It's time once again for one of the launch games for the Atari 2600.
Long before they were called "Snake games," you had a ton of games backed on Blockade by Gremlin Industries. Not surprisingly, this Atari 2600 launch title was one of them. And back then, instead of running around running into a lone dot without hitting yourself or the wall, you played against another player in an attempt to trap each other, with the first person to run into a wall or part of their or the other player's being the loser. And it was fun. And we liked it.
Game Mode 1 is the standard two-player mode, while Game Mode 2 is one player against the computer, with the human player controlled with a joystick in Controller Port 2. The joystick moves your square around, with different colors used to tell the two players apart. Player 1's score and color is at the top left, and Player 2's score and color is at the top right.
As you move, you'll leave a trail that stays on the playfield for the duration of the round. The aim of the game is to get the other player to run into the wall, their own trail or your trail without doing the same to yourself.
The controls are simple. You don't use the fire button for anything in Game Modes 1 and 2; instead, you just move your square around and leave a trail with the joystick. That's it.
Both players need to strategically move around in order to trap the other player without accidentally trapping themselves. Whenever someone runs into a wall or a trail, the other person scores a point. The first to ten points wins.
The left difficulty switch controls the difficulty of the computer controlled opponent, with B/Novice giving you the easier difficulty and A/Expert giving you the harder difficulty. The right difficulty switch acts as a failsafe that keeps both players from accidentally backing into themselves. B/Novice keeps players from accidentally moving opposite their current direction and backing into their own trail, while A/Expert allows for it.
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