Atari A to Z Flashback: Air-Sea Battle

An all-time classic of the Atari 2600’s library is launch title Air-Sea Battle, a simplistic but enjoyable fixed shooter with a variety of different ways to play.

Air-Sea Battle is an excellent example of what you could expect from early 2600 titles that promised “27 video games” or similar. Those “27” video games would be a lot of variations on the same theme — but there’d sometimes be some surprising and enjoyable differences between them!

Air-Sea Battle shines as a two-player game, even today, but it’s still an enjoyable high score-chaser solo. Which is your favourite of the 27 variations?

Find a full archive of all the Atari A to Z videos on the official site.

2 thoughts on “Atari A to Z Flashback: Air-Sea Battle”

  1. I have a lot memories of playing Polaris vs Bomber and trying to win! But I did like the guided missile modes a lot and tried often to sneak in a few good shots to win a game. 🙂

    This and Space Invaders were the first home video games I ever played so I do have a fondness for it. Your info about the game length is fascinating and when I look at it now it makes a lot of sense. I think it did encourage smart players to take more risks once they saw the scores flashing and the game was close to finishing. Keeping the experience short and sweet did a lot for avoiding boredom.

    You see similar tactics used now in modes for Geometry Wars and Pacman CE where players are time limited… no wonder I like them too. 🙂

    1. Those two games are prime examples of old-school arcade formulae being absolutely perfectly applied to modern games. Beautiful stuff. That reminds me, I haven’t played Geometry Wars for ages… perhaps I’m due a bit of a blast!

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