Venetian Blinds (video game)

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Venetian Blinds is a quirky simulation video game created by Activision co-founders David Crane and Bob Whitehead for the Atari 2600. In the game, you raise and lower gray Venetian blinds on an olive window in a brown room using the joystick. When the blinds are raised, a detailed sunset appears behind a green valley, and the Activision logo sits in the corner.

The game started as a joke about a lawsuit between Activision and Atari over Whitehead’s Venetian blinds graphics technique. The technique was designed to work around the Atari 2600’s limits by drawing every other horizontal line and offsetting sprites, which let developers show more moving parts than the hardware normally allowed. It first appeared in the 1979 chess game Video Chess.

Activision formed in 1979 by Whitehead, Crane, Larry Kaplan, and Alan Miller after leaving Atari due to pay and recognition issues. In 1980, Atari sued Activision, claiming they stole trade secrets, including the blinds technique. The lawsuit was dropped in 1982, likely through an out-of-court settlement.

Venetian Blinds was not released to the public until 2003, when it was included in Activision Anthology for Windows, macOS, and Game Boy Advance. It was later released in 2010 through the Game Room service for Windows, Xbox 360, and Windows Phone 7. In May 2025, it joined Xbox Game Pass Retro Classics.

Some view the game as more of a historical curiosity or “diss game” than a traditional title, but it’s notable for its insider joke and its place in early video game history. The sunset technique it spotlighted also influenced later projects, and the game remains a memorable footnote to the Activision/Atari era.