Back in the days of the Atari 2600, most games were created by a single individual 
who did the design, programming, graphics and sound. These days it takes large 
teams of people many months (years!) to create a single game. But back then, if 
you had the skills you could program a 2600 game by yourself in a few short months 
(weeks!) As time passed and the capabilities of systems improved, more people 
were needed in order to produce a quality game. 
The information provided below comes from many different sources. Some companies, 
  such as Activision, 
  were pretty open about who their programmers were. Others, such as Atari, 
  kept this info in the dark (probably to keep other companies from stealing their 
  talent!) Several classic gaming programmers have publicly spoken about their 
  accomplishments, and for those individuals information is generally comprehensive. 
  We also used The Giant 
  List of Classic Game Programmers as a reference in compiling our list of 
  programmers for Atari systems. And some games have the programmer's name listed 
  in the manual, on the cartridge, or somewhere in the game itself. 
The list below is by no means complete. For that matter, this list is only 
  a small subset of programmers who worked on titles for Atari systems. Unfortunately, 
  as time goes on it's likely that such information will be even harder to come 
  by. If you know someone who worked in the classic game industry, please 
  let us know! We'd love to hear from them and would like to fill in as many 
  blanks as possible. And we're not just talking about programmers here, we'll 
  also acknowledge designers, artists, musicians, and so forth.  |