Pac-Man: This game was one of the most highly anticipated games of 1981, and THOUSANDS of people signed up to buy it from dealers before it hit the stores. I remember waiting with bated breath on mine to finally get in at Sears. This game is horrible, folks. It is a crummy rendition of the game, and apparently Atari gave the programming assignment to someone that had really never even seen the game before. It still didn't prevent me from being an idiot and playing it for hours, though.

Pac-Man is among the more notorious carts among collectors, as it and Combat were both pack-ins at some point during the VCS console's marketing, and also sold separately. This coupled with the fact that both games sold quite a large number, means that there are many more carts still in existence than there are consoles. So, when you hit your local thrift, don't be surprised to see a box full of thirty combats and Pac-Men and nothing else.

Video Chess: Before bankswitching became a big practice to improve graphics and gameplay, Atari's games had to fit inside of 4k of memory. So it is beyond incredible that an ingenious programmer at Atari managed to write a Chess program in 6507 asm which would present something of a challenge and STILL fit in a 4k ROM. This game is a testament to Atari's games of the time. Higher difficulty levels of the game present a greater challenge, of course the computer might take days to make a move.