Atari 2600 Homebrews

Below is a collection of all of the Atari 2600 Homebrews that I have created from 2006-2024.   There are 26 games in this collection:  Asteroid Escape, Bombs Away, Bomb Barrage, Cave In, Cave Run, Cave Raider, Diamond Drop, Drag Racing, Gate Racer 2k, Gate Racer 4k, Gate Racer 32k, Grand Theft Atari (demo), Inferno, Jumper, Jungle Adventure (demo), Monkey Drop, OS2600, Primate Plunge, RoadBlaster, Rollerball, Space Chaos, Space Dungeon (Demo), Spy Dive (Demo), Touchdown Challenge, Turbo, and Warship.

Asteroid Escape

You’re caught in an endless asteroid belt and it’s your mission to ram and destroy the escaping cargo ship without crashing into an asteroid yourself.  You gain a point each time you destroy the ship. If you’re destroyed, the game is over. There’s only one life. Push up or down to enter the asteroid belt to try and take out the escaping Cargo ship. Your momentum requires an angled 45 degree attack, push up or down on the joystick to move to the other side of the asteroid belt. When on the outskirts, you can thrust forward or backward by pushing left or right. . The game will continue as long as you can survive.

Bombs Away!

Zap the falling bombs before they reach the city below. You have a powerful laser beam that can be moved back and forth to take out the bombs. The city also has a set of shield defenses which will stop the bombs, but you won’t score any points for their destruction. You also have one super powerful laser blast that you can deploy at any point during the game. It will destroy all of the falling bombs on the screen. To activate the super laser, push up on the joystick. You will receive 10 points for every bomb you destroy, and as mentioned before, no points for bombs destroyed by the city shields. The game is divided up into 12 levels, and with each passing level you’ll face a faster bombing raid on your city.

Once you reach level 12, it’s a test of endurance – there will be no more pauses in the action until you reach the inevitable destruction of your city. You’ll see your city blow up when six bombs have hit.  When the game pauses at each level, press fire on the joystick when you’re ready to continue. There is a brief pause built in so you don’t accidently move past the level change screen, the fire button won’t work for a few seconds. The city can survive six direct bomb hits before it’s destroyed. Your six hits are indicated with the level counter at the bottom of the screen. If you reach the end of a level and you’ve taken at least one hit you will gain one life back. Once you reach level 12, there are no more opportunities to gain extra lives.  This game includes the option of having a second player control the city’s shields using the right joystick. If no one is using the right joystick, the shields will hover back and forth automatically.

Bomb Barrage

Download Instructions

An updated version of Bombs Away that was completed in 2024.   

Cave Bandit

See Forum post for more detailed Instructions (guide will be added here later)

In Cave Bandit, you play an intrepid explorer who is trying to steal as much gold as possible without getting hit by a bat.  It takes fast reflexes and precise jumps! Go for the gold!

Push fire to jump, push down to duck, push down and press fire on a platform to drop down, grab the falling powerup for 4 seconds of invicibility.   On easy, the bats start slow and always follow a pattern.  On standard and advanced they will split up, and advanced starts at the highest bat speed.

Cave-In

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Cave In is a large adventure game for the Atari 2600, inspired by the 2600 versions of Raiders of the lost ark and Adventure.

Cave Run

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The object of Cave Run is to run through thirty horizontally placed screens (or “caves”) and grab the treasures on each level. Some backtracking and creative jumping is required to reach some of them. Once you have collected all the treasures the final screen unlocks. If you successfully navigate the last screen you win the game. You start the game with three lives.

Cave Raider

Download Instructions

Another cave to explore!  Cave Raider is a large, 64k update to Cave Run with many enhancements. This time, you’re on a mission for fame, fortune, and untold riches. You’ve heard rumors that this ancient cave has over 100 treasures ripe for the taking, but it’s a dangerous path that must be taken in order to find them all. An ancient map has charted about half of the cave, and previous explorers have named the rooms, but none have tried to escape with the treasures. There are falling rocks, bats, traps, dangerous platforms, and numerous obstacles in your way. Are you up for the challenge?

Cave Trap

See forum post for more detailed instructions (guide will be added here later)

Cave Trap is a simple, 4k game of quick reflexes.  Jump around the cave trap that you’ve fallen in to, and score as many jumps as you can.   In the score bar, the top left is the number of jumps, top right is the number of invincibility uses you have left (push down to activate), and the timer keeps track of how long you’ve survived in the cave.

