''Kaboom!'' is an action video game published in 1981 by

Activision Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one o ...

for the Atari VCS (renamed to the

Atari 2600 The Atari 2600, initially branded as the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS) from its release until November 1982, is a home video game console developed and produced by Atari, Inc. Released in September 1977, it popularized microprocessor- ...

in 1982). It was programmed by

Larry Kaplan Larry Kaplan is an American game designer who was the co-founder of Activision. Kaplan studied at the University of California, Berkeley from 1968 through 1974 and graduated with a degree in Computer Science. He started at Atari, Inc. in Augus ...

, and David Crane coded the overlaid sprites. The game was well received and sold over one million cartridges by 1983. ''Kaboom!'' is an unauthorized adaptation of the 1978

Atari, Inc. Atari, Inc. was an American video game developer and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Atari was a key player in the formation of the video arcade and video game industry. Based primarily around the Sunny ...

arcade video game ''

Avalanche An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a slope, such as a hill or mountain. Avalanches can be set off spontaneously, by such factors as increased precipitation or snowpack weakening, or by external means such as humans, animals, and earth ...

''. The gameplay of both is fundamentally the same, but ''Kaboom!'' was re-themed to be about a mad bomber instead of falling rocks. Ex-Atari programmer Larry Kaplan originally wanted to port Avalanche to the Atari 2600. In ''Avalanche'' all the boulders are lined up at the top which is difficult to accomplish on the 2600, so the design was adjusted.

Atari 8-bit family The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers introduced by Atari, Inc. in 1979 as the Atari 400 and Atari 800. The series was successively upgraded to Atari 1200XL , Atari 600XL, Atari 800XL, Atari 65XE, Atari 130XE, Atari 800XE, ...

and

Atari 5200 The Atari 5200 SuperSystem or simply Atari 5200 is a home video game console introduced in 1982 by Atari, Inc. as a higher-end complement for the popular Atari Video Computer System. The VCS was renamed to the Atari 2600 at the time of the 520 ...

ports followed in 1983.

Gameplay

The game is similar to ''Avalanche'' in concept, but instead of there being a pre-existing set of rocks across the top of the screen that randomly fall, a character known as the "Mad Bomber" moves back and forth randomly dropping bombs. As the game progresses, the Mad Bomber traverses the top of the screen more erratically, dropping bombs at increasingly higher speeds, making each of the seven higher levels more difficult. The player uses a

paddle controller A paddle is a game controller with a round ''wheel'' and one or more ''fire buttons'', where the wheel is typically used to control movement of the player object along one axis of the video screen. A paddle controller rotates through a fixed arc ( ...

to move buckets back and forth near the bottom of the screen to catch the bombs before they reach the bottom. The player starts with multiple buckets arranged over each other, which makes it more likely to catch the bombs in one of them. If the player fails to catch a bomb, it explodes, along with any other bombs still on the screen in a chain reaction from bottom to top. This also causes one of the buckets to disappear. The game ends when the player loses the last one. Points are awarded for every bomb caught, and extra buckets (maximum of three) are awarded at every 1,000 points. While the Mad Bomber is dropping bombs, he has an unhappy face. If the player misses and a bomb is dropped, he smiles while the bombs on the screen explode. The game manual mentions that something "special" will happen after 10,000 points. When the player reaches that score threshold, the Mad Bomber's mouth opens in surprise even if the player drops a bomb. When ''Kaboom!'' was originally sold, players who scored above 3,000 points could send Activision a photograph of their television screens to receive membership in the Activision Bucket Brigade and a Bucket Brigade patch.

Ports

''Kaboom!'' was later released for the

and the

of computers. A 16-bit remake for the

Super NES The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), commonly shortened to Super NES or Super Nintendo, is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea, 1991 in North America, 1992 in E ...

was in the works at some point, but was never released. ''Kaboom!'' is included in the ''

Activision Anthology ''Activision Anthology'' is a compilation of most of the Atari 2600 games by Activision for various game systems. It also includes games that were originally released by Absolute Entertainment and Imagic, as well as various Homebrew (video games), ...

'' compilation.

Reception

Contemporary critical reception was positive with ''Kaboom!'' winning an award for "Best Audio-Visual Effects" at the 3rd annual

Arkie Awards An electronic game is a game A game is a structured form of play (activity), play, usually undertaken for enjoyment, entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as pro ...

. Arkie Award judges characterized the game as "a feast for the eyes and ears" and commented that Activision had "hit the mark dead-center again with 'Kaboom!'". While the game concept was described as rather similar to that of ''

'', ''Kaboom!'' was found to have such presentational elan that it was hailed as an "instant classic". Richard A. Edwards reviewed ''Kaboom!'' in ''

The Space Gamer ''The Space Gamer'' was a magazine dedicated to the subject of science fiction and fantasy board games and tabletop role-playing games. It quickly grew in importance and was an important and influential magazine in its subject matter from the la ...

'' No. 55 Edwards commented that "All in all, it is hard to recommend ''Kaboom!'' Definitely try this one before buying." ''Video'' magazine praised ''Kaboom!'' for "exceptional" graphics and "lightning-quick" gameplay. ''

Antic Alphanumeric Television Interface Controller (ANTIC) is an LSI ASIC dedicated to generating 2D computer graphics to be shown on a television screen or computer display. Under the direction of Jay Miner, the chip was designed in 1977-1978 by ...

'' in 1984 said that the Atari 8-bit version had "cute" graphics and was "simple, but not by any means easy". In 1995,

Flux Flux describes any effect that appears to pass or travel (whether it actually moves or not) through a surface or substance. Flux is a concept in applied mathematics and vector calculus which has many applications to physics. For transport ph ...

magazine ranked the Atari 2600 version 85th on their Top 100 Video Games. They described the game as "Simple and addictive."

Legacy

In the late 1990s, a keychain version of the game was created by

Tiger Electronics Tiger Electronics Ltd. (also known as Tiger and Tiger Toys) was an independent American toy manufacturer best known for its handheld LCD games, the Furby, the Talkboy, Giga Pets, the 2-XL robot, and audio games such as ''Brain Warp'' and the Br ...

References

External links