Atlantis

Atlantis is a 1982 shooter for the Atari 2600 from Imagic. The player defends ground installations against attackers flying overhead, with each wave arriving faster than the last. It supports one or more players taking turns.

Imagic was founded at the start of the 1980s by people who had left the larger game companies, and it quickly earned a reputation for cartridges with above-average visual craft. Its releases are recognisable by their strong use of colour and by packaging that was among the best-produced on the market.

The Atari 2600 imposed extraordinarily tight limits. Tiny memory, a handful of movable objects and a picture assembled line by line meant every effect had to be paid for somewhere else. That is exactly why 1982 games are built on one simple rule that escalates through speed rather than through scope.

1982 was also the peak of the cartridge market for this console, immediately before it collapsed the following year under a flood of poor product. Imagic's games stand as evidence that carefully tuned difficulty existed inside that wave too.

Defending ground targets was a favourite structure in the early 1980s. The player does not roam the screen but protects something that is steadily whittled away, which gives the game a visible running scoreboard of how badly things are going. Every installation lost is there on screen, so the player always knows exactly what remains.

You can play Atlantis in your browser on OldGame.cz, where the release year and images accompany it.