List of Atari, Inc. games
Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and video game console and home computer development company which operated between 1972 and 1984. During its years of operation, it developed and produced over 350 arcade, console, and computer games for its own systems, and almost 100 ports of games for home computers such as the Commodore 64. Atari began its operations by developing and producing some of the first arcade video games; the first commercial arcade video game, "Computer Space", was released in November 1971 by Atari founders Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney in partnership as Syzygy Engineering. The game in part marked the end of the early history of video games and the start of the rise of the commercial video game industry. After its founding in 1972, Atari released "Pong", believed to be the third arcade video game after "Computer Space" and a clone game and the first commercially successful arcade video game machine, and thereafter produced numerous arcade games, including video games and pinball machines.
Atari 2600
Despite Bushnell's retirement in 1978, Warren Robinett's invention of the first action-adventure game, "Adventure", was developed the same year and changed the fundamentals of gaming as it unlocked a game with a "virtual space bigger than the screen". However, the VCS still had gained a killer application to sell the console, and it had suffered the loss of programmers David Crane, Bob Whitehead, Larry Kaplan, and Alan Miller, the company's "Fantastic Four", who had programmed most of the successful VCS games to that point. The four left Atari disgruntled over Warner's oversight of the company and treatment of programmers in 1978, and formed the firm Activision, which would give rise to third-party software for the VCS. While the VCS was the best-selling console during the 1979 holiday season with over 1 million units sold, Atari saw newfound competition from the Mattel Intellivision and Magnavox Odyssey², both systems that also used swapable ROM cartridges.
Atari then licensed the arcade hit "Space Invaders" by Taito, which greatly increased the unit's popularity when it was released in January 1980, doubling sales to over 2 million units. The VCS and its cartridges were the main factor behind Atari grossing more than $2 billion in 1980. Sales then doubled again for the next two years; by 1982, the console had sold 10 million units, while its best-selling game "Pac-Man" sold 7 million copies. The console also sold 450,000 units in West Germany by 1984.