Atari Is Reissuing 39 Atari 2600 Games on Real, Playable Cartridges

Pitfall! is coming back on a cartridge you can actually shove into a console. Not an emulator. Not a plug-and-play stick. A cartridge.

Atari announced the Atari x Activision Collection today, a physical game partnership that reunites the two companies after almost 50 years apart. The full set covers 39 classic Activision games, and there are three different ways to get your hands on them.

The 12 you can buy one at a time

Standard Edition releases of 12 games arrive in November at USD$35 each. The list: Pitfall!, River Raid, Megamania, Enduro, Kaboom!, H.E.R.O., Pressure Cooker, Private Eye, River Raid II, Keystone Kapers, The Activision Decathlon and Pitfall II: Lost Caverns.

Two of those come with an asterisk. Atari notes The Activision Decathlon and Pitfall II: Lost Caverns will ship at a later date than the rest.

Each Standard Edition comes with full packaging and a printed color manual modeled on the original releases. They work on the Atari 2600+ and Atari 7800+, and on original Atari 2600 and 7800 hardware, which is the detail that matters if you’ve been keeping a wood-grain console alive in a closet since the Carter administration.

Then there’s the box set math

Four box sets, named Treasure, Speed, Secrets and Victory, expand the collection to all 39 games. The first lands in late November. The other three roll out across the first three quarters of 2027. Pre-orders run through atari.com at USD$250.

And if you want everything at once, a complete collection of all 39 games goes up for pre-order at USD$1000. It will reportedly include a “collectible item” that Atari hasn’t announced yet.

Why Activision and Atari, and why now

The reunion has some history behind it. Activision was founded by Atari programmers who wanted credit and royalties for the games they made, and the company Atari is now partnering with is a very different beast than the one that started in a living room.

“In 1979, a group of Atari programmers set out to prove that great games could come from independent creators and ended up changing the industry forever,” said Atari VP of hardware Matt Burnett in a comment published alongside the announcement. “The Atari x Activision Collection brings that legacy to life through the games themselves, giving fans an opportunity to experience, collect and preserve the work of the developers who helped establish a new model for the video game industry.”

Physical media is having a strange year

Fresh cartridge pressings of Activision’s oldest catalog land at an odd moment for anyone who likes owning things. PlayStation is sticking with its decision to discontinue physical discs in the near future, and maintains that the move won’t hurt its business now or later.

So the state of play is this: the format that peaked when Reagan was in office is getting new manufacturing runs, while the disc is being quietly shown the door.

Kaboom! on a shelf in 2027. Nobody had that one written down.