Well here's me thinking I knew my Atari history pretty well and I completely missed something and only found out about it this morning while trawling through an old Atari prototypes site whilst having my morning cup of tea.
It also involves one of my favourite game designer/coders, a chap by the name of Eugene Jarvis who I could name as being the guy whose style of design most influenced and inspired me in my early career. EBJ is a top chap I had the privilege of meeting and hanging out with some years ago, and the man responsible for some of the most awesome and stylistically distinctive coin-op arcade games of the eighties, games that anyone into videogames back then would have known and respected - Defender, Stargate and Robotron, to name but three.
There's another game he made, a sequel of sorts to Robotron, which never achieved such a wide release, and indeed which I only discovered when it became available under emulation towards the end of the 90s; a game called "Blaster".
Having found this Jarvis gem I'd not seen before I of course played the hell out of it and really enjoyed it, to the extent where eventually I could play right through all the game's 20 levels. It may look a bit crude by modern standards with all those huge square blocks flying around, but remember it was made in the days way before polygonal 3D was doable in realtime on accessible systems. Layering and scaling these simple shapes enabled the game to give a good impression of 3D motion, and the way in which shot enemies flew apart into their component blocks was a harmonious echo of the way the sprite enemies disintegrated in Defender, Stargate and Robotron (an aspect of EBJ's distinctive design style I'd always loved).
A few years ago an earlier, unreleased prototype of Blaster was found which contained 30 levels as opposed to the 20 levels of the released game, and I was pleased to discover that and get a bit more pleasure from revisiting this unreleased variation of a favourite game. I wouldn't've thought there could be any more revelations regarding Blaster to come - until this morning with my cup of tea.
I was browsing a site that lists details of Atari game prototypes - it's interesting to see details of games which for whatever reason never got released back in the day; in many cases you can download and play them to see what they were like. I was drinking my tea and looking at the Atari 8-bit list and I saw an entry for Blaster.
Now I've never seen Blaster ported to any of the old machines. It's been available in emulations in various forms since the late 90s, but always emulations of the original coin-op, I had no idea it was even attempted on any other hardware, never mind the good old 8-bit Atari. So, intrigued, I clicked the link to see the info on the game.
http://www.atariprotos.com/8bit/software/blaster/blaster.htm
The first thing that struck me was the programming credits: Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar. Those are the guys who programmed the coin-op, and usually ports to the home machines are made by completely different people. I had no idea EBJ had even put hands on an 8-bit Atari, much less converted his own coin-op to one.
Reading on though I was blown away to discover that Blaster was *created originally* for the 8-bit Atari. The coin-op was a conversion of the Atari original. Due to the vagaries of the video game business at the time, the coin-op version was released but the original Atari version was shelved and never heard of until 2004, when the prototype was rediscovered.
Having been an Atari fan for many years (and having worked for them for a while) I felt pretty comfortable in the knowledge that I surely knew about all the really great 8-bit Atari games out there, and yet here I found out over my morning cuppa that one of my personal deities wrote the original version of one of my favourite games on that old Atari, and I'd never even seen it.
I had to see for myself, and luckily the ROM is available for download at Atari Age, so I nipped over there to grab it.
http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=2684
So what's it like?
It's astonishingly good, especially when you consider that it was running on hardware that came out in 1979. If this game had been released as intended in 1983 then I am certain it would have been up there as one of Atari's stone cold classics alongside the likes of Star Raiders, and would quite possibly have ensured better penetration of the coin-op. As it is the coin-op never did as well as it deserved to, and what should have been one of the greatest 8-bit Atari games, personally programmed by one of the great masters, never saw the light of day. I think I would have peed myself if I'd seen this running on the Atari in 1983.
I'd love to do an updated version of it one day, in a modern-yet-retro style that retains the spirit of the original. I wonder if EBJ would be interested in a collaboration? };-)
I can't believe I missed out on this rediscovery in 2004, I really should keep a better eye on the retro sites. Still, now I have a new favourite 8-bit game to crack out the Atari emulator for }:-). Thank goodness for the net and one's morning cup of tea, eh?