The folks at Atari Age have done a nice job of scanning and archiving these relics from a bygone era.
I remember seeing the Atari Force ones as a kid.
Check it out: A Yars’ Revenge comic!
Oh wow, those bring back memories. I had the first two Swordquest comics that came with their respective games. The comics were actually better than the games (which didn’t make any sense to me as a 5-6 year old kid), with good art by George Perez.
The Angry Video Game Nerd did a spot a few months back about Swordquest and the contest that went with it.
Great find! Atari Force #3 is the only comic I had, coming with the Star Raiders cartridge. Among the games listed, I owned Yars’ Revenge, Berzerk, and Phoenix, but no comics came bundled with those.
I always knew something was missing from my childhood…
I love stuff like this from the early age of video games, it seems so simple and pure and makes me nostalgic for being 12 years old again (ahhh, 1982, so radical!). I had the Swordquest ones, and I’m pretty sure I remember a Pitfall! comic too, though it did not come packaged with the game.
This goes right along with the other thread about manuals and extras in old video games for bringing back the memories. Gaming now is better than ever in terms of choices available, technology involved and what can be accomplished, and yet it also seems somewhat jaded and gaudy when compared to the honest simplicity of that earlier era.
Of course, then there are the “Tramiel” era Atarian comics that have a borderline racist character named “Ninja-endo”
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This story says it all.