Diamond Drop

Diamond Drop is a small 4k game that is loosely based on the iOS game ‘Duet’, which I really enjoyed. You have two Diamonds at the bottom of the screen that will rotate in a circle in either direction along a diamond shaped path. Barriers will fall from the top of the screen in a random pattern and you must avoid them by circling around them (or through them if there is a large enough opening). Every barrier you pass will score you a point. The game will slowly get faster up to it’s maximum speed after you’ve passed 20 barriers.
Gameplay Notes:

You can press down on the joystick to move the barriers down the screen faster (just like Tetris). It’s useful if you’ve got yourself positioned correctly and just want to quickly bypass the barrier.  You start each new game with 6 bombs which are indicated as dots on the status bar. Press the fire button to use a bomb, which will erase the current barrier on the screen. It’s useful if it looks like you’re not going to be able to easily pass it. Your high score will be saved on the title screen, however it does not save once you turn the game off. You can select your speed on the title screen. Push up or down on the joystick and you’ll see either “Lo” or “Hi” selected. Press the fire button to start the game. Your speed selection will persist in-between games.  You can select the size of the rotating diamonds with the left difficulty switch. Slide it to ‘A’ for larger diamonds, ‘B’ for smaller diamonds.

Drag Racing 2600

Downlaod Instructions

Inspired by Activision’s Dragster.  I thought it would be fun to try and make a single player 3D version of that game.

Gate Racer 2k

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The one and only time I attempted to make a 2k game for the 2600, which then led to several expansions of the game later. 

Gate Racer II 4k

Download Instructions

I expanded the game to 4k in order to include some additional in-game selectable options, such as velocity, removing the oil slick, and car size.  It also adds SaveKey/AtariVox high score saving.

Gate Racer Revisited

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I revisited this game again in 2024 and expanded it to 32k.  It includes new music, a new title screen & menu screen, and some revisions to the gameplay.

Grand Theft Atari Demo

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A combination of Cave In and batari’s Zombie Chase, and it was never completed.  Drive around 254 screens!

 The goal I was thinking of was that you’d have to burglarize the 50 houses that I spread out around the map. You can currently enter all 50 multi-room houses, but there’s not really anything to do inside them yet.  I included the ability to pull up a road map screen that shows you your exact location on the map. Activate the map screen by toggling the color/bw switch. When you’re on the map screen, move left and right to see both parts of the map.

In order to enter houses, you’ll have to exit your car. Enter/exit your car by toggling the left A/B difficulty switch. When you exit your car, you won’t be able to leave the screen you’re on, but you’ll be able to walk into the houses. Houses you can enter have a different colored door. Also, to change the top speed of your car (fast/slow), toggle the right difficulty switch.

Inferno

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A game inspired by US Games’ Inferno.  Navigate through the building, put out fires, escape with your life.

Jumper

A game inspired by Epyx’s Jumpman, it was one of my very early games.  I never truly finished it, but it is a fully playable game with 15 levels.  Grab the four treasures at the top to move to the next level and avoid the shooting missiles.

Jungle Adventure Demo

Jungle Adventure is a platform game inspired by Pitfall & Pitfall II (and dare I say Cave in?).  There are 15 screens you can freely roam from left to right.  The object is to collect as many treasures as you can while avoiding the scorpions, rolling logs, arrows, alligators and pits. You get three lives and will restart at the original first screen if you lose a life. There are three difficulty levels/speeds. Right now the speed will ramp up twice, after getting 5 and 15 treasures. There is no sound yet and it still needs quite a bit of polish to be called complete, but it’s very playable.

Monkey Drop

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Navigate your Monkey through the falling jungle, grabbing and jumping off branches as you descend.  Pressing the fire button will give you a slight speed boost to try and grab those
branches at the last second!  The longer you fall, the faster the branches will scroll!

OS2600

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OS2600 is a collection of min-games and apps presented in an operating system-like format.

Boulder. In this game you have to run around and avoid the bouncing boulder while at the same time shooting it to score points. You get one life, if you’re hit by the boulder you die and the game ends.

Pong. You play against the computer, and whoever gets five points first wins the match. The computer has a basic AI and will occassionally miss.

Tubes. There are four pipes in each corner of the playfield, and you control a ball that can roll between the four corners. The object is to keep the bombs from entering the tubes by rolling the ball back and forth between the tubes. Once you start rolling, you can’t change direction until you hit a corner. If three bombs explode the game ends.

Mountain. In this game, you have move your crosshair to shoot the bombs falling out of the sky before they hit the mountain. You score one point for each bomb hit. Once three hit the mountain and explode the game ends.

Alley. This is similar in gameplay to Hogan’s Alley. You control a crosshair looking at a building with nine windows. Shoot the bad guys, don’t shoot the friendly people. You get three lives and score one point for each bad guy shot. You get a few seconds to react, if you don’t shoot a bad guy in time you lose a life and if you shoot a friendly person you lose a life.

Primate Plunge

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Inspired by the shareware game of the same name, I revisited this game in 2024 and made many enhancements.

RoadBlaster

Download Instructions

My very first 2600 game.  While it was inspired by the arcade game RoadBlasters it bears little resemblance.  At it’s core, just drive and shoot the other cars!

