The Best-Selling Atari 2600 Games of All-Time - News

I believe that Atari invested 100 million to develop the VCS in 1976 and the first run of commercial units came out of Sunnyvale, CA in 1977 (the "heavy sixers" with heavier, more expensive electronic shielding required by the FAA) before they moved it out East for cheaper manufacturing costs. They only sold 250K of these that first year, and about 600K out of 800K made that second year, since the public was already so burnt out on Pong. It was only around 1980 the system became the #1 gift for Xmas, especially after the release of all those great arcade ports. The VCS in the picture is the 1980 version.

Heh...game names have drastically changed over the years eh?

Wait, is that wood on the front of the system?

There's a bunch of wrong dates for these VCS titles in here as well, which also makes me wonder on the sources used for this chart. Asteroids for the VCS was released in 1981, not 1980. Adventure was not released in 1977 - that would have made it a launch title, which it was not. Missile Command was Spring of 1981, not 1980. Space Invaders was 1980 (more than a famous fact) not 1977, '77 was when Taito's original arcade version was produced. Ms. Pac-Man for the VCS was released in 1983 not 1981 ('81 is again when the arcade version was produced). It seems like for a lot of these you mistakingly used the arcade release dates.

This list is interesting but some things don't ring true. For example, there is no way that 820,000 copies of Custers Revenge were sold, or 630,000 copies of X-Man. Those XXX games could not get distribution and were only made it out a few months before the market collapsed. There are other games as well that seem out of place on the list (Alien's Retun at 85 is a German pirated version of PacMan; Ultravision's Karate at 65 is an incredibly rare find today (and th Froggo version is rare as well) while other games lower on the list are much easier to find). Also, Combat was a pack-in for several years and probably sold more than 1.25M. Finally, is there a reason you lowered the sales for the console by 10% from the standard number of 30M cited everywhere for the last decade?

Wow, this is cool, before my time. I hear Donkey Kong sold about 6 million on the Colecovision, is that true?.

What was the name of the game where you control a police officer and you have to chase down the burglar in like a four story building?

Yar's Revenge had the coolest box art but rodeo or missle command are my favorite Atari games

I don't get how ET sold so much yet was considered one of the biggest failures in game history. I know the controls weren't so hot, but I was able to beat the game fairly easy. Adventure was my fav game on the 2600. I never realized it was created the same year I was born. Makes sense though, that'd I'd grow into an adventure/rpg fan =)

Haha... i never realised i was as old as Mario and Pac-man. :)

citation need.

PacMan was a huge disappointment and I wondered why did they bother with such a poor port. But I think Combat was a major pack in and probably had higher sales.
Plus, Sears had their own label on the system, does this include the Sears VCS branded systems?

Vgchartz source for these numbers?

Brett - Wikipedia isn't the best source on the matter, it's just referencing popular theories. What I presented is based on facts, not opinions, via actual documentation at Atari that we of course were able to collect, and direct interviews with the people involved. It was also quite well covered at the time as well by the media, such as:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1291&dat=19840108&id=5y5UAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-IwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6534,1948069

Brett, you took some liberties here and there and introduced inaccuracies because of that.

1) Atari produced that many Pac-Mans not because they hoped to sell that many. Pac-Man was moved to be the pack-in game for the 2600 starting in 1982 as well (with the intro of the Darth Vader model of the 2600). The production numbers account for this fact as well.

2) E.T. is in no way, shape, or form to blame for the video game crash (which is more accurately described as a U.S. consumer industry crash), nor did Pac-Man or E.T. cause the downfall of Atari. Atari's problems that lead to it's downfall were already in full swing by the early part of 1982 and in full crescendo by that summer. These problems came to light on December 7, 1982 when it's earnings projections fell far lower than originally projected, causing massive ripples across the rest of the industry. (When you're 80% of the consumer industry - as Atari was at the time, and you have those problems, the rest of the industry is going to be effected as well). That's when the industry crash actually began, early December '82. E.T. had only just been released about 2 weeks before.

If you're interested in knowing more about what was actually going on at Atari during the time, feel free to check out our book "Atari Inc. - Business Is Fun" on Amazon.

Mario Bros. from 1982? The arcade is from 1983...