Combat

Combat uses two four-directional joysticks, one for each player. The game has several modes of gameplay: "Tank", "Biplane" and "Jet" and with variations of the above models. The tank and jet modes are viewed from a top-down perspective while biplane games are side view. In all forms of the game, pushing the button fires a missile.

Hitting the other player with a missile scores a point. The player with the most points at the end of a two minutes and sixteen second round wins. Variations of the gameplay in Tank mode include adding obstacles to maneuver around, having the missiles rebound off of walls (referred to as Tank-Pong) and a mode where the tanks are invisible except when they are firing a missile or are hit by one. In the other two modes, Jet and Biplane, there are no obstacles, and both aircraft continuously move forward.

Combat was programmed while the hardware of the Atari Video Computer System was still under development. Steve Mayer was developing the game by late 1975. The original version was a tank game made on the early prototype Atari 2600 hardware engineered by Mayer and Ron Milner from Cyan Engineering, a consulting firm that Atari purchased in 1975. The VCS hardware was designed to be capable of playing Atari's popular arcade games Pong (1972) Pong Doubles (1973), Quadrapong (1974), Gran Trak 10 (1974), Tank (1974), and Jet Fighter (1975). Combat was based on the Tank.

Combat was made to fit into a two kilobyte cartridge's ROM. In his academic journal article Combat in Context, Nick Monfrot stated that the game was coded in assembly language by Joe Decuir, who was working on the final VCS hardware with Jay Miner. Decuir has deferred much of the credit on the game, stating that "Ron Milner and Steve Mayer conceived of what became Combat, I was an implementer [...] I worked on it mostly as a test case for the hardware".

From contemporary reviews, Video compared the Atari VCS's launch titles, and gave tank pong the highest rating of the variations on Combat with a seven-and-one-half rating for Tank-Pong and Invisible Tank Pong, six-and-one-half for invisible tank game, and six for all the other variations. In comparison, BlackJack and Video Olympics received a ten and eight-and-one-half rating each, while Basic Math, Surround, Street Racer, and Star Ship all received lower ratings. By 1982, the game was receiving negative reception. Walter Lowe, Jr.

ranked the game with a one-and-a-half star rating in Playboy's Guide to Rating Video Games while Ken Uston in Buying and Beating the Home Video Games declared "It's not fair to be too critical because, after all, this cartridge is nearly five years old; and in this age of rapid computer technology, that makes it almost an antique." Craig Kubey's The Winners' Book of Video Games simply described it as "adequate" with both Lowe, Jr. and Kubey both only finding the saving grace that it came included with the console. In the British publication TV Gamer from August 1983, Sonya Bradford found the controls took time to get used to and that the game "becomes a bit monotonous, which is not helped by the poor graphics."

A sequel to Combat went into development for the Atari 2600 and was to be titled Combat Two. It was announced by Atari in 1982. The game would have included landscape elements such as water, forests and bridges as well as a level editor. The game was officially announced but was never officially released for the system. An incomplete prototype of the game surfaced in 1999 by former Atari Age magazine editor Steve Morgenstern.

Physical copies of the game were made for sale in limited quantity at the 2001 Classic Gaming Expo. The prototype was released as part of the Atari Flashback 2 dedicated console in 2005. Combat Two was included as part of the Atari 50 (2022) compilation for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam, and Xbox One.