PixlBit

One of the most prominent developers on the Atari 8-bit line was, of course, Activision. Known as the world's first third party developer, Activision was formed by disgruntled Atari employees with the promise to treat individual developers like rock stars. If you ever read a manual for a 2600 Activision game, you've seen the "about the author" bios for each of them. Eventually, as Activision grew and became more corporate, its employees would leave and form their own companies. Most notable among these were Accolade, Absolute Entertainment, and the best known of all of the baby Activisions, Acclaim Entertainment. By 1990, Activision completely flamed out, was bankrupt, and well on its way to going out of business. A new CEO that came from the grocery store industry, one Robert "Bobby" Kotick, was hired... and the rest is history.

Anyway, Activision's strategy for the Atari 8-bit computers was, for the most part, to take their 2600 titles and pretty up the graphics a ittle bit and add a couple of new features here and there. All the HD remasters of today were nothing new under the sun, Activision helped pioneer that concept. However, they did come up with a few unique game ideas on the more powerful hardware. Here are some of Activision's more notable games.

Pitfall!

In this case, this was a straight up port with slightly enhanced graphics, nothing special. That said, this was one of the better pre-NES games.

Pitfall II: Lost Caverns Adventurer's Edition

This game also sported enhanced graphics and sound compared to the 2600 game, but with a twist. The cavern layout was exactly the same as the 2600 version, and your object was still to find Rhonda, the Raj Diamond, and Quickclaw the Cat (and as a bonus, that prehistoric rat blocking your way to Quickclaw). However, once you collected the last of the three "essential" treasures, a portal would open up and Harry would be transported into another, much larger cavern. This new cavern sported new dangers: gapped floors that allowed easy falling, rabid bats that flew in erratic patterns, super-fast army ants, and piranhas in the water. You also had a new objective: collect a snake charmer, flute, clay pot, and a golden rope. Once you assembled all of these in a certain location, the snake charmer would play the flute, and Harry, his niece, his cat, and the diamond ring would be spirited to safety on the golden rope. I played this version before the 2600 version and ended up being disappointed by the 2600 version.

Kaboom!

Same game as the 2600, but the bombs would play the notes from the 1812 Overture as you caught them on this version.

H.E.R.O.

Again, a graphically enhanced version of the 2600 game, with more levels.

River Raid

Another 2600 port with better graphics and a few more obstacles. River Raid was actually one of my favorite 2600 games (right behind Yars' Revenge, in fact) so I liked this one.

Great American Cross Country Road Race

This game was one of Activision's more ambitious games. A follow-up to Activision's 2600 racing game, Enduro, It was sort of a precursor to games like OutRun and Cruis'n USA. You raced across the United States from city to city, fighting traffic patterns, inclement weather from rain to snow to fog (the weather patterns were specific to certain routes and did not change), day/night cycles, racing from the West Coast to the East Coast in the shortest possible time. There was also a USA tour race where you visited every city in the game. You also had to avoid running out of gas and avoid running afoul of the police. Your car had a manual transmission and if you didn't master the gearshift you'd blow your engine and have to push your car to the next gas station.

Pastfinder

In this game, you piloted a four-legged vehicle with the ability to jump navigating across a bunch of vertical-scrolling stages. You had to navigate increasingly difficult walls as well as keep your vehicle from being destroyed by the persistent radiation on these landscapes, and collect little shields to earn promotions. Depending on the dropoff stations you used, you'd gain temporary invincibility to objects/enemies or temporary immunity to radiation based on how many shields you dropped off at a time.  You could equip your vehicle with four items: heavy metal (slow the rate of radiation exposure) beam shields (protect your ship from enemy shots) scramblers (cause the enemy ships to fly in straight lines instead of homing in on you) and de-radiators (one-time use items that would instantly clear your radiation gauge). One of my favorite Activision games of the 1980s.

Hacker

In this game, you would boot up, and be asked for a login. After failing the login (or correctly entering the password), you would be given control of a subterranean vehicle in a network of tunnels controlled by a megacorporation that wanted to harness volcanic power for world domination. Your object was to collect evidence of their plans from spies around the world and deliver them to FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, before the corporation caught on and expelled you from the game. Over time, your navigation systems would fail and the company would ask you for security checks. This game was pretty highly regarded for its time.

David Crane's Ghostbusters

Some of you may be familiar with this game through the Angry Video Game Nerd's video skewering the NES version of this game. This is fundamentally the same game: You drive around New York City trying to catch ghosts (don't cross the streams!) and prevent the city from being destroyed by Gozer the Gozerian and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, the final confrontation of which would happen when the Keymaster and Gatekeeper arrived at "Zuul", which was the in-game name given to Dana Barrett's apartment building where the portal to Gozer's dimension opened. There's a financial aspect to this game. You're given $10000 to buy a vehicle (including the Hearse seen in the movie) as well as ghost-busting equipment. In order to win, you must basically make more money than you started with, whether or not you destroy Gozer's portal - which you'll only be offered the opportunity to do if you have more money than you started with. Each time the Marshmallow Man successfully destroys a building you lose $4000. Oh, and like the NES game, the Ghostbusters theme plays ad nauseam throughout the game. You'll enjoy hearing it the first time, but not so much after three or four times.

Anyway, that's all of the Activision games I know of that were made for the Atari 8-bit computers. There were more, I'm sure, since Activision ported its games to every system under the sun back then. See you next time!