Missile Command is a 1980 shoot 'em up arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. and licensed to Sega for Japanese and European releases. It was designed by Dave Theurer, who also designed Atari's vector graphics game Tempest from the same year. The game was released during the Cold War, and the player uses a trackball to defend six cities from intercontinental ballistic missiles by launching anti-ballistic missiles from three bases.
Pitfall! is a video game developed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 and released in 1982 by Activision. The player controls Pitfall Harry, who has a time limit of 20 minutes to seek treasure in a jungle. The game world is populated by enemies and hazards that variously cause the player to lose lives or points.
Lode Runner is a 2D puzzle-platform game, developed by Doug Smith and published by Broderbund in 1983. Its gameplay mechanics are similar to Space Panic from 1980. The player controls a character who must collect all the gold pieces in a level and get to the end while being chased by a number of enemies. It is one of the first games to include a level editor.
Warlords is an arcade game released by Atari, Inc. in 1980. The game resembles a combination of Breakout and Quadrapong ; up to four players play the game at the same time, and the "castles" in the four corners of the screen are brick walls that can be broken with a flaming ball.
Moon Patrol is a 1982 arcade video game developed and released by Irem. It was licensed to Williams for distribution in North America. The player controls a Moon buggy which can jump over and shoot obstacles on a horizontally scrolling landscape as well as shoot aerial attackers. Designed by Takashi Nishiyama, Moon Patrol is often credited with the introduction of full parallax scrolling in side-scrolling games. Cabinet art for the Williams version was done by Larry Day. Most of the home ports were from Atari, Inc., sometimes under the Atarisoft label.
Congo Bongo, also known as Tip Top, is a platform game released as an arcade video game by Sega in 1983. A message in the ROM indicates it was coded at least in part by the company Ikegami Tsushinki. The game is viewed in an isometric perspective, like Sega's earlier Zaxxon (1982), but does not scroll. Numerous home ports followed.
Demon Attack is a fixed shooter video game created by Rob Fulop for the Atari 2600 and published by Imagic in 1982. The game involves the player controlling a laser cannon from the surface of a planet, shooting winged demons that fly down and attack the player in different sets of patterns.
1982 was the peak year for the golden age of arcade video games as well as the second generation of video game consoles. Many games were released that would spawn franchises, or at least sequels, including Dig Dug, Pole Position, Mr. Do!, Zaxxon, Q*bert, Time Pilot and Pitfall! The year's highest-grossing video game was Namco's arcade game Pac-Man, for the third year in a row, while the year's best-selling home system was the Atari 2600. Additional video game consoles added to a crowded market, notably the ColecoVision and Atari 5200. Troubles at Atari late in the year triggered the video game crash of 1983.
Imagic was an American video game developer and publisher that created games initially for the Atari 2600. Founded in 1981 by corporate alumni of Atari, Inc. and Mattel, its best-selling titles were Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, and Demon Attack. Imagic also released games for Intellivision, ColecoVision, Atari 8-bit family, TI-99/4A, IBM PCjr, VIC-20, Commodore 64, TRS-80 Color Computer, and Magnavox Odyssey². Their Odyssey² ports of Demon Attack and Atlantis were the only third-party releases for that system in America. The company never recovered from the video game crash of 1983 and was liquidated in 1986.
Spelunker is a 1983 platform video game developed by Timothy G. Martin of MicroGraphic Image. It is set in a colossal cave, with the player starting at the cave's entrance at the top, and the objective is to get to the treasure at the bottom.
Venture is a fantasy-themed action game released as an arcade video game in 1981 by Exidy. Each level consists of a playable, overhead map view. Upon entering one of the rooms shown on the map, the game zooms in until the room fills the screen. As a round smiley-face named Winky, the goal is to collect the treasure in each of the rooms. Winky can shoot arrows at enemies which turn into slowly disintegrating corpses when hit. Corpses are deadly to the touch. Each room has a different layout, treasure, and enemies, and some rooms have special features, such as moving walls.
Frog Bog is a 1982 video game by Mattel Electronics for the Intellivision. An Atari 2600 conversion was released later that year as Frogs and Flies. In both games, each player controls a frog sitting on a lily pad, attempting to eat more flies than the other. Frog Bog is similar to the 1978 Sega-Gremlin arcade game Frogs.
Keystone Kapers is a platform game developed by Garry Kitchen for the Atari 2600 and published by Activision in 1983. The game involves a Keystone Cops-theme, with the player controlling police officer Kelly, who traverses the many levels of a department store, dodging objects to catch the escaped thief Harry Hooligan.
Astrosmash is a fixed shooter video game for the Intellivision console, designed by John Sohl, and released by Mattel Electronics in 1981. The player uses a laser cannon to destroy falling meteors, bombs, and other targets.
In the history of video games, the second-generation era refers to computer and video games, video game consoles, and handheld video game consoles available from 1976 to 1992. Notable platforms of the second generation include the Fairchild Channel F, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Odyssey 2, and ColecoVision. The generation began in November 1976 with the release of the Fairchild Channel F. This was followed by the Atari 2600 in 1977, Magnavox Odyssey² in 1978, Intellivision in 1980 and then the Emerson Arcadia 2001, ColecoVision, Atari 5200, and Vectrex, all in 1982. By the end of the era, there were over 15 different consoles. It coincided with, and was partly fuelled by, the golden age of arcade video games. This peak era of popularity and innovation for the medium resulted in many games for second generation home consoles being ports of arcade games. Space Invaders, the first "killer app" arcade game to be ported, was released in 1980 for the Atari 2600, though earlier Atari-published arcade games were ported to the 2600 previously. Coleco packaged Nintendo's Donkey Kong with the ColecoVision when it was released in August 1982.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons is an Intellivision game and was one of the first Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games to be licensed by TSR, Inc. It was later retitled to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Cloudy Mountain to distinguish it from the sequel, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin. It is the first Intellivision cartridge to use more than 4K of ROM.
Lock 'n' Chase (ロック・ン・チェイス) is a maze chase video game developed by Data East and released in arcades in Japan in 1981. It was licensed to Taito for distribution in North America. It has similarities to Pac-Man, including a goal of collecting dots, with the addition of doors that periodically block pathways. Home versions for the Intellivision and Atari 2600 were published by Mattel in 1982 and an Apple II version appeared in January 1983.
Tutankham is a 1982 arcade video game developed and released by Konami and released by Stern in North America. Named after the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, the game combines a maze shoot 'em up with light puzzle-solving elements. It debuted at the European ATE and IMA amusement shows in January 1982, before releasing worldwide in Summer 1982. The game was a critical and commercial success and was ported to home systems by Parker Brothers.
Riddle of the Sphinx is a vertically-scrolling action-adventure game written by Bob Smith for the Atari 2600 and published by Imagic in 1982. The player, as the Prince of Egypt, must collect treasures and gain strength to release the land from a vile curse.
