Fish (Atari 2600 - Newly Found Prototype from 1983)
14Fish (at least that's what the file was called) is an entirely unknown game that was discovered in a programmers personal folder on a backup tape from one of the old Atari mainframes.
What exactly is Fish?
Fish is a cute little action game where you control the titular fish in an effort to eat everything in sight. You can move the fish up and down around the screen and also swim forward or backwards which makes the fish move in a little 'chugging' motion like he's actually swimming. At first you'll only see worms moving back and forth across the screen. These worms are completely defenseless and can be eaten without worry. However after a level or two the game will begin to introduce new elements including eggs, power balls, enemy fish, large enemy fish, large worms, and even squids. There are 99 waves in total and you can select a starting wave in increments of five (5-95) on the title screen. This is a nice touch for people who want to see how difficult the game gets at the later levels. The higher levels include features such as the enemies moving in a wave pattern around the screen instead of just back and forth in their rows and super dangerous Giant Fish.
Fish is a fun little game and seems to be complete with sound (which changes every level), music, and a demo mode. Fish even features a pause mode (using the Color/B&W switch) which was just starting to become the norm for 2600 games at this time. It's unknown if Fish was ever supposed to be a real game or if the programmer was just having some fun in their spare time, but given how much work went into it it's probably the former. Assuming it was meant to be a real game, it probably would have had to been 'beefed up' a bit with a little more variety and content. As is the game is only 4K which is absolutely tiny at the time (late 1983) when most games were 8K or 16K in size.*
*Courtesy of AtariProtos.com
Attempting to do a "No Repeat Atari Game" this year, where I only play an Atari game (on livestream) once. This may turn out to be a good or bad thing. There may be some exceptions and I found some loopholes but we'll see.
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