River Raid
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''River Raid'' is a vertically scrolling shooter designed and programmed by Carol Shaw and published by Activision in 1982 for the Atari 2600
video game console A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally placed i ...
. Over a million game cartridges were sold. Activision later ported the title to the Atari 5200, ColecoVision, and
Intellivision The Intellivision is a home video game console released by Mattel, Mattel Electronics in 1979. The name is a portmanteau of "intelligent television". Development began in 1977, the same year as the launch of its main competitor, the Atari 2600. I ...
consoles, as well as to the
Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...
,
IBM PCjr The IBM PCjr (pronounced "PC junior") was a home computer produced and marketed by IBM from March 1984 to May 1985, intended as a lower-cost variant of the IBM PC with hardware capabilities better suited for video games, in order to compete mor ...
,
MSX MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, announced by Microsoft and ASCII Corporation on June 16, 1983. It was initially conceived by Microsoft as a product for the Eastern sector, and jointly marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then vice-p ...
,
ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...
, and
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, ...
. Shaw did the Atari 8-bit and Atari 5200 ports herself. Activision published a less successful sequel in 1988 without Shaw's involvement.


Gameplay

Viewed from a top-down perspective, the player flies a fighter jet over the River of No Return in a raid behind enemy lines. The player's jet can only move left and right—it cannot maneuver up and down the screen—but it can accelerate and decelerate. The player's jet crashes if it collides with the riverbank or an enemy craft, or if the jet runs out of fuel. Assuming fuel can be replenished, and if the player evades damage, gameplay is essentially unlimited. The player scores points for shooting enemy
tankers Tanker may refer to: Transportation * Tanker, a tank crewman (US) * Tanker (ship), a ship designed to carry bulk liquids ** Chemical tanker, a type of tanker designed to transport chemicals in bulk ** Oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanke ...
(30 points), helicopters (60 points), fuel depots (80 points), jets (100 points), and bridges (500 points). The jet refuels when it flies over a fuel depot. A bridge marks the end of a
game level In video games, a level (also referred to as a map, stage, or round in some older games) is any space available to the player during the course of completion of an objective. Video game levels generally have progressively-increasing difficulty t ...
. Non-Atari 2600 ports of the game add hot air balloons that are worth 60 points when shot as well as tanks along the sides of the river that shoot at the player's jet. Destroying bridges also serve as the game's checkpoints. If the player crashes the plane they will start their next jet at the last destroyed bridge.


Development

For its time, ''River Raid'' provided an inordinate amount of non-random, repeating terrain despite constrictive
computer memory In computing, memory is a device or system that is used to store information for immediate use in a computer or related computer hardware and digital electronic devices. The term ''memory'' is often synonymous with the term ''primary storage ...
limits. For the Atari 2600 the game with its program code and graphics had to fit into a 4 KB
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. The game
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does not actually store the sequence of terrain and other objects. Instead, a procedural generation
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manifests them by employing a linear-feedback shift register with a
hard-coded Hard coding (also hard-coding or hardcoding) is the software development practice of embedding data directly into the source code of a program or other executable object, as opposed to obtaining the data from external sources or generating it at ...
starting value, also called a pseudorandom number generator. Because of this the algorithm generates the same game world every time the program executes. The enemy crafts' AI relies on another pseudorandom number generator to make the start of the enemy movement less predictable as this pseudorandom number generator's starting value is not reset when a new game starts.


Reception

''
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'' in 1983 stated that ''River Raid'' might be the best
Atari 8-bit 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, ...
game of the year, "more challenging than any VCS version" and superior to others like ''
Caverns of Mars ''Caverns of Mars'' is a vertically scrolling shooter for the Atari 8-bit family of home computers. It was programmed by Greg Christensen, with some features added by Richard Watts, and published by the Atari Program Exchange (APX) in 1981. ''Cav ...
''. '' Antic'' in 1984 said that the Atari 8-bit version was identical to the 2600 original, but with slightly "spiffed up ... game visuals". The ''
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'' in 1984 called ''River Raid'' "one of the most playable and entertaining of all war games". The newspaper gave the ColecoVision version four stars, recommending it to all console owners and describing it as "a definite winner all the way". The game received the award for "1984 Best Action Videogame" and a Certificate of Merit in the category of "1984 Best Computer Action Game" at the 5th 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 ...
, where the judges described it as "provid ngthe brand of non-stop excitement the blast brigaders adore". ''
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'' rated the Atari VCS and ColecoVision versions 92% in 1989. ''River Raid'' was the first video game to be banned for minors (including a complete ban on advertising, mail ordering and any sort of public display) in
West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...
by the ''Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Schriften'' (Federal Department for Works Harmful to Young Persons, now called the
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).


Legacy

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 87th in its Top 100 Video Games. In 1996, ''
Next Generation Next Generation or Next-Generation may refer to: Publications and literature * ''Next Generation'' (magazine), video game magazine that was made by the now defunct Imagine Media publishing company * Next Generation poets (2004), list of young ...
'' listed the Atari 2600 version as number 81 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", commenting that, "Nostalgia aside, the 2600 sucks. ... But this game is still great, for one main reason: Level design." Activision published the relatively obscure ''River Raid II'' for the Atari 2600 in 1988. This sequel, programmed by David Lubar based on a concept by Dan Kitchen, has similar gameplay, but with a different landscape and increased difficulty. ''
The Games Machine ''The Games Machine'' is a video game magazine that was published from 1987 until 1990 in the United Kingdom by Newsfield, which also published ''CRASH'', ''Zzap!64'', ''Amtix!'' and other magazines. History The magazine ran head to head with ...
'' magazine reviewed ''River Raid 2'' and gave it a 76% rating. A further sequel called River Raid: The Mission of No Return was a planned release for the
SNES 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 Euro ...
in 1991 but it was cancelled. In 1995, ''River Raid'' was published for
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...
as part of '' Activision's Atari 2600 Action Pack''.


See also

*
List of Atari 2600 games This is a list of games for the Atari Video Computer System, a console renamed to the Atari 2600 in November 1982. Sears licensed the console and many games from Atari, Inc., selling them under different names. A few cartridges were Sears exclu ...
* List of Activision games: 1980–1999


References


External links


''River Raid''
for the Atari 2600 at Atari Mania

for the Atari 8-bit family at Atari Mania * * {{Atari 2600 1982 video games Activision games Atari 2600 games Atari 5200 games Atari 8-bit family games ColecoVision games Commodore 64 games Intellivision games MSX games Vertically scrolling shooters Censored video games ZX Spectrum games Video games developed in the United States