HuguesJohnson.com: Atari Catalog 1982 Scans

A friend of mine was moving and found some old Atari product catalogs buried in a box somewhere. He passed them on to me because he figured I was nerdy enough to care about them. He was right. These were standard pack-ins with Atari cartridges in the early 80s. This was a golden era when game boxes and advertisements had lavish artwork to compensate for the blocky graphics. Well, it would be a stretch to call this artwork "lavish" but it does a fine job of distracting you from what the games look like. Back then games were a lot of fun, even if you needed a bit of imagination to play them. I'll take any of these games over Grand Theft Auto II: San Vice Andreas City or whatever it's called.

All the images here are thumbnails, left-click to see the full-size image or right-click to save them.

Front Cover: This cover reminds me of a menu at a cheap Italian restaurant.

Introduction: "And now there's a network if local ATARI repair centers to help keep your game in good working order." I don't recall ever seeing an "ATARI repair center" but I lived in the middle of nowhere in 1982. I think this says a lot about how much console prices have fallen. If my Gamecube broke I wouldn't bother trying to find someone to fix it.

Skill Gallery: The skill gallery section seems to be the catch-all for titles that didn't fit into another category.

Demons to Diamonds: The first time I played this game was in the mid-90s on an emulator. At the time I thought it was awful, after reading this I now realize that it's meant for "young sharpshootes ages six through ten".

Breakout, Circus Atari, Human Cannonball, Maze Craze, Pac-Man, Sky Diver: So why didn't Atari give a whole page to their home version of Pac-Man? It was a huge deal to get that Pac-Man license, you'd think they'd want to show off the fine work they did on the home translation.

Super Breakout, Video Pinball, Classics Corner:I'm not writing these poignant comments in order. I kept putting this page off because nothing about it strikes me as noteworthy.

Backgammon, Casino, Othello, Tic-Tac-Toe, Checkers, Chess: I've done a pretty good amount of work with artificial intelligence programming. I'd love to know how they coded a chess algorithm on the limited memory of the 2600. I'd also love to know why they decided chess should be a one-player only game.

Space Station: Hyperbole alert - "these games are packed with action and imagination that's light years ahead of our time!"

Berzerk: This was a really great acid-trip of a game. There's an online version of it over at http://web.utanet.at/nkehrer/JBerzerk.html.

Star Raiders: I thought that video touch pad controller that was bundled with this game would go for a lot now.. turns out they're about $5 on eBay.

Asteroids, Defender, Missile Command, Space Invaders, Space War, Yars' Revenge: Asteroids is one of the better arcade ports for the 2600. Yar's Revenge is still confusing to me.

Adventure Territory: This artwork is straight out of a first edition AD&D manual.

Adventure, Haunted House, Superman: Haunted House and Adenture are two of my favorite 2600 games. Superman, on the other hand, was just plain confusing. I had no idea what I was supposed to do in that game. Has there ever been a good Superman video game?

Dodge 'Em, Indy 500, Night Driver, Slot Racers, Street Racer: I really like racing games even though I'm terrible at them. The 2600 had a strong racing library at the time even if the graphics weren't so hot.

Sports Arena: There's absolutely nothing that I like about baseball.

Basketball, Bowling, Football, Golf, Homerun, Pele's Soccer: Sports games have come a long way since 1982. Although there was a certain fun-factor to these classics that's missing from some modern sports titles.

Video Olympics, Combat Zone: I can't figure out which NBA player they're trying to rip-off with this artwork..

Air-Sea Battle, Canyon Bomber, Combat, Outlaw, Warlords: Outlaw is one of many games that I played 20+ years ago, liked, and then forgot what it was called.

Learning Center: Learning games for console systems always flopped. Of course Atari didn't know this at the time being the first console system to try it.

Math Gran Prix: I thought it was "Grand" Prix? Maybe I'm an idiot.

BASIC Programming, Brain Games, Codebreaker, Concentration, Hangman: I sure hope that's supposed to be a tail in the Hangman screenshot.

Accessories: This is my favorite page of the catalog, I wish I could find these accessories in good condition. What's polystyrene anyway?

Coming Attractions!: "At this very moment, our ATARI engineers are working on challenging and exciting new Game Program cartridges." This page has a reference to the Combat sequel that didn't see daylight until 2001.

Back Cover: This is tagged CO16725 Rev. E. From what I understand there were several different revisions of these catalogs. I can't tell you the difference though.

Atari Catalog 1981
Guide to Atari Catalogs
Sears Catalog Scans

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