Paperboy sends players on a daily paper route to deliver papers to customers, while vandalizing non-customers' houses (by tossing papers through windows), avoiding cars and obstacles and trying to get through an entire week of deliveries. Like several Atari games of the mid-80s, the game used a novel controller, in this case a set of realistic metal handlebars that control direction, speed and paper throwing – the controller makes it difficult to accurately emulate, but a joystick or yoke-style controller will suffice. Paperboy's distinctive look, soundtrack and play style make it an enduring favorite from Atari's arcade heyday.

Probably the least-known of the Atari System 1 games, Peter Pack Rat featured an original set of cartoon animals, led by a pack rat whose goal is to collect all the random junk strewn about each level. Peter Pack Rat is a hybrid of platformer and maze game with a jazzy, eclectic soundtrack, and while its levels can be a little visually confusing at first, its a game that grows on you. The original cabinet sported a bright blue joystick identical to the original Battlezone joystick, only... blue.

Check out the rest of the Atari System 1 games on the theme pack page.

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Released the same year as Killer Instinct and during the reign of the Mortal Kombat series, Primal Rage was part of an overall trend toward more sophisticated (and violent) graphics and gameplay in arcade fighting games. Following a cataclysm that regresses the world back to the Stone Age, seven godlike creatures emerge on this new Urth and fight over the fate of the planet, worshipped by the remaining humans. Primal Rage's key differentiator was its non-human characters, including dinosaurs and giant apes, brought to life using novel stop motion animation techniques. The game spawned not only a significant arcade following, but numerous console versions as well as a popular toy line and a sequel, Primal Rage II, that was never widely released but can now be played via emulation.

Red Baron, released the same year and using the same basic cabinet design and control stick as Battlezone, used similar 3D vector graphics to create a believable dogfighting experience. Though not exactly accurate from a simulation perspective (you cannot crash into the ground, though you can crash into mountains), the game features a variety of airborne and ground-based enemies to defeat, most notably biplanes that do their best to take you down first. Red Baron includes an adaptive difficulty setting that was designed to adjust to the average player skill of its arcade location (but it doesn't know you're playing on a computer 40 years later, and we won't tell).

The first Looney Tunes arcade game, Road Runner gives players control of everyone's favorite speedy bird as he tries to outrun disaster-prone Wile E. Coyote, grabbing birdseed as he races through a series of increasingly twisty desert roads. The game travelled a rocky road of its own on the way to release, starting out as a much cooler laserdisc-based game with animated cutscenes and superior graphics, only to initially blow up like so much ACME brand dynamite before finding its way to the System 1 with a somewhat downsized vision. The original cabinet used a "hall effect" joystick that controlled both speed and direction, which is best emulated on MAME with an analog joystick, though it can be played with a standard 8-way stick as well, with less control.

Check out the rest of the Atari System 1 games on the theme pack page.

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The last of the Atari System 1 games to be released, RoadBlasters puts players in a surprisingly colorful dystopian future death race, blasting other cars and picking up fuel orbs while grabbing air-dropped weapon upgrades. The original steering wheel controller was essentially a one-axis Star Wars yoke, and its limited turning radius makes it somewhat challenging to emulate on MAME. A yoke-style controller is ideal and a 270-degree steering wheel may offer similar control, though without the buttons. You may also get acceptable results with a dial, trackball, or analog joystick, and you can even play it with a standard 8-way joystick with the right settings. Even if you don't have the optimal setup, it's worth a try!

Check out the rest of the Atari System 1 games on the theme pack page.

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Space Duel was the “true” sequel to Asteroids, adding a variety of novel features, the most notable being two-player simultaneous play. Atari had the genius (or insane?) idea of linking the two players’ ships together, creating the opportunity for both concentrated firepower and outright mayhem, as one player can thrust and send the tethered ship careening across the screen (early examples of both realistic physics and video game trolling). Space Duel also replaced the asteroids with colorful shapes that change across the levels, and added aggressive alien attackers (including some that “play catch” with their projectiles), shields and bonus levels. (One thing to note: you’ll need to have a Select button mapped as this game has you press Select to choose the game type and then Start to actually start the game.)

Tempest brought a number of key innovations to arcades in 1981 – it was one of the first arcade games to feature full color vector graphics, it featured a wide range of level designs and it made use of a convincing 3D perspective, among other things. Though visualized in the cabinet's art with terrifying aliens crawling out of a space portal, the game itself is simple and geometric, with abstract shapes that represent the game's protagonist and enemies. Tempest was fairly intimidating to many arcade-goers in 1981, but it has endured as one of Atari's high points and a classic that continues to be sought after decades later.

One of Atari's quirkier cabinets of the 80s, Toobin' featured both an unusual all-button control scheme and a weird stretched cabinet design that evoked the laid-back aesthetic of surfing, tubing and the endless summer. Toobin' also had unusually high-res graphics for its era, which show off its beautiful waves and waterfalls. It plays best on MAME with a 6-button Street Fighter-esque layout, where you can use the outer buttons for paddling and the bottom center button for throwing cans. The biggest challenge with this one was capturing its unusual cabinet shape while still making the game playable – we took some liberties with the actual construction of the cabinet, but we think we pulled off something that feels like the original cabinet. This overlay includes several variants that balance between the huge header image, the huge control panel and a huge screen.

Xybots was one of our favorites of this period, with a dungeon-like pseudo-3D maze filled with robots to shoot (though it also featured one of Atari's biggest sins of this era, the ever-decreasing player health, because apparently both the space heroes of Xybots and the fantasy squad of Gauntlet had some terrible wasting disease that required constant eating). Nonetheless, it's easy to get into while being challenging in later levels, and it plays great on MAME without a fancy twisty joystick (if you have 3 buttons in a row, just map the center button to Fire and the first and third buttons to rotate). Don't get neutralized!