip you to the other side

Glad you put Adventure at the top! Also glad to see Dragonstomper and Phaser Patrol. Personally I would put Superman on the list as a cousin of Adventure, and Communist Mutants from Space as the best bottom shooter. And also Escape from the Mindmaster, a Supercharger game where you are walking first person through mazes, solving puzzles, and avoiding a bad robot. True fact: once in the 1980s, the Mind Master declared me Awesome. How many people can say that?

"Rotondella", that resembles "rondelli" that's something kinda good, but at least it is not "tortelli", the huge "raviolli" that could be wonderful but it is mistakenly filled with pumpkin (I hate pumpkin). Great video btw, thank you.

I really recommend Thunderground, Star Trek, Space Jockey, Mountain King, Blueprint, Tunnel Runner, Turbo, Myst and Battle Tank. My Favorite top ten probably even though I haven't tried Myst and Turbo yet.❤ Great games.

Great list! IMHO just one game missing: Cristal Castles

Imagine if Warlords was created a little later on. The quality of later games such as Stargate, Millipede and Ms Pacman proves that so much more could have been accomplished especially with the graphics. Maybe some home brewer could build an enhanced version on an 8k or 16k cartridge? It's also a pity that the new CX-30+ paddles are only available packaged with a multi-game cartridge (and are now out of stock). I really want four paddles for my original six-switcher along with two of the out-of-stock CX40+ joysticks. I'm hoping they will be more robust than the originals. My old controllers have been broken for years. :(

@9:08 “Somebody get this freak’n duck away from me!” - SB

You forgot Haunted House and how playing it as a kid with the lights off in the house was an experience.

I remember I was trying to install an Atari 2600 emulator on certain machine, and when I set it up finally, I had just like two or three roms available to test, I tried with "Dragonstomper", never heard about it, so I tried with that... I was about 3 hours playing, it was ridiculous. Good game.

Another fun one I had as a kid and kinda creepy was Haunted House. Had some of the same elements mentioned for Adventure.

I think people would have been interested to know Dragonstomper used a cassette tape to play.

I find these games to be a bit more playable on a mobile solution like a miyoo mini plus or similar. It's good to get in and get a couple quick minutes of fun and they look better on the small screen too, vs trying to play em on a TV.

Loved pitfall and the Olympic one that would have the marathon on the end and break your controller. Lol

Imagic Atlantis ... simple but satisfying

I would add a couple of titles: - Solaris (a masterpiece on VCS) - Ms.Pac-Man (different levels, great gameplay) - Pac-Man Jr. (great scrolling environment) - Crystal Castles (excellent arcade conversion) - Kung Fu Master (incredible arcade conversion) not counting some modern homebrews like Mappy :)

Solid list. I feel that River Raid gets a little overrated, but this list certainly gives deference to some obscure titles, cheers to that.

*sees Phoenix at #4* "Demon Attack's a ripoff of Phoenix" THANK YOU. Phoenix doesn't get enough love and it seems most people remember Demon Attack over it. To me, Phoenix is the best of its kind (the "you get the bottom of the screen and the top is a bunch of enemies" kind of space shooters, not the side scrollers or open field ones)

These games should be on the list: Boing!, Ms. Pacman, Pacman Jr, and Pole Position.

I might try dragon stomper it looks good

I enjoyed and finished Montezuma's Revenge back in the day. IIRC there was no ending, just a black screen.

Amanecimos jugando ❤❤❤

Omg sky diver :D Fishing derby :')

Warlords arcade game version was off the hook!

Snoopy and the Red Baron was always my favorite on the Atari 2600

Don't forget the cheat in Adventure game. The hidden dot that blinks that allowed you pass through the blinking area to see the makers names😄

Had Phoenix, but it came out with the Atari Force comic.

There's more games...but anyway...thank you for bring me a lot of memories from my childhood 😎

Aardvark looks like the most fun game here. HERO looks like the best game. Are any of these on the Switch collections?

I love Atari 2600 because is part of My life.

It's refreshing to see someone who seems to know where he's going in Adventure. When you know your way around, there's nothing more nerve racking than watching somebody else skip happily along some dead end path and get eaten. Only part that got me nervous was plowing through those dragons like that. Occasionally, they'll surprise you with a one bite kill, or you won't pass through them and get stuck in their mouth until you die. I usually tap their mouth until they bite, then back out to the left and jump over them while they're frozen. I try to always have room for that by never traveling too close to the left walls when they're in pursuit. You can also temporarily ditch one by letting him chase you toward any room to your left, and stop the second you get into the room, so you're close to the right side. When the dragon catches up he'll bite you and get warped around offscreen somewhere to the far left. If you hang out there too long, he'll show back up, but if you're headed to the right, you just lost him. You can also dump them into open castles by letting them chase you toward the gate, but as you approach it, slide up the left wall of the doorway so you hit the wall beside the actual gate and won't enter. The dragons need to be on your right to kill you, so the second they try, they'll hit the gate and disappear into the castle. AFAIK, they can't come back out on their own unless they chase you out, or get carried out by the bat (in which case, you're still free of them for the next 12 seconds). Only unlikely exception would be the yellow guy, if his arch enemy yellow key happened to be sitting right in the first room. Long live Warren Robinett.

Here are some of my favs on the console: Defender Solris Pole Position Laser Gates Robot Tank Frogger Spider Figher Plaque Attack Moon Patrol Joust

I wouldn't say this is the best game, but it is the one I played the most is Indiana Jones. I wanted to win that game so bad and i think I might have done so, but when I completed the game, it didn't tell me that I won, it just showed a skull being lifted up on a something like a scissor lift. But I think it might have done a variation of this if you lost - I think if you lost it didn't lift it up high. The time I won, it lifted up higher. I might be remembering all this incorrectly - you have to remember this was nearly 40 years ago.

I would put Solaris on this list. It was in my opinion fun space game fighter game on the system. I would put Asteroids as a runner up.

List of games mentioned: Honorables: - Warlords - Video Olympics 20 - Jawbreaker 19 - Solar Fox 18 - Sky Diver 17 - Yars Revenge 16 - Frostbite 15 - Turmoil 14 - Fishing Derby 13 - Kaboom 12 - Battlezone 11 - Aardvark 10 - Dragonstomper 9 - Pitfall 1 & 2 8 - Space Invaders 7 - Phaser Patrol 6 - River Raid 5 - Combat 4 - Phoenix 3 - Berzerk 2 - H.E.R.O. 1 - Adventure

If you like combat, do not forget to try 2 slot racer players, and try to hit the opponent by turning the bullets in the corners, hehe Congratulations for your video, thank you very much Ah Missile command