Atari 7800 Console Games Source Code

As it's July 4th here's something slightly off-topic. Back in the early 1980s, Atari ruled the roost in video games. They'd started in 1972 and Pong was the first creation followed the by the Atari VCS console (aka 2600). For a while Atari was the fastest growing company in the US but in 1983 the whole video game market crashed and Atari's consumer division was sold to Jack Tramiel, He was the founder of a typewriter import and repair company Commodore Business Machines that went into calculators and home computers. They were the company that produced the CBM-Vic, 64. He left them in 1984 and bought Atari.

Before the ST Atari had a couple of home computers the Atari 400 and 800. I did a game conversion on an 800 but that's another story. Just after the Atari ST was launched Atari launched the 7800 console. It was basically a souped up Atari VCS with a better 6502 CPU and a different graphic architecture. it suffered from a variety of problems, mainly lack of games and by 1992 it was dead.

Thanks to someone dumpster diving, commented source code was located and the Atari Museum website has made these available. games include Ms Pacman, Dig Dug, Joust and nearly a dozen more. Of course to run these you need an emulator. This site has some and there's also MESS listed in the C games code library.

• Link to C Games Code Library