Making their own games isn't the only way that 2600 fans satisfy their jones for new Atari thrills. Some in the scene have taken it upon themselves to hunt down fabled "lost" titles -- prototype games developed years ago by Atari and other companies that were never released for sale. Several prototypes have been discovered over the past few years.

A prototype tends to turn up when the programmer who worked on it reveals its existence to the 2600 revival scene, or when a collector happens to find a prototype cartridge at a thrift store or acquires it through someone who once worked for a company that made games for the system. Once the existence of a lost game is confirmed, the goal among the gaming community is to politely encourage the person in possession of it to "dump" the code in the cartridge to software form so that it can be played on an emulator and freely enjoyed by others.

(There are obvious copyright issues associated with releasing old games on the Net, even if they have never been commercially marketed. If the company that made the game is still around, permission might be sought. Or a game's original programmer(s) might be asked if the code can be released.)

Bilstein's Web site, AtariAge, has introduced several prototypes to the public, including Kabobber, a fully playable game from Activision that was never published by the company. Games based on the comic strip "Garfield" and Disney's "Snow White," an incomplete but playable translation of arcade classic Tempest and even a sequel to Combat, the game that originally came packaged with the 2600 console, have all turned up in the past two years. The aforementioned Elevator Action was a recent discovery; cartridge versions of it, complete with old Atari-style packaging, will be sold to the public at the Classic Gaming Expo in August.

"There's a surprisingly large number of prototypes available for the 2600, certainly more so than for any other system," says Albert Yarusso, a 31-year-old programmer who has worked in the modern-day gaming industry at Looking Glass Technologies and Ion Storm. He runs the AtariAge Web site with Bilstein. "When the market crashed in 1983, most companies were very active in 2600 development. There were many finished (or near-finished) games that never made it to store shelves because of the crash. Looking through the database we have at AtariAge, there are around 70 prototypes listed for the 2600. Amazingly, new prototypes are still being discovered to this day."

Several highly sought-after prototypes have yet to be found. "Holy Grail" titles include games based on "The Lord of the Rings," "The Incredible Hulk," "Rocky and Bullwinkle" and Dungeons & Dragons, as well as 2600 versions of classic arcade games like Scramble, Turbo, Zookeeper and more. Bilstein believes some of these titles will eventually be discovered. "Just as a wild guess, I wouldn't be surprised if 10 to 20 more turned up," he says. "At least 10 games were seen at [consumer electronics shows] back in the '80s that nobody has been able to find, so they may just be waiting in a storage locker somewhere."

Atari's future may extend beyond the revival of prototypes and the creation of simple new games for hobbyists. Some Atarians predict the emergence of 2600-style games made to appeal to a broad audience. During the golden age of video games, a single person could program an entire game for the 2600. With today's state-of-the-art consoles, such video game auteurism is an impossibility. But Bilstein says, "I see a parallel between classic games and mobile gaming, as it requires fewer people to design the small games that mobile gaming requires. I know a few classic-era game programmers who went into [mobile gaming development] because they enjoy being the sole developer of a project."

There may be a market opportunity here. International video game publisher Infogrames, the latest company to own the Atari name and its games, recently announced that it will bring Atari classics like Asteroids and Missile Command to PDAs and Java-capable cellphones. The simple game play and graphics of such games lend themselves well to these devices. Mobile gaming is projected to grow in the next few years, and Infogrames is one company looking to capitalize on the moment.

Above all else, Atari 2600 aficionados believe that their favorite console remains relevant because there are lessons about making games for it that every developer for more technically advanced consoles needs to be reminded of: Keep it simple and remember that it's all about the play. "While most of the 2600 games may not be very aesthetically appealing, they have [what] counts: Namely, they're fun to play!" says Yarusso. "It should be mandatory to sit and play through the best games of the 2600 library before designing games for modern systems."

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