Best Games on the Atari 8-bits

For the purposes of my computer game commentary I refer to Atari Inc.'s 8-bit Atari 400 and 800 of November of 1979 as Western home omputer game machines.

The Atari 400, 600, 800, 1200 and XE are also referred to as the Atari 8 Bit Family or the Atari 8-bits; I myself prefer to refer to them as the Atari 8-bits.

cf. Atari ST 16 bit micro.

The Atari 8-bits are powered by 8-bit MOS Tech 6502s clocked at 1.77-1.79 MHz.

In the U.K. in December of 1981 the 16K Atari 400 retailed for £340 whereas the 16K Atari 800 retailed for £645. By December of 1982 they were retailing for £199 and £499 respectively. By December of 1983 the 16K Atari 400 retailed for £135, the 16K Atari 800 retailed for £269, the 16K 600XL retailed for £160 and 16K Atari 800XL retailed for £249. By December of 1984 the 64K Atari 800XL retailed for £169 and the 48K Atari 800 retailed for £69. Atari released the 800XL-compatible 64K Atari 65XE and 128K Atari 130XE in January of 1985. In the U.K. the Atari 130XE retailed for £170 by May of 1985. The XE line was housed in ST-like wedge-type cases. The XEs were attractive in the mid 80s to early 90s because they were cheap, small in size, light in weight and backwards-compatible with the massive Atari 8-bit software catalogue that stemmed back to 1979.

The initial American Atari 400's standard 8K of RAM was expandable to 16K whereas the Atari 800's 16K of standard RAM was expandable to 48K via three 16K plastic-enclosed CX853 memory modules. Software was distributed on Atari program cartridges, cassette tapes and 5.25" 184K DS floppy disks. The tape drive was the 410 Program Recorder and the disk drive was the 810 Disk Drive or the 815 Dual Disk Drive. Up to four disk drives could be daisy-chained. The Atari 800 featured a proper full-stroke typewriter keyboard and video monitor jack whereas the 400 only had a membrane keyboard and TV switchbox.

Atari 8-bit computer input devices included 1-button digital joysticks and analog paddle controllers (4x controller jacks that allowed for 4-player simultaneous play in some games). The Atari 800 featured 4-voice audio and could display 16-colors drawn from a palette of 128. The Atari 800 featured 9x graphics modes and 3x text modes. The highest display resolution is 320x192 pixels. Many Atari 8-bit games featured coinop-quality screen-scrolling and sprite-shifting by 1982.

Masterminded by Jay Miner the Atari 8-bits employ custom chips known as ANTIC, C/GTIA and POKEY. C/GTIA and ANTIC are the successors to Jay Miner's TIA of the Atari VCS of 1977 (the Atari 2600 video game console) and precursors to Amiga Denise and Agnus, respectively.

Jay Miner is also The Father of the Commodore Amiga: the origin of the Amiga's custom chipset lies in the Atari 8-bits, not the Commodore 64.

This makes Jay Miner one of the greatest LSI and VLSI architects in home computer history; even Chuck Peddle acknowledged Jay Miner's 8-bit custom chipset -- and Chuck Peddle engineered the PET and was involved in the design of the 6502, 6800 and the VIC, all of which were incalculably influential.

The Atari 8-bits are legendary microcomputers. The Atari 8-bits were the first to feature hardware-accelerated line-draws, flood-fills, scrolling and sprites. Even the sound chip was rock-solid. There were graphics-coding routines executable by Atari 8-bits that NO other micros could execute until the advent of the Amiga, six years later. The Atari 8-bits were basically 8-bit Amigas. Several of the best American coders got their start on the Atari 8-bits, subsequently building super-franchises on the PC that are still going strong in 2025.

By the mid-80s Atari 8-bit audiovisuals were (in most cases) eclipsed by the Commodore 64's SID and VIC-II, but for several years the Atari 8-bits were numero uno; certainly, they were the only micros that could evoke "arcade-quality" in their games-catalogue. But the Atari 8-bits were not just for arcade games, they innovated as well.

In my estimation the best Atari 8-bit game is First Star's Boulder Dash of 1984, which also came out first on the Atari 8-bits. To this day, this is THE greatest version of Boulder Dash; it is better than ALL subsequent ports and versions. This is GREATNESS IN GAMEPLAY, right here. And Boulder Dash is also a technical marvel.

You can read about these three GOAT-level shooters in Defender-likes:

Dropzone of 1984:

Fort Apocalypse of 1982:

Protector of 1981:

If you played Protector for the first time in 2025, you'd find it hard to believe that it came out in 1981 on 1979 hardware. Protector is an ancient yet ageless game.

Dandy 1983 (coinop-quality 8-way shooter with 4-player simultaneous play):