The Rants of an Angry Game Dev Girl: The Atari Challenge

That's right gamers, this week in Game Design and Production I we were tasked with making a card game out of an Atari game! For anyone who doesn't know Atari (I forgive you because it is pretty old) I will give a quick overview of Atari and some of the games it has made.

The games we had to pick from are as followed:

Lunar Lander
Asteroids
Centipede
Galaga
Frogger
Qix
Paperboy
Elevator Action
Berzerk
Dig Dug

Atari is an electronics company started in 1972, and is the pioneer in the world of Arcade games, video game consoles and home electronics. Atari and it's products helped develop and define the computer entertainment industry; Some of the most innovative Atari products where Pong and the Atari 2600. Now the company has changed it's name multiple times throughout the years because of multiple reasons from change in management to change in Owners. During the Golden Age of Video Games, Atari was one of the most innovative and well known game developers and even today it is a global leader in the publishing and development of interactive gaming and entertainment. Atari has games for almost every type of genre, from action to adventure to even sports games (A Fun Fact: Did you know Atari created one of the first sports games, Pong, in 1972. For more info on Pong click Here). For a list of some of Atari's recent games click Here and for a list of it's arcade games made available on its Atari 2600 system click Here.

Now the way I know Atari is through it's collection of Arcade Video games (no I'm not that old to have played them when they first came out but there was an Arcade, long closed down, that use to have all the old retro Atari Arcade games in working condition near my house when I was a kid and I would go there all the time before I moved). Some of my absolute favourite games were Frogger, Dig Dug, Space Invaders, Pac-man and Elevator Action (they are some of the best Atari games ever in my opinion and you should play them like right now. You can find ROMs and emulators that let you play these retro video games, and you can find and play some of them online Here).

Frogger:

Frogger was an arcade game developed by Konami (You can learn more about this company by clicking Here) in 1981, which was later adapted to the Atari 2600 system. The goal of the game was to navigate frogs through a busy street and hazardous river (this sounds easy but the game gets harder and harder as you play). Some of the obstacles in this game includes cars, alligators and snakes among others, and can gain bonuses by catching flies and escorting lady frogs (for all those Player Frogs out there).

Dig Dug:

Dig Dug was developed by Namco (You can find more info on this company Here) in 1982 as an arcade game which like Frogger was later adapted to the Atari 2600 system. The goal of the game was to clear all the monsters in the level by either squishing them with a rock (that was my favorite for some reason) or by making them pop through the process of inflation.There were two types of monsters, a red tomato like creature with goggles called a Pooka and a fire breathing dragon thing called a Fygar (you can see them in the image below). There were 3 different ways to get killed in the game, getting caught by a monster,getting burned by a Fygar's fire or having a rock dropped on you.

Space Invaders:

Space Invaders was developed and released in 1978 by Tomohiro Nishikado (You can find more info on Tomohiro by clicking Here). Like the other games it was later adapted to the Atari 2600 system as well as other systems later in the years. In Space Invaders players must defend earth against an alien invasion by blasting the Aliens out of the sky by shooting them with a laser canon. As you progress throughout the game the aliens begin to pick up speed (it gets really tricky when there is one left, its nearly impossible).

Pac-man:

Now I already wrote a blog about Pac-man so I won't really go into explaining it again, you can find my previous blog Here. What I will say about Pac-man was it is one of my favorite arcade game ever and one of the funnest collection game ever!

Elevator Action:

Elevator Action, created in 1983 by Taito (You can find more info about Taito by clicking Here), was popular for years due to it's innovated game play, which was later adapted to the Atari 2600 system. My group decided to choose this game for our assignment because of a couple reasons; 1. This was one of the games most of our group was familiar with, and 2. we felt te game play and mechanics were the most interesting to adapt to a card game (Personally I'm really glad that we choose this game because there was some seriously interesting things we could do with Elevator Action).

Now in Elevator Action players are a spy infiltrating a building full of enemy spies and elevators (hence the name), and must find and gather the secret documents as well as make his way through the numerous floors without getting caught by enemy agents. Players can defeat enemy spies through a number of methods, however each method has a different score associated with it. My group really liked this scoring system which really influenced our decision to use this game for our assignment. The score system is as followed:

Retrieve secret documents = 500 points
Knock out an agent by falling light = 300 points
Crush an agent using elevator = 300 points
Knock out an agent by jumping/kicking = 150 points
Shoot an agent = 100 points
There is a 50 point bonus for shooting/kicking agents on the dark floors or when the lights are shot out.
Bonus points are given with completion of each round (1,000 points per round up to a maximum of 10,000 points)

Elevator Action Game Play: