Blog:Ode to Air Raid

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CRV 14:13, 2 April 2010 (UTC) [permalink] [comments]

Good Friday indeed...for two reasons! The first I might get into later here and/or on Twitter. The other is Air Raid for the Atari 2600. That is, someone found the ultra-rare box for what is already one of the rarest games on the system (only 13 copies are known to exist) and is now selling it and the cartridge on eBay.


Thanks to the timing of all this, there was rampant speculation that this was an April Fools' joke. Though April Fools' Day has now passed us by, there is still skepticism as of this writing. We'll see after the auction ends, I guess.

With its baby blue cartridge and "T-handle," Air Raid is shrouded in mystery. According to the box, assuming it's real, publisher Men-A-Vision was based in Los Angeles, but you'll be hard-pressed to find any news articles or any other record of it. Who programmed the game? Was Men-A-Vision planning on releasing more games? Why so rare?

As for the game itself, Air Raid is, at its core, a hack of the more well-known Space Jockey. But whereas the enemies in Space Jockey scroll from right to left, the aircraft in Air Raid come hurtling down from the top of the screen. And you're not just shooting the bad guys (as in Space Jockey). You're also defending two buildings that scroll beneath the player. If they're destroyed (which is pretty much inevitable), you lose.

Air Raid has eight variations of gameplay. (Space Jockey has 16.) Since there are no instructions, I'm not totally sure what the difference between each of them is. I can say that they are similar to the ones in Space Jockey - some allow the player to control their missiles and/or have the enemy ships move randomly.

With all the recent hoopla, I finally decided to take Air Raid for a whirl. There are two obvious issues. First of all, there's no good way to defend the buildings other than sacrificing yourself. That being said, I can't think of a "good way," and such a way could make the game too easy. You could just shoot the ships before they come down too far, but that leads us to our next problem - the collision detection is out of whack! Many times, your shots will go right through the enemy. Still, I enjoyed myself.


Video of Air Raid:


For comparison purposes, Space Jockey:

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