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| Dominos | |
|---|---|
 Promotional flyer | |
| Developer(s) | Atari, Inc. |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release | January 1977 |
| Genre(s) | Snake |
Dominos is a one, two or four-player video action game packaged in its own distinctively styled upright cabinet that rest directly on the floor.
Gameplay is a variation of the snake genre, in which players compete by surrounding each other with lines of dominos. Players change direction via a set of four directional buttons representing up, down, right, and left respectively. A player loses when they hit a wall, their own dominos, or their opponent's, at which point all the dominos in their line "fall" down. At the end of each round, a point is awarded to the winner of that round until the end point goal is reached. The point goal can be 3, 4, 5, or 6 points. [1] [2]
Dominos was programmed by Dennis Koble. [3] He had joined Atari in 1976 and was only the fourth programmer at the company. His first project was Sprint 2 (1976) made with Lyle Rains and Dan Van Elderen. [4] Koble stated that despite being credited as the programmer on Dominos, Rains was "the brains behind the game", stating Rains suggested the concept, drew the graphics and created the AI for the computer controlled player. [3]
Following the release of Blockade by Gremlin Industries, Atari wanted to make their own version of the game. Koble said the game was not stolen from Blockade, stating that prior to Gremlin's release, he had seen similar snake video games on ARPANET and CompuServe, which made him feel he was not stealing Gremlin's game. [4] Among the additions made to the game, Koble added a computer-controlled opponent, giving the game a single-player mode. [3]
Koble claimed it was made in a very short amount of time, estimating about 13 weeks from to complete. He recalled that the game was made when Atari was still a "young company and just trying to survive as they made the transition into using microprocessors. They didn't quite have the standards they developed later." [4]
Dominos was shipped in January 1977. [5] Following Dominos, Koble went on to program Avalanche , his final game for Atari. [6] Atari would shortly release another snake game, Surround for the Atari 2600 on September 1977. [7]
From retrospective reviews, Bret Alan Weiss wrote in Allgame that Dominos was a simplistic game in terms of both visuals and gameplay and that it was superior as a two-player game, but it was "more fun than it looks, which isn't saying much" [8]
Asteroids is a space-themed multidirectional shooter arcade video game designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg released in November 1979 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a single spaceship in an asteroid field which is periodically traversed by flying saucers. The object of the game is to shoot and destroy the asteroids and saucers, while not colliding with either, or being hit by the saucers' counter-fire. The game becomes harder as the number of asteroids increases.
Snake is a sub-genre of action video games where the player maneuvers the end of a growing line, often themed as a snake. The player must keep the snake from colliding with both other obstacles and itself, which gets harder as the snake lengthens. It originated in the 1976 two-player arcade video game Blockade from Gremlin Industries where the goal is to survive longer than the other player. The concept evolved into a single-player variant where a snake gets longer with each piece of food eaten—often apples or eggs. The simplicity and low technical requirements of snake games have resulted in hundreds of versions—some of which have the word snake or worm in the title—for many platforms.
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.
Frogger is a 1981 arcade action game developed by Konami and published by Sega. In North America, it was distributed by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct five frogs to their homes by dodging traffic on a busy road, then crossing a river by jumping on floating logs and alligators.
Cabal is a 1988 arcade shooter video game originally developed by TAD Corporation and published in Japan by Taito, in North America by Fabtek and in Europe by Capcom. In the game, the player controls a commando, viewed from behind, trying to destroy various enemy military bases. The game was innovative for the era, but only a mild success in the arcades, and became better known for its various home conversions.
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom, known as Zoom 909 in Japan, is a pseudo-3D rail shooter released as an arcade video game by Sega in 1982. The player controls a spaceship in a third-person perspective, adapting the three-dimensional perspective of Sega's earlier racing game Turbo (1981) for the space shoot 'em up genre. It used the Buck Rogers license, referencing the space battles, though Buck himself is never seen.
Phoenix is a fixed shooter video game developed for arcades in Japan and released in 1980 by Taito. The player controls a space ship shooting at incoming enemies that fly from the top of the screen down towards the player's ship. There are five stages which repeat endlessly. The fifth is a fight against a large enemy spaceship, making Phoenix one of the first shooters with a boss battle, an element that would become common for the genre.
