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Atlantis (video game)

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This article is about the 1982 shoot 'em up game. For the 1997 adventure game, see Atlantis: The Lost Tales.
Atlantis
Atari 2600 cover art
Developer(s)Imagic
Publisher(s)Imagic[1]
Designer(s)Dennis Koble
Platform(s)Atari 2600, Intellivision, Magnavox Odyssey 2, VIC-20, Atari 8-bit computers
Release
August 1982
  • Atari 2600
  • August 1982
  • Intellivision
  • October 1982
  • Odyssey 2
  • May 1983
  • VIC-20
  • May 1983
Genre(s)Shoot 'em up[1]
Mode(s)Single-player, two-player

Atlantis is a fixed shooter video game released by Imagic in August 1982 for the Atari 2600. The game is set in the fabled city of Atlantis where the cities are under attack by invading Gorgon vessels who plan to destroy the city. The player controls sentries to fire a counter attack.

The game was designed by Dennis Koble. In comparison to his previous game Trick Shot which he described as giving him anxiety, Koble described the development of Atlantis as a far more positive experience. Atlantis was ported to the Atari 8-bit computers, VIC-20, Intellivision, and Magnavox Odyssey 2. While the VIC-20 and Odyssey 2 versions of the game play similar to the original, the Intellivision version adds several elements of gameplay to the game.

Atlantis was a financial success for Imagic, being the second highest-grossing game for the company after Demon Attack (1982). A follow-up titled Atlantis II was given as a grand prize for winners of a video game competition, which featured the same general gameplay, but with higher difficulty.

Atlantis and its various ports received positive reviews from video game publications such as The Video Game Update, Video Games and The Logical Gamer. The game received a "Certificate of Merit", as a runner-up in the category "Video Game of the Year" category from Video magazine in 1983.

Gameplay

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Gameplay of Atlantis on the Atari 2600. The Acropolis Command Post is in the center, with the two sentries situated on the left and right sides of the screen.[2]

The game takes place in the fabled city of Atlantis, a place with major city districts. One day, an ominous sound is heard in the sea surrounding the city that is the Gorgon Fleet, fierce warriors with an intent to demolishing the city.[2]

The goal of the game is to defend Atlantis from the Gorgons vessels before they destroy it with their death rays. The player can fire at the invading Gorgon sentry vessels from either the Acropolis Command Post or the sentry posts on each side of the screen. The smaller, faster ships are worth more points.[2]

The Gorgon fleet attacks in waves. At the end of each wave, the player receives points for each part of Atlantis that is not destroyed. For every 10,000 points, a destroyed part of Atlantis is restored at the end of a wave. Points are earned for shooting the vessels, the smaller ships are worth more points and shooting them with the sentries is worth more points.[2]

Each city in the game is has a force field that protects it powered by the Acropolis post. In some game modes, the Acropolis post is disabled. Other game modes adjust whether the next wave of enemies have faster enemies, or offer a two-player mode where the left joystick fires the left and right joystick control each sentry respectively.[2]

Development

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Atlantis was designed and coded by Denis Koble. It was made for Imagic, a company made from ex-Atari and Mattel employees in 1981. Prior to making Atlantis, Koble made Trick Shot for the company, a game he said gave him anxiety attacks as he had difficulty getting the physics correct for the game. Atlantis comparatively was described by Koble "a pleasure to work on and we were a very cohesive team [...] I have lots of positive memories".[1]

For the game's theme, Koble said he wanted to do a game themed around Atlantis for a long time and knew exactly what he wanted it to be and that the game "turned out to be 95 percent of what I imagined".[3] When asked about influences for the game, Koble said he was a huge fan of the Atari game Missile Command (1980) and said: "I'm sure it inspired me but not consciously".[1] Koble credited Bob Smith for a coding technique which allowed for more moving objects on screen than the Atari 2600 hardware had originally intended.[1]

The ports of the game have vary in differences. The Atari 8-bit computers version plays similar to the Atari 2600 game while the VIC-20 version has only two-outer bases with enemy attacks changinge to compensate. The Magnavox Odyssey 2 version is pared-down with only five parts of the city to defend with. The Intellivision game was very different from the original, the game uses crosshairs and features launchable pods to fight enemies and features night levels with searchlights to fight enemies.[4] The Odyssey 2 version was designed by Jeff Ronne some graphics assistance from Michael Becker.[5]

Release

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Atlantis was released in August 1982 for the Atari 2600 and for the Intellvision in October 1982.[6][7] The Odyssey 2 and VIC-20 versions were released in May 1983.[8]

Atlantis was a financial success for Imagic, being the second highest-grossing game for the company after Demon Attack (1982). Koble recalled that it sold two million copies.[1]

A competition was held in 1982 which led to a trip to Bermuda for the top four high scorers of the game. Koble later recalled that the players could "pretty much play indefinitely" leading him to create a harder version of the game called Atlantis II.[9][1][10] The contest winners would receive this version of the game which features the same cover and cartridge art as Atlantis but with a white sticker on the box labeled Atlantis II. The game features faster enemy ships worth fewer points.[10]

Reception

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Reviewing the Atari 2600 game, a reviewer in The Video Game Update stated that along with Cosmic Ark, the two Imagic games featured arcade-quality graphics and original gameplay which they declared to be "quite refreshing in this day of so many copy-cat games".[15] Both JoyStik and Suzan D. Prince in Video Review complimented the graphics in the Atari 2600 version, with JoyStik finding the gameplay appropriately challenging, Prince said the game was too easy, even on its most difficult setting.[13][14]

