Venetian Blinds

About

Venetian Blinds is not a game at all but a simple demonstration for the Atari 2600 that lets you control window blinds with the joystick. Pushing up or down moves the slats while raising them fully reveals a static sunset scene outside. This tiny project came from Activision founder Bob Whitehead, who needed to prove he did not steal a specific rendering technique called Venetian Blinds. The legal team used this code as evidence during their famous lawsuit against Atari over intellectual property claims. The backstory here is actually more interesting than the gameplay itself since it documents a pivotal moment in video game history. Activision won that court case and went on to become the largest third party developer for the system. You can see the sunset from this demo reused as the background in Barnstorming later on. It sits in the Activision Anthology collections today as a piece of tech history rather than something you play for fun or score points.