PrinceWatercress plays Fall Down

This game is fun as hell. Definitely play this one if you can!

Longplay

Fall Down is a homebrew game for the Atari 2600 programmed by Aaron Curtis and self-published in 2005. In this game, two players - one red and one blue (blue-green in the PAL version) - fight to stay on the screen and score points by capturing platforms as they scroll upwards. To capture a platform, one must fall through a gap in the platform before the other person does. The first person to fall through the gap gets the point. Of course, there's always the danger of being scrolled past the top of the screen, which will take a player out of action temporarily and give the other player a bit of an advantage in the form of being able to score a lot of points uninterrupted. The game ends when both players are scrolled past the top before either person can be re-spawned.

Controls are easy. You just move left and right with the joystick, and you can use the fire button to use the power-ups that you collect during the game. Players can bump into each other, but there are "pass-by" modes that allow players to walk through each other. Sometimes, you'll find dots on the platforms, and if you can pick them up, you can do all sorts of things with the fire button, such as turn the other person invisible, switch places with the other person, create a gap where you are standing so you can get an easy point, and much more.

The game is one of the first homebrew games to use Richard Hutchinson's AtariVox to save high scores as well as provide in-game speech when someone wins or achieves a new high score.

There are eight different game modes:

• Human vs. AI (red human and a blue computer chip): a simple game against the computer. See if you can get more points that the computer-controlled opponent!
• Human vs. AI, easy mode (red human and a blue computer chip, with "EZ" in white at the bottom): Same as above, but the computer isn't as smart. Use this mode to get used to how the game works.
• Human vs. AI, pass-by mode (red human and a blue computer chip, with a white arrow pointing downward at the bottom): Same as the first one, but both players will pass through each other if they come into contact instead of bumping off each other.
• Human vs. AI, invisibility mode (red human and a blue computer chip, with a white eye at the bottom): This mode is pretty cool. This is the same as Human vs. AI, but the background changes from red to blue and back again at regular intervals, causing one player and then the other to be unable to be seen, making things a lot more difficult. Hope you can keep track of a player that you can't see!
• Single player (just a red human): See how well you can keep up with the eternally scrolling screen and see how high you can score as you drop from platform to platform without having a second player in the picture.
• Human vs. Human (a red human and a blue human): Your standard two player mode. See who can score the most points!
• Human vs. Human, pass-by mode (a red human and a blue human, with a white arrow pointing downward at the bottom): same as Human vs. Human, but both players pass through each other on contact instead of bumping into each other.
• Human vs. Human, invisibility mode (a red human and a blue human, with a white eye at the bottom): The invisibility mode, now with two players! Compared to the human vs. computer version, this one can be really fun at parties.

To switch between, hit the Game Select switch on the title menu.

This is a really fun game. The premise is simple and the game controls pretty well, but this is one of those games where anything can happen. While the game is fun enough on its own with the single player modes, the two-player mode is where this game gets a lot more exciting, especially if you have a few friends over. When it comes to homebrew games, this one is loads of fun.