Activision: We put YOU in the game!

Activision stuff was just awesome. I can't think of any other words to describe their stuff. They took the 2600 VCS and gave it colors, sounds, and gameplay that were simply unmatched by anyone else in the field. Immediately one thinks of such great games as Pitfall, Kaboom, and Keystone Kapers when one thinks of Activision, and with good reason. They were the best. Period.

Catalog #3:

Activision Video Game Cartridge Catalog from Winter/Spring 1984 (Almost Crash time)

This catalog has some of Activision's late releases for the 2600 VCS, right before the great crash occurred. They did release other games after the crash, like River Raid II, Rampage, Kung Fu Master, Commando and others, but the fire they had behind pushing their games was lost by then. Activision still exists though, and makes excellent software (i.e. MechWarrior for the PC). The same cannot be said for other companies. Just look at Atari themselves.

Click on the thumbnail for the full image:

The front and back cover, respectively. The back cover notes some of the Activision titles available for the Intellivision.

Some of their later releases. Activision had sort of a "standard" cart style during their earlier years, but they seemed to have abandoned it when they released some of these games. It isn't a bad thing, these games were still VERY good. Just a change.

Featured: H.E.R.O., Enduro, Pitfall II, Pressure Cooker

Featured: Frostbite, Beamrider, Decathlon, Robot Tank. Robot Tank is one of the more notorious titles due to the massive bankswitching that it incorporates in its design. Kevin Horton was almost on the brink of having to design a portion of his Bankzilla hardware emulator just for Robot Tank. ugh.

Activision also reached out for Colecovision! Featured: River Raid, Pitfall!

Here are some of the games that Activision pursued for the Atari 5200 and 8-bit computers. Featured: Pitfall, Kaboom, River Raid, Megamania. A note: The 5200 version of Kaboom plays a note of the 1812 Overture for every bomb you catch!

Catalog #4:

Activision Video Game Cartridge Catalog from 1981

This one is from when Activision was just making headway into programming games for the 2600 VCS.

Click on the thumbnail for the full image:

The cover

Now this is pretty cool. During this period of time, Atari was deathly afraid of other companies finding out who their programmers were and stealing them. Mattel was kind of the same way about the Blue Sky Rangers. However, Activision didn't give a damn. Really! To the extent of broadcasting this fact. Yessir, Activision included photographs and biographies of its programmers in its catalogs, each programemr was featured in the catalog of his/her game with a writeup and photo, and their names were included on their cart's labels. The above is one of those catalog pages featuring programmer bios.

Featured: Alan Miller, David Crane, Larry Kaplan, Bob Whitehead.

Cut these guys some slack. Hey, they were just recovering from the 70's, ok?

Boxing, Skiing, Fishing Derby, Tennis, Dragster, Freeway, Laser Blast, Kaboom

Checkers and Bridge. These are among two of the harder to find Activision titles, IMO.

Go back