As I’ve mentioned earlier, the Atari era passed me by, so I’ve been reading up on this console and its games. I was surprised to discover that there was an educational programming game in 1979 called “Atari BASIC Programming.” It was designed as an educational tool to teach users the basics of programming using the Atari BASIC language. Players could create simple programs and games using two Atari keypad controllers with special overlays to show how to type the different commands and letters.
The game was innovative for its time, especially considering the constraints of the Atari 2600 hardware and the simplicity of the programming language itself. Nonetheless, Atari BASIC Programming was an early attempt to merge gaming and education, paving the way for future educational games and programming tools.
Here you can find the game’s manual and the game’s dump .
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