''Alpha Beam With Ernie'' is an

edutainment Educational entertainment, also referred to by the portmanteau edutainment, is media designed to education, educate through entertainment. The term has been used as early as 1933. Most often it includes content intended to teach but has inciden ...

video game released for the

Atari 2600 The Atari 2600 is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977 as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS), it popularized microprocessor-based hardware and games stored on swappable ROM cartridg ...

by Atari, Inc. in 1983. It was developed in conjunction with the Children's Computer Workshop. The game was programmed by Michael Callahan and Preston Stuart.

Gameplay

The object of ''Alpha Beam'' is to help ''

Sesame Street ''Sesame Street'' is an American educational television, educational children's television series that combines live-action, sketch comedy, animation, and puppetry. It is produced by Sesame Workshop (known as the Children's Television Worksh ...

Ernie Ernie is a masculine given name, frequently a short form (hypocorism) of Ernest, Ernald, Ernesto, or Verner. It may refer to: People * Ernie Accorsi (born 1941), American football executive * Ernie Adams (disambiguation) * Ernie Afaganis ...

pilot a small shuttle, collect fuel tanks (marked by a letter of the alphabet), and return them to his space ship so that he can return to Earth. The game was marketed as a family-friendly game that could teach children

pre-reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word r ...

skills such as identifying and matching letters. ''Alpha Beam'' was compatible with th
Atari Kid's Controller
which was sold separately, although the regular keyboard controller is also compatible.AtariAge – Kid's Controller
/ref>

References

1983 video games Atari 2600 games Atari 2600-only games Children's educational video games Sesame Street video games Single-player video games Video games developed in the United States Video games set in outer space Bert and Ernie {{edu-videogame-stub