i am scared to death of heights and i would 100% pass out if i went skydiving...however that being said if lewis took me i would be strapped to him and that is an experience that i would not want to miss out on! fjkdshfdksh
could you not be strapped to him without falling out of the sky though 😭😭
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Would you try this skydiving??😮😮😥🙌 #skydiving #skydive #adventure #short...
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Skydiver (Arcade)
Developed/Published by: Atari
Released: 6/1978
Completed: 27/07/2023
Completion: Played ages trying to spell Skydiver..
Version Played: Atari Flashback Classics (Nintendo Switch)
Trophies / Achievements: n/a
Hey! An Atari arcade title from the 70s that’s… at least mildly diverting!
Actually, I might be damning it with faint praise. It’s got a lives system. It’s got actual risk/reward gameplay. It even has subtleties!!!
The play is misleadingly simple at first: push a button to leap from a plane that’s crossing the screen, and then pull your rip cord to open your parachute (brilliantly, on the arcade machine this was a literal loop you had to pull) to land safely on a landing pad. However, while you’re falling with the parachute open, you have some limited ability to move left and right, though you’re heavily affected by the wind (which you can observe, cleverly, via the windsocks on the landing pads.) And the longer you wait to open your parachute, the higher the score you get for landing on the landing pad!
It’s a little… relentless, which is one of the game’s major flaws. The instant a plane appears on screen you have to know when to leap, because if you don’t, you lose a life, and if you leap too late (possible, as the landing pad randomly spawns) you’re losing a life anyway–especially if the wind has turned against you–so certain attempts might be doomed from the get go. It makes one of the more interesting quirks hard to engage with–the original game features a light-up “SKYDIVER” marquee, and by timing (and landing) your leaps, you can light up each letter to eventually gain a bonus–an extra life, a free play, or bonus points (I guess the latter if the arcade operator is especially stingy.)
If it was a little more forgiving, this would be a honestly quite brilliant wee score attack game, but in 1978 I suspect the intention was for it to be played in two player in quick bursts, as like many other Atari titles of the time (Canyon Bomber, for example) if you’re playing it alone there’s still an AI playing the second player, so there’s a frustrating missed opportunity here. Still, better than I could ever have expected.
Will I ever play it again? Unlike most of these Atari arcade titles which I’d play if I saw a physical machine out of grim duty more than anything, I’m dying to play this and pull the rip cord controller. So yeah.
Final Thought: There’s a cute (or annoying) wee animation of an ambulance picking your skydiver up if you fail to open your parachute that shows a real level of care taken by programmer Owen Rubin, who would go on to develop titles such as Battlezone, Space Duel and Major Havoc.
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