Atari 2600 Hacks
Hacks are a modification of an original game to make it different in some way. This can be simply changing a few of the graphics in the game (a graphical hack), or disassembling the code and changing core aspects of the game itself (a functional hack). Included below are all of the Atari 2600 hacks that I made from 2003-2024.
Featured Hacks
The first and probably most popular hack that I created. It was created in late 2002, and is what started me down the homebrew path. It was one of my favorites as a kid and modifying it was an incredible amount of fun. It also led me to create the Create Your Own Adventure application, a Visual Basic 6/Windows XP app that allows you to modify the game in many different ways, including new room layouts & graphics, new sprites, object placement, invisible rooms, etc. It was a pretty big hit at the time. I made some minor updates to the hack in 2005. Some graphics were changed and I made an all-invisible room version. This hack is for sale in the AtariAge store.
Trainer Hacks
All of these hacks are trainers that will grant you unlimited lives and/or time.
Unlimited lives
Unlimited Time
Unlimited lives, lives counter removed from the display, score font changed
Unlimited lives
Unlimited Lives, Polar Bear appears on level 1, Sky changed to Black, Temp increased to 55, faster speed
Unlimited lives
Unlimited lives
Unlimited lives and unlimited time in Pitfall
Unlimited lives
Unlimited lives and fuel, and collision detection is disabled
Unlimited lives
Ultra-Fast “Sadistic” Hacks
These hacks were changed to make the game much faster and thus much more difficult.
Berzerk Sadistic (Unlimited lives, Lives Counter was removed, score font was changed)
Frostbite Sadistic (Very fast speed, 3 lives, polar bear appears on level 1, sky changed to black)
Dragonfire Sadistic (Fireballs are much faster)
Space Race Sadistic (a hack of Freeway, much faster)
Graphics Hacks
The cityscape was changed to a mountain scene.
The cars in Activision’s Dragster were changed to look like the General Lee from the Dukes of Hazzard.
I changed the maps to make them a little more complex, the original game is a little too easy. If you try it out, make sure to choose game variation #4
This hack of Indy 500 changes the track layout for each track.
Functional Hacks
These hacks were generally by making changes to a disassembly and re-compiling those changes, as opposed to simply changing graphics with a hex editor.
Dragonfire Easy | Dragonfire Really Easy
In the easy hack, the Dragon in the castle can’t fire his fireballs high enough to hit you, so you can’t die when you’re inside the castle. In the Really easy hack, the player moves really fast, so most of the time you can enter the castle just by running left before anything is shot at you.
This hack adds Thomas Jentzsch’s auto-shift code into my DragRace hack. It is buggy but playable, and I managed to score a world record 5.44 with the hack back when I created it.
8 Lives, Polar Bear appears on level 1, sky changed to black, starting temperature increased to 55, faster speed
The link will take you to the AtariAge thread that includes many different River Raid hacks that I created.
- River Raid Turbo – Push up for ‘Turbo mode’ and you’ll see your jet flies much faster. Left/Right movement speed was also increased.
- River Raid Turbo (with Fast Shots) – Same as the prior version but with faster shots from your jet.
- River Raid (Fuel Tank is always Full) – No need to fill your fuel tank, it’s stuck on Full all the time.
- River Raid (Fast Shot) – Your missile fires much faster than normal.
- River Raid (Fly over land) – Collision detection is turned off for hitting the river banks, you can fly over land. Flying over houses recharges your fuel, not sure why.
- River Raid Trainer – Unlimited Lives & Fuel and collision detection is turned off.
- River Raid Random (original hack by batari, not me) – You will start at a random location in the river every time you hit reset
- River Raid Random (Turbo/Fast Shots) – Batari’s binary hacked to have turbo speed and fast shots.
- River Raid Plus (Turbo/Fast Shots) – I hacked Thomas Jentzsch’s River Raid Plus hack to include turbo speed and fast shots.
- River Raid Turbo (Fast Spread Shots) – Based on Nukey Shay’s hack, this is the fast shot turbo version with the 3 shot spread firing.
- River Raid 3 – This is the original Spread-Shot hack created by Nukey Shay.
This is a hack of Activision’s Freeway, in an attempt to make it look like Space Race
This is a hack of Activision’s Kabobber. The colors and sprites were changed from the original.
Star Wars The Arcade Game Reversed Control Hack
In this hack I changed the controls so that up is up and down is down, rather than the standard flight control of up=down and down=up.
There are four Yars Revenge Hacks, one with No Neutral Zone, 1 life, and faster speed (sadistic hack), one with a faster missile & 4 lives, and one with no neutral zone and 4 lives)
There are four Demon Attack Hacks:
demon_fastshot.bin – Super fast shots from your cannon. Makes the game pretty easy, but it’s fun to plow through the demons with the fast shots, they have no chance!
demon_nofireback.bin – The enemies never fire back at you in this version.
demon_alwayssmallenemies.bin – The enemies are always the small “ball” type that you see in the final wave. Much harder to hit.
demon_startwith6lives.bin – You start the game off with 6 lives instead of 3.
Here are two hacks I’d love to see;
Yar’s Revenge – Disable the Easter Egg, or make it possible to resume the game by pressing the fire button. It’s way too easy to trigger it by accident, ending your game.
Tunnel Runner – Add a rear image for the Zots. Tunnel Runner uses the same face image for both the front and back of the Zots. Not only does this spoil the illusion of them being real creatures, it artificially increases the difficulty because when one comes out of a tunnel ahead of you, it is impossible to immediately tell if it’s coming toward you or going away from you. Adding a rear image would make this instantly obvious. It wouldn’t need to be anything fancy, just the face image, filled in, so that it’s solid. Some might argue that this changes the game from what the designers intended, however I see it as just perfecting the illusion. And besides, did they really intend it to be that way, or did they just do it to save space?