Atari 2600 was my very first console. I enjoyed a great many games on it.

Like many other retro console fans, I still hold dear my NES, SNES, Master System, Mega Drive, PC Engine games today, and play them regularly. But I hadn't gone back to the Atari in almost two decades, and my box was nowhere to be found, so I downloaded an emulator and a full ROM set today.

It is shit. Really. After a random sample of 100 games, I can't find a single one I enjoy. Even the good old River Raid is a disappointment. Was my childhood a lie?

Please, let me find at least one truly good game on the system, it can't all be shit now... can it?

Combat

Space Invaders.
Pitfall
Breakout.

In your gaming quest did you try E.T.?

I really enjoyed In the Hall of the Mountain King. I tried it again a few years back and got some enjoyment out of it. It's hard, I've never beaten it, but I enjoy trying to beat it.

I think manuals are needed for many of the old games. They worked in tandem with your imagination.

The new Pac-Man homebrew.

The first I had as well. The Missile Command port on it is still one of my favorite games.

Pitfall is the only one I recall playing on the Atari2600, so it must've been fairly good to recall after all of these decades ;)

Grew with the NES, but i could play Atari 2600 and Colecovision at my friend's some years after their prime time... No game i can remember was appealing to kid me back then in 1985-1990, either...

My conclusion; at this point in history; technology was too basic to really allow creating "meaningful" interactive experiences beyond hypnotic Bip; Bip. Bip... Pac Man / Breakout / Space Invaders seem the best incarnations of that era holding up somewhat fun.

Edit : I can't personally comment on Pitfall; did not play that one. but it seem the most "meaningful" Atari 2600 videogame indeed; for what it could be.

As someone born just right at the dawn of the 16 bit era, but grew up with a NES, I think the only thing that really resembles a meaningful experience from the 2600 is Pitfall and II.

Maybe Adventure.

But make no bones about it. Whatever games the Atari 2600 did, they were done better on other platforms.

pitfall holds a special place in my rotting heart and I love it to death. I own a pretty much new Sears Tele-Games model and pitfall with pac-man that's pretty much it, Still looking for asteroids and pong and done my collection.

Damn, I was going to say River Raid...

But I think you are onto something. Atari 2600 (VCS) was from the era where games were mostly poor arcade conversions and other simple action games where you usually couldn't save progress. Other gaming systems from that era were e.g. Mattel Intellivision, Colecovision, Commodore VIC-20, Texas Instruments TI-99/4A etc...

NES, SNES, Commodore 64, Apple IIc etc. were from a new generation. There you could get more advanced games and completely new genres where you could actually save progress, like adventure games, RPGs, (flight) simulations, strategy games etc.

Plus, Atari 2600 specifically... frankly I felt it was a bit shitty system already back then. Usually if an arcade game had home ports, the Atari version was the worst of them all. Zaxxon? Pac Man? Pole Position? Space invaders? LOL, the Atari version suxxxxxorzzzz!

Pitfall and Combat if you have someone else to play with.

Good riddance, I say too. Not missing any. Many of the better game ideas have been remade later on with much better result.

Defender
Asteroids
Chess

Wait... those are probably for the 5200...

So many.

Combat
Space Invaders
Video Olympics
Night Driver
Tennis
Indy 500

Even Superman (one of the first adventure games I played and finished) was great.

There are probably some more I'm forgetting. I also liked , that I played once in a mall, and [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pslbO6Fddhw]Pitfall, that my brother borrowed from a friend for a day. But I didn't put enough playtime into those to really know.

The main issue with emulators, though, are the controllers. It's hard to emulate the 2600 joystick in Combat, for instance, and how well it worked with the gameplay.