From the first golden age of video gaming we have this 1982 catalog for the Imagic video game cartridge collection, available for Atari and Intellivision.

The catalog itself contains mostly descriptions of Imagic’s games along with cover art photos and game shots. Here are a few from games I played on the trusty old Atari 2600 back in the day:

Demon Attack

Cosmic Ark

Towards the back is a beautiful storage center, complete with faux wood grain.

And as many other video companies had in the ’80s, Imagic offered their own brand-specific club membership. Theirs was cleverly named the Imagic Numb Thumb Club. On the plus side, they offered a sweet game poster. On the down side, no awesome patches like Activision.

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Gamers today pretty much take it for granted that any new release they get their hands on will be a veritable orgy of graphics and sounds.  When you look at promotional materials for a game like Call of Duty: Black Ops or Rock Band 3, you know that what you see in a commercial, a trailer, or a poster will pretty be much be what you get when you play the game.

This was not always so.  See, there was a time when the surest way to draw the attention of a gamer was not by showing real game play (although that was part of any ad campaign), but through attractive packaging.  And up until, say the mid-’80s, there was usually a fairly substantial disconnect between what you saw on the box and what you saw on the TV or PC.  People more cynical than I have called this bait and switch of a kind, but I take a more realistic outlook.  The artwork on a piece of packaging was a company’s best shot to get you interested in their product, so in many cases they pulled out all the stops.  Consider a game like Combat for the Atari 2600 – would you be more likely to buy it with this image:

or this?

Yeah, I thought so.  So join me now as I take a look at some of the coolest examples of early video game art!

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The failures and successes of Atari in the ’70s and ’80s are well-documented, but if you were of gaming age back then there was no doubt that for a brief time, they were the kings of gaming.  Oh sure, we all knew kids who had Intellivision or ColecoVision – and truth be told they were superior systems – but they were desperately out of step and knew it.

Atari, like many of its contemporaries, was hit hard when the North American video game market imploded in 1983.  They were never able to build on the success of the Atari 2600 console, as the subsequent 5200 console was discontinued after just 18 months on the market and the 7800 was halted for a few years.  But none of that really mattered, as within a few years the Nintendo Entertainment System would begin its ascent into gaming legend, and Atari was toast.

Still, I had a blast playing my Atari.  I had or played all of the games in this ad except for Star Raiders.  I’ll go with Defender and Berzerk as the best of the lot.