Play Air-Sea Battle Online

Game Overview

Air-Sea Battle is one of those classic Atari 2600 games that somehow makes shooting at pixelated targets weirdly addictive. You start at the bottom of the screen, and depending on which mode you pick, you're either an anti-aircraft gun blasting planes, a submarine launching torpedoes at ships, or even a jet dropping bombs on boats below. The controls are dead simple—mostly just timing your shots and angling them right—but some modes let you tweak your projectile's path mid-flight, which adds just enough strategy to keep you from mindlessly mashing the button.

My favorite part? The two-player mode where one person controls the jet and the other the ship, trying to outscore each other in a frantic two-minute showdown. The computer opponent in single-player isn’t exactly a genius—it just spams shots nonstop—but beating your own high score feels oddly satisfying. And yeah, the manual claims the game ends if someone hits 99 targets, but after countless rounds, I’ve still never seen it happen.

It’s not deep, but there’s something charming about how straightforward it is. You’ll probably cycle through all the modes once, then settle on a favorite (I’m partial to the submarine one).