| Beany Bopper | |
|---|---|
 Front cover of the Beany Bopper game cartridge | |
| Developer(s) | Sirius Software |
| Publisher(s) | Fox Games |
| Designer(s) | Mark Turmell |
| Programmer(s) | Grady Ward |
| Platform(s) | Atari 2600 |
| Release |
|
| Genre(s) | Shoot 'em up |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Beany Bopper is a shoot 'em up for the Atari 2600 from California-based developer Sirius Software and published by 20th Century Fox Games in 1982. [1]
The player controls the "bopper", which is a ball that traverses a playing field with rectangular obstacles in it, and is tasked with preventing "beanies" (so called because they wear propeller beanie hats) from reaching the bottom of the screen. To do this the player must shoot the "beanies" with a stun-gun that can pivot through 360 degrees, and then touch them to capture them. [2] Two play-modes are possible: a first in which the "beanies" can not move through the obstructions, and a second in which they can. Objects fall from the top of the screen that can be collected by the player for additional points. [1] [3] Once sufficient "beanies" have been captured, "Bouncing Orange Eyes" start bouncing around the play-area that must be avoided. [4]
Initial design for the game was done by Mark Turmell, then twenty years old. [5] Programming was done by Grady Ward. [6] Launch of the game was accompanied by a television advertising campaign which portrayed a boy being absorbed into the electronic world of the game. [7] The game was part of a series of games launched by 20th Century Fox for the Atari 2600 (also called the Atari VCS), which also included Deadly Duck , Worm War I , and Fast Eddie . [6]
Writing in Electronic Fun With Computers and Games in March 1983, Ed Hulse praised the game as offering "a lot of enjoyment" and being very challenging. [3] Writing retrospectively in 2011, Brett Weiss criticised the game as having excessively simplistic graphics and sound and having game-play that was "limited in scope". [1]
Kaboom! is an action video game published in 1981 by Activision for the Atari 2600. The gameplay was based on the Atari arcade game Avalanche (1978), with the game now involving a Mad Bomber who drops bombs instead of falling rocks. Kaboom! was programmed by Larry Kaplan with David Crane coding the graphics for the buckets and Mad Bomber. It was the last game designed by Kaplan for Activision, who left the company shortly after the release of the game. The game was later ported by Paul Wilson for the Atari 5200 system.
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Sirius Software was a California-based publisher of video games for the Apple II, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, and VIC-20. Most games were written for the Apple II, then ported to other systems. The company was founded in 1980 by Jerry Jewell and Terry Bradley and released over 160 games before folding in 1984. Sirius also developed games for the Atari 2600 which were published in 1982 and 1983 by 20th Century Fox Video Games. Fox's failure to pay Sirius resulted in company's downfall. Nasir Gebelli wrote some of the early hits from Sirius, establishing his reputation as an Apple II game programmer.
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