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Adventure is a video game developed by Warren Robinett for the Atari Video Computer System and released in 1980 by Atari, Inc. The player controls a square avatar whose quest is to explore an open-ended environment to find a magical chalice and return it to the golden castle. The game world is populated by roaming enemies: three dragons that can eat the avatar and a bat that randomly steals and hides items around the game world. Adventure introduced new elements to console games, including enemies that continue to move when offscreen.
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Cathryn Mataga is a game programmer and founder of independent video game company Junglevision. Under the name William, she wrote Atari 8-bit family games for Synapse Software in the early to mid 1980s, including Shamus, a flip-screen shooter.
Steve Cartwright is an American video game designer. He is best known as one of the original Activision game designers, credited with such games as Barnstorming, Megamania, Seaquest and Hacker.
Pac-Man is a 1982 maze video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. under official license by Namco, and an adaptation of the 1980 hit arcade game of the same name. The player controls the title character, who attempts to consume all of the wafers in a maze while avoiding four ghosts that pursue him. Eating flashing wafers at the corners of the screen causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue and flee, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points. Once eaten, a ghost is reduced to a pair of eyes, which return to the center of the maze to be restored.
Computer Quarterback is an American football simulation video game written for the Apple II by Danielle Bunten Berry and published in 1981 by Strategic Simulations. Ports to the Atari 8-bit family and Commodore 64 were released in 1984. Add-on disks for new football seasons were also sold by SSI.
Quantum is a color vector arcade video game developed at General Computer Corporation for Atari, Inc. and released in November 1982. It was designed by Betty Ryan (née Tylko) who was the first female developer at GCC. The premise of the game is related loosely to quantum physics; the player directs a probe with a trackball to encircle atomic "particles" for points, without touching various other particles. Once the particles are surrounded by the probe's tail they are destroyed.
Jawbreaker is a Pac-Man clone programmed by John Harris for the Atari 8-bit family and published by On-Line Systems. Released in 1981 before an official version of Pac-Man was available, it was widely lauded by reviewers and became a major seller. The story of its creation and Harris's Atari 8-bit implementation of Frogger form a portion of Steven Levy's 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.
Atari Program Exchange (APX) was a division of Atari, Inc. that sold software via mail-order for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers from 1981 until 1984. Quarterly APX catalogs were sent to all registered Atari 8-bit owners. APX encouraged any programmer, not just professionals, to submit video games, educational software, applications, and utilities. If selected, a program was added to the catalog with credit given to the programmer. The top submissions of the quarter in each category were recognized. One program each year received the top honor: the Atari Star award. Several APX titles, such as Eastern Front (1941), Caverns of Mars, and Atari Star winner Typo Attack, were moved to Atari's official product line. A few internally developed Atari products were sold through APX, such as Atari Pascal and the developer handbook De Re Atari.
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Christian H. "Chris" Oberth was a video game programmer who began writing games for the Apple II in the late 1970s. He also developed handheld electronic games for Milton Bradley, arcade video games for Stern Electronics and other companies, and ported games to home computers and consoles.
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Dimension X is a first person action game for the Atari 8-bit family released in 1984 by Synapse Software. It was designed by Steve Hales, who previously wrote Slime and Fort Apocalypse for Synapse. Dimension X is a vehicle-based, first person shooter with similar gameplay to Atari's Battlezone and Novagen's Encounter. The manual includes instructions for a Commodore 64 version of the game, but it was never completed nor released.
Secret Quest is an action-adventure game developed by Axlon for the Atari 2600 and published by Atari Corporation in 1989. The player controls a humanoid character that fights monsters and gathers items on a series of space stations. It was one of the last cartridges released for the console and has a larger ROM capacity than most 2600 games plus a small amount of RAM. The box credits Nolan Bushnell for the game and includes his photo on both the front and back. According to Secret Quest programmer Steve DeFrisco, "Atari thought that his name would entice people to buy some more 2600 titles".
Threshold is a space-themed fixed shooter written by Warren Schwader and Ken Williams for the Apple II and published by On-Line Systems in 1981. Inspired by Sega's Astro Blaster arcade video game, Threshold introduces many enemy ship types and wave formations as the game progresses. Reviewers found the variety distinguished the game from the many similar shoot 'em ups.
Elektra Glide is a futuristic motorcycle racing game developed by designer Adam Billyard for the Atari 8-bit, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64 home computers. It was published in 1985 by English Software. Mastertronic also published the game in the US.
References
- 1 2 The full HTML Halcyon Days book
- ↑ Classic Gaming review
- ↑ Accidental Innovation, Part 2
- ↑ "Halcyon Days now online," Atari Age forums, 2002
- ↑ Erickson, Jonathan (August 1, 1998). "Lessons Learned". Dr. Dobb's Journal.
- ↑ "John Romero's .plan". Blue's News. February 1997.
- ↑ Alderman, John. "Fan Captures History of Games' Early Creators". Archived from the original on October 24, 2012.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ↑ Bogost, Ian (March 31, 2009). Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System . MIT Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-262-01257-7.
- ↑ Aycock, John (2016). Retrogame Archeology: Exploring Old Computer Games. Springer. p. 14. ISBN 978-3319300023.