Atari 8-bit computers in the context of "Atari ST"

A side-scrolling video game (alternatively side-scroller) is a video game viewed from a side-view camera angle where the screen follows the player as they move left or right. The jump from single-screen or flip-screen graphics to scrolling graphics during the golden age of arcade games was a pivotal leap in game design, comparable to the move to 3D graphics during the fifth generation.

Hardware support of smooth scrolling backgrounds is built into many arcade video games, some game consoles, and home computers. Examples include 8-bit systems like the Atari 8-bit computers and Nintendo Entertainment System, and 16-bit consoles, such as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis. These 16-bit consoles added multiple layers, which can be scrolled independently for a parallax scrolling effect.

Cut & Paste is a word processor published in 1984 for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, Commodore 64, IBM PC compatibles, and IBM PCjr. It is one of the few productivity releases from game developer and publisher Electronic Arts, along with the contemporaneous Financial Cookbook. In the UK it was distributed by Ariolasoft.

Originally sold for US$50, Cut & Paste was praised for its user-friendliness and criticized as overly simplistic. Magazine advertisements proclaimed, "If you can learn to use this word processor in 90 seconds, can it really be any good?" and the slogan on the box read "The Remarkably Simple Word Processor".

In computer graphics, a sprite is a two-dimensional bitmap that is integrated into a larger scene, most often in a 2D video game. Originally, the term sprite referred to fixed-sized objects composited together, by hardware, with a background. Use of the term has since become more general.

Systems with hardware sprites include arcade video games of the 1970s and 1980s; game consoles including as the Atari VCS (1977), ColecoVision (1982), Famicom (1983), Genesis/Mega Drive (1988); and home computers such as the TI-99/4 (1979), Atari 8-bit computers (1979), Commodore 64 (1982), MSX (1983), Amiga (1985), and X68000 (1987). Hardware varies in the number of sprites supported, the size and colors of each sprite, and special effects such as scaling or reporting pixel-precise overlap.

S-Video (also known as separate video, Y/C, and erroneously Super-Video) is an analog video signal format that carries standard-definition video, typically at 525 lines or 625 lines. It encodes video luma and chrominance on two separate channels, achieving higher image quality than composite video which encodes all video information on one channel. It also eliminates several types of visual defects such as dot crawl which commonly occur with composite video. Although it is improved over composite video, S-Video has lower color resolution than component video, which is encoded over three channels.

The Atari 800 was the first to introduce separate Chroma/Luma output in late 1979. However, S-Video was not widely adopted until JVC's introduction of the S-VHS (Super-VHS) format in 1987, which is why it is sometimes incorrectly referred to as Super-Video.

Star Raiders is a space combat simulator video game created by Doug Neubauer and published in 1980 by Atari, Inc. Originally released for the Atari 400/800 computers, Star Raiders was later ported to the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Atari ST. The player assumes the role of a starship fighter pilot, who must protect starbases from invading forces called Zylons. Piloting and combat are shown in the 3D cockpit view, while a 2D galactic map shows the state of the Zylon invasion. Neubauer made the game in his spare time at Atari, inspired by contemporary media such as Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars, as well as the 1971 mainframe game Star Trek.

Star Raiders became one of the most successful games on Atari's 400 and 800 computers, and their first killer app. It influenced space combat games such as Elite (1984) and Wing Commander (1990), as well as spawning an official sequel and a 2011 remake. Star Raiders was included in a list of ten games that were submitted as a game canon to the Library of Congress in 2007.

The Atari XG-1 is an electronic light gun accessory manufactured by Atari Corporation. Released in 1987, it is compatible with the Atari 8-bit computers, Atari 7800, and Atari 2600. It was bundled with the Atari XEGS Deluxe home computer and video game console combination system, and with the light gun game Bug Hunt for the 7800 as model XES2001 for US$34.95 (equivalent to about $100 in 2024). Atari eventually released five light gun games on the 7800 (Alien Brigade, Barnyard Blaster, Crossbow, Meltdown, and Sentinel) and one on the 2600 (Sentinel).

The Atari 5200 SuperSystem or simply Atari 5200 is a home video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari, Inc. as a higher-end complement for the popular Atari Video Computer System. The VCS was renamed to Atari 2600 at the time of the 5200's launch. Created to compete with Mattel's Intellivision, the 5200 wound up a direct competitor of ColecoVision shortly after its release. While the Coleco system shipped with the first home version of Nintendo's Donkey Kong, the 5200 included the 1978 arcade game Super Breakout, which had already appeared on previous Atari home platforms.

The system architecture is almost identical to that of the Atari 8-bit computers, although software is not directly compatible between them. The 5200's controllers have an analog joystick and a numeric keypad along with start, pause, and reset buttons. The 360-degree non-centering joystick was touted as offering more control than the eight-way Atari CX40 joystick of the 2600, but it was a focal point for criticism.

Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for arcades. Designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, it was one of the most commercially successful games from the golden age of arcade video games, and one of the first widely played by women and girls. The primary objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede that winds down the playing field.

Centipede was ported to Atari's own 2600, 5200, 7800, and 8-bit computers. Under the Atarisoft label, the game was sold for the Apple II, Commodore 64, ColecoVision, VIC-20, IBM PC (as a self-booting disk), Intellivision, and TI-99/4A. Superior Software published the port for the BBC Micro. Versions for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color were also produced, as well as a version for the short-lived Game.com. Other developers released more than 25 Centipede clones for home computers. It was followed by the arcade sequel Millipede in 1982. In 1998, a 3D remake for Windows, Mac, PlayStation, and Dreamcast was published by Hasbro Interactive.

The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness World Records as the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, with independent estimates placing the number sold between 12.5 and 17 million units. Volume production started in early 1982, marketing in August for US$595 (equivalent to $1,940 in 2024). Preceded by the VIC-20 and Commodore PET, the C64 took its name from its 64 kilobytes (65,536 bytes) of RAM. With support for multicolor sprites and a custom chip for waveform generation, the C64 could create superior visuals and audio compared to systems without such custom hardware.

The C64 dominated the low-end computer market (except in the UK, France and Japan, lasting only about six months in Japan) for most of the later years of the 1980s. For a substantial period (1983–1986), the C64 had between 30% and 40% share of the US market and two million units sold per year, outselling IBM PC compatibles, the Apple II, and Atari 8-bit computers. Sam Tramiel, a later Atari president and the son of Commodore's founder, said in a 1989 interview, "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years." In the UK market, the C64 faced competition from the BBC Micro, the ZX Spectrum, and later the Amstrad CPC 464, but the C64 was still the second-most-popular computer in the UK after the ZX Spectrum. The Commodore 64 failed to make any impact in Japan, as their market was dominated by Japanese computers, such as the NEC PC-8801, Sharp X1, Fujitsu FM-7 and MSX, and in France, where the ZX Spectrum, Thomson MO5 and TO7, and Amstrad CPC 464 dominated the market.