Ah, the Atari 2600, an important console with a complicated legacy that involves some of gaming's earliest high and lowlights. Except for a couple of ports like Pac-Man and legendary disasters like E.T. (which isn't a bad game), I imagine most people are not only unfamiliar with the platform's library, but also have played none of its offerings. Atari 2600 games are way too old-school to be haphazardly recommended, and most retro articles tend to skip forward to the NES.

The thing is, the Atari 2600's best games are basically stripped-down arcade romps that excel because of their simplicity rather than in spite of it. Yes, the console had a serious quality control issue that ultimately led to the 1983 video game crash, but its masterpieces hold up shockingly well and deserve to be remembered for what they accomplished.

I'm sticking to games that are still fun to play today, even if just for about 15 minutes.

That's right, Dragon Quest wasn't the first turn-based RPG with "Dragon" in the title, as Starpath's Dragonstomper was released all the way back in 1982. Generally regarded as the first console role-playing game, this title contains quite a few staples of the genre: random encounters, turn-based combat with RNG, dropped items, and stats. Yes, the visuals are extremely plain, but they are also incredibly obvious what they are trying to represent.

While the above pictures only showcase the first act, Dragonstomper is divided into three segments that actually change things up quite a bit .

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