Brain Games (Atari 2600, 1978)

Brain Games is an early title from programmer Larry Kaplan, and the reason we know his name from an era when most game developers were treated like anonymous uncredited cogs in a vicious machine is because Larry would go on to make Kaboom, have great timing on leaving Atari, and become one of the original founders of an obscure start up company named Activision. Humble beginnings here eh Larry? This is a cart made up of a number of memory type games with varying degrees of difficulty and sort of horny names like “Touch Me” and “Play Me.” None of them are very fun. Its really only notable for Kaplan’s involvement and the very entertaining theory that Ralph Baer stole the idea of Simon from Touch Me as revenge for Nolan Bushnell stealing the idea for Pong from him.

TERRIBLE

LAWFUL AVAILABILITY: Not hard to find, about 8 bucks loose and 20 bucks complete, also available in the Flashback Classic Switch anthology. CHAOTIC AVAILABILITY: Included in most Atari 2600 ROM sets.