Chase the Chuck Wagon

Chase the Chuck Wagon
Opening splash screen of Chase the Chuck Wagon
Developer(s)	Michael Schwartz / ICOM/TMQ
Publisher(s)	Spectravision
Distributor(s)	Ralston Purina
Designer(s)	Michael Schwartz
Platform(s)	Atari 2600
Release date(s)	1983
Genre(s)	Maze
Media/distribution	Cartridge

Chuckie the dog in Chase the Chuck Wagon avoids a bouncing dog bone (not visible due to flicker) and a dog catcher.

Chase the Chuck Wagon is a 1983 promotional video game distributed by Purina for the Atari 2600/VCS home console. It was available only via mail by sending in proofs of purchase to Purina.

Gameplay

In the 1970s and 1980s, popular television commercials for Purina dog food included a dog chasing a tiny Chuckwagon.^[1] The gameplay is loosely based on this premise.

Chase the Chuck Wagon is a maze game. The object of each maze screen is to move Chuckie, the dog, through mazes of four different designs and escape through the opening directly below the chuckwagon. The player has limited time (60 or 30 seconds depending on the difficulty setting) per maze to accomplish this.

There are two obstacles in each maze: the dog catcher moves through the maze, and if he touches Chuckie, the player loses one life; the bouncing object (bone, etc.) travels back and forth across the maze unhindered by the maze walls, and if it touches Chuckie, he will be frozen momentarily (signified by the maze changing color), making it more difficult to reach the end of maze within the time limit or avoid the dog catcher.^[2]

After successfully completing a maze screen, the maze clears and the reward screen appears. A dog dish drops from the Chuckwagon, and the player must use the joystick to orient Chuckie left or right to face the dish, and press the fire button at the right moment to stop it horizontal to Chuckie, allowing him to move to the dish and eat. This scores an additional 100 points.^[3][4] If the player misses, no points are awarded and the game advances to the next maze screen.^[5] If the player does not press the fire button, the dish falls repeatedly and the game does not advance.

The player starts the game with three Chuckies. Chuckies are lost when time runs out on a maze on upon contact with the dog catcher. The game ends when all the Chuckies are exhausted.

Scoring

The amount of time left on the clock at the end of each maze is the player's score for that stage. Each successfully completed reward screen adds 100 points. When the game is over, the total score is displayed.

Controls

The player uses the joystick to move Chuckie through mazes, and to change his facing on the reward screen. The fire button is only used to stop the dropping food dish on the rewards screens.

The console controls are unusual as the Atari's Reset switch does not start the game (which is the typical behavior). Instead, the Select switch is used to start a game.

History

As part of a promotion involving the Chuck Wagon line of dog food, Purina contracted video game distributor Spectravision^[6] to create a game themed around dogs and dog food. Customers could redeem proofs of purchase from bags of dog food in exchange for the game, an example of a new marketing technique that emerged during the popularity of video games in the early 1980s.^[7] In practice, the promotion was relatively unsuccessful, and the game is nowadays something of a collector's item. The unshipped cartridges were destroyed.^[8]

Among collectors

The game has something of a reputation among collectors of Atari video games.^[9] It is far from the rarest of games for the Atari 2600, yet the mystique surrounding its history grants it a disproportionate amount of interest. It is commonly referred to as the Holy Grail^[10] of Atari 2600 video game collecting. Among Spectravision games, only Bumper Bash and Mangia are listed as more difficult to find in the AtariAge rarity guide.^[11]

Reviews

• The Video Game Critic gave it a D+ rating.^[12]

See also

• Video game crash of 1983

References

1. ^ [1] Chuck Wagon dog food commercial illustrating the chuckwagon the game is based on.
2. ^ [2] Description of the game on Atari Guide.
3. ^ [3] Text from original instruction sheet on AtariAge.
4. ^ [4] Scan of the original instruction sheet on Digital Press.
5. ^ [5] Gameplay description on Gaming Wikia.
6. ^ [6] Third-Party Profile: Spectravision
7. ^ Kohler, Chris (2005), p. 48. Retro Gaming Hacks. O'Reilly. ISBN 0-596-00917-8 http://books.google.com/books?id=Sv5OAAAAMAAJ&q=%22chase+the+chuck+wagon%22&dq=%22chase+the+chuck+wagon%22&pgis=1
8. ^ [7] History of game from AtariAge.
9. ^ [8] HOLY GRAIL GAMES on AtariHq.
10. ^ [9] Chase the Chuckwagon - Complete Interview on Video Game Trader.
11. ^ "AtariAge - Companies - Spectravision". AtariAge. http://www.atariage.com/company_page.html?SystemID=2600&SystemFilterID=2600&CompanyID=20&orderBy=Rarity&orderByValue=Ascending. Retrieved September 23, 2010. 
12. ^ [10] The Video Game Critic review.

External links

• Chase the Chuck Wagon at MobyGames
• [11] Video of gameplay on YouTube.