Secret Quest

Secret Quest was released by CBS Electronics in 1989 as one of the very last titles ever officially released for the Atari 2600, and at the same time as an action adventure with item-collecting elements and simple puzzle solving. The player moves through a large, interconnected game world, fights various types of enemies, searches for keys and useful items, and gradually unlocks new areas of the map, similar to later action adventures on more powerful platforms. The emphasis on exploratory progress, mapping the terrain, and gradually unlocking further areas markedly sets the game apart from older, more simply structured titles for this console from the early eighties.

Given its late release date, the game could draw on several years of accumulated developer experience with the Atari 2600's capabilities and limits, which shows in smoother controls and clearer graphics compared to older adventures from the early eighties. Even so, the hardware itself remains a constraint - the animation is still spare and music is almost entirely absent, with all emphasis placed mainly on the structure of the game world, the smoothness of progression, and motivation for further exploration.

Secret Quest fell into the shadow of the approaching arrival of newer consoles, and at the time of release only a handful of loyal Atari 2600 owners noticed it, making it more of a curiosity of the platform's late phase than any commercial success. Today it is interesting precisely as a late demonstration of how far the design of action adventures on this hardware could be pushed before the console was finally replaced by a newer generation of home computers and game consoles. For collectors, Secret Quest represents an interesting final record of just how long the Atari 2600 was actually able to keep pace with the evolution of game design and the changing tastes of players of the time.

Why play it: Collectors of the Atari 2600's late era will find Secret Quest appealing as a final record of how far the design of action adventures on this hardware could be pushed before the console was replaced by a new generation.