 Rollerball

Rollerball was based on the code from Jumper.  You control a ball and must navigate to the bottom of the screen without hitting any obstacles.  There are 12 levels to complete.  Quite counterintuitively, you must MISS the bucket at the bottom of the screen to complete the level.

Space Chaos

It’s an intergalactic rescue mission! Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to rescue as many trapped astronauts as possible from our fleet of nine ships. Each ship has a limited supply of oxygen represented by the meter at the top of the screen. Rescue as many astronauts as you can before it runs out, once the oxygen meter gets all the way to the right you will be transported to the next ship.

Using your specially equipped fighter, you can enter the federation ship and rise through the tunnels to the eighth floor to get to the trapped astronauts. You can only carry one at a time. Once you pick them up, transport them back to the bottom docking area and they will exit the ship for rescue. In your path is a security system gone awry, you’ll need to shoot and/or avoid the regulators and completely avoid the moving security doors. Regulators will be regenerated after a period of time, so be careful. Security Doors cannot be destroyed and must be avoided. You will receive 10 points for each Regulator you destroy, and 100 points for each astronaut that is rescued. After running out of oxygen on the ninth ship, the game will end. There are no bonus ships in this game, so tread carefully! Go for the high score!

Space Dungeon Demo

A demo of what Space Dungeon could look like on the 2600.  You can walk around the map, the map navigation screen at the top right is functional, and there are enemies on-screen, however this is not really a playable game.  It’s a demo.

Spy Dive Demo

A game idea that was never completed.  You start off jumping from an airplane and descend for a long time toward the city street below using a parachute.  The idea was to shoot enemies along the way and avoid obstacles.  This is just a demo and not a complete game.

Touchdown Challenge

After playing Kickoff on my iPhone it insipired me to make a similar, simple football game.  The object is to run past the defenders and score a touchdown.  The pattern changes when you score.  Most of the players run slowly down the field, but there is one who will relentlessly chase you.  If you get tackled, the score resets.  I discovered 7800basic before I truly finished this, a complete version of the game is available for the 7800.

Turbo

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An early attempt at a 3-D Racing game for the 2600.

Warship

Download Instructions

The basic gameplay consists of navigating your ship through a moving asteroid field and ramming the enemy warships for points.  There are 10 stages of increasing difficulty.  The game is timed at about 30 seconds per stage, or about 5 minutes for the entire mission.  You will be given a ranking based on the number of ships destroyed, and your high score is saved to the savekey.

Local Downloads

Maximus_Star_Wars_The_Arcade_Game_Reversed_Controls

Maximus_Yars_Revenge_ Fast_Missile_NoNeutralZone_4Lives

Maximus_Yars_Revenge_Fast_Missile_4Lives

Maximus_Yars_Revenge_No_Neutral_Zone_4Lives

Maximus_Yars_Revenge_Sadistic

Montezumas_Revenge_Trainer

Maximus_Solaris_Trainer

Maximus_Space_Race

Maximus_Space_Race_Sadistic

Maximus_SpyBob

Maximus_Seaquest_Trainer

Maximus_Marauder_Hack

Maximus_Pitfall_Trainer

Maximus_River_Raid_Always_Full_Tank

Maximus_River_Raid_Fast_Shot

Maximus_River_Raid_Fly_Over_Land

Maximus_River_Raid_Trainer

Maximus_River_Raid_Turbo

Maximus_River_Raid_Turbo_with_Fast_Shot

Maximus_Jawbreaker_Trainer

Maximus_Josh_Invaders

Maximus_Kaboom_Big_Buckets

Maximus_Indy_500_Alternate_Tracks

Maximus_Dragonfire_Sadistic

Maximus_DragRace_AutoShift

Maximus_Frostbite_Fast

Maximus_Frostbite_Sadistic

Maximus_Frostbite_Trainer

Maximus_Dragonfire_Really_Easy_No_Fireballs_Super_Speed

Maximus_Dragonfire_Easy_No_Fireballs

Maximus_Drag_Race_Red_KevinMos

Maximus_Drag_Race_Blue_KevinMos

Maximus_Drag_Race

Maximus_Demon_Attack_No_Fire_Back

Maximus_Donkey_Kong_Low_Gravity

Maximus_Demon_Attack_Start_with_6_lives

Maximus_Defender_Vector

Maximus_Demon_Attack_Always_Small_Enemies

Maximus_Demon_Attack_Fast_Shot

Maximus_Atlantis_Trainer

Maximus_Battlezone_Trainer

Maximus_Berzerk_Sadistic

Maximus_Defender_Trainer

Maximus_Astroblast_Turbo

Maximus_Airlock_Trainer

Maximus_Adventure_Plus_2005_Invisible

Maximus_Adventure_Plus

Maximus_Adventure_Plus_2005

Maximus_All_Hacks