A Little History About Atari 2600 Games

Back in a generation, a long, long time ago, the first video game system was launched.. In 1972, Atari Launched Pong, which was Atari's first successful video game system. That slow square that bounced across the screen.

Pong really got the ball rolling, that started the merger between sears and atari, creating tele-games in late 1975. Many of atari's first games on the 2600 were tele-games. Sears and atari had a great merger, so to speak. Sears gave atari another outlet to sell their games and systems.

Lets not get to far ahead of ourselves, atari released Pinball by Atari which, really seems similar to pong, and one year later in 1976 and then Atari released Stunt Cycle based of the stunts of Evel Knievel. So by late 1977 atari had released 3 systems, and then they released their million dollar baby! The Atari 2600, with the Classic woody cross grain, and 6 switches they release in late 1977. So with the success of atari, along came competition to Coleco, Odyssey, Bally, Zircon, and others.

The late 70's saw many games systems, but also created a few smash hits , Space Invaders, and Night Driver. As most of us know space invaders, which was a very popular game with atari. Night Driver, wasn't so popular, but was Very Very influential, with games even today. Night Driver was a one person driving game, even though it might have been basic when it was created, but it carries the torch to such games as Need For Speed and Pole Position. Those two games, may not have made it, if it were not for the innovations from That game Night Drive way back in 1976.

In the coming years, more game developers started to evolve, many who are still around today. From Nintendo releasing Donkey Kong in the early 1980's, to Namco releasing one of the most popular games Pac-Man, and Sega with Buck Rodgers Planet. That's the interesting part about the history of video games, many of the companies of today first started out creating games in the late 70's and early 80's.