Pitfall! is returning on a cartridge you can physically slot into a console. Not an emulator. Not a plug-and-play stick. A cartridge.
Today Atari unveiled the Atari x Activision Collection, a physical game partnership that brings the two companies back together after nearly 50 years apart. Spanning 39 classic Activision games, the complete lineup will be sold in three separate ways.
The 12 you can buy one at a time
November brings Standard Edition releases for 12 of the titles, priced at USD$35 apiece. Those games are: Pitfall!, River Raid, Megamania, Enduro, Kaboom!, H.E.R.O., Pressure Cooker, Private Eye, River Raid II, Keystone Kapers, The Activision Decathlon and Pitfall II: Lost Caverns.
An asterisk hangs over two of them. According to Atari, The Activision Decathlon and Pitfall II: Lost Caverns will arrive later than the others.
Every Standard Edition ships with complete packaging plus a printed color manual patterned after the original releases. Compatibility covers the Atari 2600+ and Atari 7800+ as well as original Atari 2600 and 7800 hardware — the detail that counts if a wood-grain console has been surviving in your closet since the Carter administration.
Then there’s the box set math
The collection stretches to all 39 games through four box sets called Treasure, Speed, Secrets and Victory. Late November brings the first one; the remaining three arrive over the first three quarters of 2027. Pre-orders are handled through atari.com at USD$250.
Prefer the whole thing in one go? A complete collection containing all 39 games opens for pre-order at USD$1000, and it will reportedly bundle a “collectible item” that Atari has yet to reveal.
Why Activision and Atari, and why now
There’s real history underpinning the reunion. Atari programmers seeking credit and royalties for the games they built went on to found Activision, and the company Atari has now teamed up with is a very different beast than the one that started in a living room.
“In 1979, a group of Atari programmers set out to prove that great games could come from independent creators and ended up changing the industry forever,” said Atari VP of hardware Matt Burnett in a comment published alongside the announcement. “The Atari x Activision Collection brings that legacy to life through the games themselves, giving fans an opportunity to experience, collect and preserve the work of the developers who helped establish a new model for the video game industry.”
Physical media is having a strange year
For anyone who values owning things, newly pressed cartridges of Activision’s oldest catalog show up at a peculiar time. PlayStation hasn’t backed away from its plan to discontinue physical discs in the near future, insisting the shift won’t damage its business now or later.
Which leaves the situation like this: a format that hit its peak while Reagan was in office is heading back into manufacturing, even as the disc gets quietly shown the door.
Kaboom! sitting on a shelf in 2027. Nobody had that one written down.