Play Out Of Control Online

Game Overview

Out of Control on the Atari 2600 is one of those games that feels simple until you actually try it. You're piloting this little spaceship that handles like the one in Asteroids—tap left or right to spin, hit fire to thrust forward. But here's the catch: momentum is a killer. If you don't plan your stops by thrusting backward, you'll slam into hurdles before you even realize what went wrong.

The first part is an obstacle course where arrows tell you which side to squeeze through (or between, if there are two). Mess up, and you're sent back to the last checkpoint—no mercy. After that, it turns into a weirdly tense balloon-popping minigame where you chase down ten randomly placed targets before finally docking. The whole thing has this janky, unpredictable rhythm that makes even simple maneuvers feel risky.

There are 28 variations, mostly changing speed and hurdle count—some have a brutal 82 obstacles. Odd numbers give you faster controls, evens make everything sluggish. No difficulty switches, just pure joystick navigation. It's the kind of game where you'll fail a dozen times before getting the hang of it, and then immediately crash on the next run anyway.