News a previously lost Atari 2600 game has finally been dumped and released after 44 years. (also includes data from an early version of Adventure)

[Krvavi Abadas]

found in the collection of Jim Snyder, who worked in Atari's R&D department in the early 80's. codenamed "Sonar".

the prototype on it's own is fairly intriguing, being a battleship-like built around stereo sound (each player would get a side of the speaker, with beeps being used to detect your opponent's ship.) which was an extremely rare feature on the console. and that Brad Stewart, who programmed the 2600 ports of Asteroids and Breakout, mentioned working on a similar project in an interview (though when shown this proto, he was unable to recognize it due to only creating a bit of preliminary code and a design document. it's possible a different programmer continued that initial work without him noticing.)

Q: Were there any games that you started, but didn't finish or get released (besides Sky Patrol)? Also, do you recall any other titles that others were working on but weren't released (either at Atari or Imagic)?

Brad Stewart: Wow, this question really makes me realize how much I've forgotten since I've left the industry. I have a hard enough time keeping track of games that were released! I did toy with a version of the old game Battleship right after I finished Breakout, but I never went anywhere with it, and I don't have any ROMs, of course.

but what's particularly notable is what else is in the rom. over 350 bytes of data were left over from an early version of the legendary title Adventure, which includes a few early sprites.
the poster used ASCII art to demonstrate them, but i've created some quick and basic pixel art recreations to make it easier to see. (palette probably isn't what would have been used in-game.)
early design for the Chalice

a completely unused bird character

according to the game's designer Warren Robinett, the bird is meant to be a roadrunner that he could never figure out what to do with. hence why it was taken out later in development.

(mockup sourced from this excellent video diving into the development history of the game.)

 

[WhyS]

This is so cool, thank you for posting! And I'm happy to see you linked to an Atari Archive video. One of my favorite YouTube channels. Also a wonderful surprise when a new one of those shows up in my subscription feed.

 

[Shadow]

Seriously, some of the rediscoveries in the past few years have been absolutely insane. But this probably take the cake with 44 years...

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

Warning: game modes 5 through 8 feature a very heavy flashing effect across the entire screen, so please be cautious about checking the proto yourself if you're prone to seizures.

It's Snark, developed by programmer John Dunn. (who would go on to make Superman for the system.) it's basically an unusual target shooting game where firing is done by holding down the button, moving the joystick in the direction you want to aim, and releasing.
reportedly it was cancelled because of the aformentioned flashing game modes, surprising to see people being reasonably concerned about that sort of thing all the way back in 1978.

That was my first game for Atari. It was not published while I was at Atari, and perhaps never was - I didn't track it. It had a video spin mode that caused the screen to color cycle really fast, and release was held up because there was some worry this would cause people to have seizures.

there's no extra data from other games left over BTW, it uses up the full 2KB alloted for it in the ROM.