Reviewing the Intellvision version of the game, Phil Liswell of Video Games said that Imagic had enhanced the original game for the system just as they had done with Demon Attack, declaring it a great shoot-'em-up for the system.[16] A review in The Logical Gamer had its reviewers find the Odyssey 2 version lacked the crisper graphics of the Atari 2600 version, but was far superior to anything produced for the system.[5]

In 1983, at the Fourth Annual Arcade Awards, along with Starmaster (1982) it won a "Certificate of Merit" in the "Videogame of the Year" category. Demon Attack (1982) won the main award.[17]

From retrospective reviews, David Crookes wrote in Retro Gamer that Atlantis was one of the defining games from Imagic that cemented its reputation as a talented third-party developer.[18] Brett Alan Weiss of the online game database AllGame praised the Atari 2600 version of the game for its sound and graphics and while finding it fun, wrote that it lacked the speed, freedom of movement and the varied amount of strategies offered from Missile Command.[11] Jonathan Sutyak of AllGame reviewed the Intellivision version, calling it a "fantastic cartridge with a good amount of variety". The review said the release would be "near-perfect" and only lamented that it featured an alternating two-player option instead of the cooperative version.[12]

Legacy

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Atlantis features an end sequence where survivors of the devastated city escape in a giant spaceship. Koble said that was supposed to be the "Cosmic Ark" which was the title of Rob Fulop's follow-up to Demon Attack called Cosmic Ark (1982).[4] Koble said that during development of both games, both him and Fulop tossed around the idea of the survivors from Atlantis showing up in Cosmic Ark.[19] The games manual proposed that Cosmic Ark was a follow-up, stating "Can the Cosmic Ark repopulate the ocean metropolis? The saga continues."[20]

Imagic closed its office in 1986.[18] Koble continued in the industry working on games such as Sonic Spinball and the PGA Tour Golf series.[4] Koble would work the director of software at Electronic Arts, and later as the vice president of technology at Universal Studios, the chief operating officer of Mineshaft Entertainment and the owner of Illogical Software where he was a consultant to the videogame industry.[21]

See also

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References

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Footnotes

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g Drury 2021, p. 46.
  2. ^ a b c d e Imagic 1982.
  3. ^ Video Games 1983, p. 29.
  4. ^ a b c Drury 2021, p. 47.
  5. ^ a b Mike & Alan 1983, p. 20.
  6. ^ The Video Game Update 1982.
  7. ^ The Video Game Update 1982b.
  8. ^ The Video Game Update 1983.
  9. ^ Electronic Games 1982.
  10. ^ a b Lammle 2010.
  11. ^ a b Weiss.
  12. ^ a b Sutyak.
  13. ^ a b White 1983, p. 55.
  14. ^ a b Prince 1982, p. 72.
  15. ^ The Video Game Update 1982a.
  16. ^ Wiswell 1983, p. 70.
  17. ^ Kunkel & Katz 1983, p. 108.
  18. ^ a b Crookes 2016, p. 52.
  19. ^ Video Games 1983, p. 24.
  20. ^ Imagic.
  21. ^ Crookes 2016, p. 54.

Sources

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  • Atlantis Game Program Instructions. United States: Imagic. 1982. 700603-1 Rev. B.
  • "Imagic". The Video Game Update. Vol. 1, no. 5. August 1982.
  • "Critically Speaking". The Video Game Update. Vol. 1, no. 5. August 1982.
  • "Availability Update". The Video Game Update. Vol. 1, no. 7. October 1982.
  • "Availability Update". The Video Game Update. Vol. 2, no. 2. May 1983.
  • "Bill Grubb and Dennis Koble". Video Games. Vol. 1, no. 4. Pumpkin Press. January 1983.
  • "Defend Atlantis and Win Its Lost Treasure of Gold". Electronic Games. Vol. 1, no. 8. Reese Publishing. 1982. pp. 14–15. ISSN 0730-6687.
  • Crookes, David (2016). "Imagic". Retro Gamer. No. 161. Future Publishing. ISSN 1742-3155.
  • Drury, Paul (2021). "The Making of Atlantis". Retro Gamer. No. 219. Future Publishing. ISSN 1742-3155.
  • Kunkel, Bill; Katz, Arnie (February 1983). "Arcade Alley: A Critical Look at Video Games". Video. Vol. 6, no. 11. Reese Communications. ISSN 0147-8907.
  • Lammle, Rob (20 March 2010). "8 Very Rare (and Very Expensive) Video Games". CNN. Archived from the original on 23 March 2010. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
  • Mike; Alan (August 1983). "Atlantis". The Logical Gamer. Vol. 2, no. 1.
  • Prince, Suzan D. (November 1982). "Top Critics Review Videogames". Video Review. Vol. 3, no. 8. Viare Publishing. p. 72. ISSN 0196-8793.
  • Sutyak, Jonathan. "Atlantis". AllGame. Archived from the original on 15 November 2014. Retrieved 13 June 2024.
  • Weiss, Brett Alan. "Atlantis". AllGame. Archived from the original on 14 November 2014. Retrieved 13 June 2024.
  • White, Matthew, ed. (January 1983). "New Games '83: Home Video Cartrdige Buying Guide". JoyStik. Vol. 1, no. 3. p. 55.
  • Wiswell, Phil (March 1983). "Soft Spot". Video Games. Vol. 1, no. 6. Pumpkin Press.
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