Carnival is a fixed shooter developed by Gremlin and released by Sega in arcades in 1980. It was one of the first video games with a bonus round.
Space Wars is a shooter video game released in arcades by Cinematronics in 1977. It is based on the PDP-1 game Spacewar! (1962) but instead uses vector graphics for the visuals. The hardware developed for Space Wars became the platform for most of the vector-based arcade games from Cinematronics. It was distributed in Japan by Taito in 1978, and a Vectrex port was published in 1982.
Grobda is a 1984 multidirectional shooter arcade video game developed and published by Namco. It is a spin-off from Xevious, as the player's tank first appeared in that game as an enemy. It runs on Namco Super Pac-Man hardware but with a video system like that used in Mappy and The Tower of Druaga, and it also uses a DAC for the "Get Ready" speech sample at the start of each round.
Space Invaders Part II is a 1979 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Taito. In North America, it was distributed by Midway Games as Space Invaders Deluxe. It is the sequel to Space Invaders (1978). The player controls a laser base that must destroy formations of descending aliens, while avoiding their projectiles. New features have been added, such as aliens that split into two when shot, an increased high score limit with the player able to save their name as initials, and short cutscenes in-between stages. It runs on the Taito 8080 arcade system.
Blackjack is a video game simulation of the card game blackjack. It was designed by Bob Whitehead for the Atari Video Computer System. The game allows up to three players to play a variation of blackjack. Each player is given 200 chips where they can bet 1 to 25 of each round. The game ends for a player when they either run out of chips or earns 1000 chips or more.
Gee Bee is a block breaker/video pinball hybrid arcade game developed and published by Namco in 1978. The player controls a set of paddles with a rotary knob, with the objective being to score as many points as possible by deflecting a ball against bricks, pop bumpers and other objects in the playfield. It was developed by Toru Iwatani, known as the creator of Pac-Man and Pole Position. Outside Japan, it was published by Gremlin Industries.
Blockade is an arcade video game developed by Lane Hauck for Gremlin and released in November 1976. It is a two-player game where each player controls the direction of an arrow on the screen which creates a trail behind it. The object is the avoid any walls surrounding the playfield or created by each player for a select amount of turns. Blockade spawned many clones which came to be known as snake games.
Frogs is a single-player action arcade game released by Gremlin in 1978. It notably featured a jumping character. The game's graphics are "projected" by laying the monitor flat on its back and reflecting the computer-generated graphics of the frogs and flies toward the player via a mirror at a 45-degree angle. The game was distributed by Sega in Japan.
T.A.N.K. is a 1985 vertically scrolling multidirectional shooter developed and released in arcades by SNK. It was published in North America as TNK III by Kitcorp. Versions of T.A.N.K. for home computers were released by Ocean Software for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and Amstrad CPC in 1987. A sequel was also released for the Nintendo Entertainment System titled Iron Tank.
Surround is a video game programmed by Alan Miller and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600. The game plays similarly to the arcade game Blockade (1976), which allows players to navigate a continuously moving block around an enclosed space as a wall trails behind it. Every time the opposite player has their brick hit a wall, the opposing player earns a single point, with the winner being the first to collect ten points.
Snake is a 1998 video game created by Taneli Armanto as one of the three games included in the Nokia 6110 cellular phone. In the game, the players controls a snake in a playing field, collecting orbs which give the player points and make the snake grow in size while avoiding the walls and the snake's own longer body.
Pitfall II: The Lost Caverns is a 1985 arcade game developed by Sega. It is based upon Activision's two home console games Pitfall! (1982) and Pitfall II: Lost Caverns (1984) for the Atari 2600. It has been described by historian Brett Weiss as a "rare occurrence" of an Arcade game being influenced by a console game.
Outlaw is a 1978 video game developed at Atari by David Crane. The game is a variation of the arcade game Gun Fight (1975). Upon release, it received positive reviews from Creative Computing, The Space Gamer and the Xenia Daily Gazette.
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