Long-Lost Atari Game Found After 40 Years Of Searching

Sonar is a lost Atari game that was never completed, but is now available to play.

Even though the Atari 2600 is over forty years old, it still has secrets to reveal. The latest comes in the form of an unreleased Battleship-like game programmed by Brad Stewart named Sonar. Brad is credited for work on several Atari games, including Breakout and Asteroids. Sonar was thought to be lost but was recently found in the collection of Jim Snyder, who worked for Atari R&D in the 80s.

Sonar isn’t a Battleship game in the traditional sense, as that would require multiple screens so you could hide your ships from your opponent. To get around that limitation, Sonar hides the targets for each player.

The game itself plays in real-time, with several options to choose from, so matches don’t devolve into mindless button spamming. The most exciting revelation is how Sonar tells players if they are near a target. A’ sonar’ sound plays when a player’s cursor is within one square of an enemy ship. This sound plays in stereo, with a speaker designated to each player.

You can read a full writeup on the game, including its mechanics, over at AtariProtos. One curious quirk noted here is the ship locations aren’t randomized, although it was a planned feature originally.

As for why the project was never finished, AtariProtos theorizes it may be Sonar‘s reliance on stereo sound at a time when TV’s used mono audio. Originally, the Atari 2600 was designed to have speakers built onto the system. With that idea scrapped, titles utilizing the stereo sound simply don’t work.

Although incomplete, Sonar is still playable in its current state, you can download the rom yourself from AtariAge