''Firebug'' is an

Apple II The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-m ...

game written by Silas Warner and published by

Muse Software Micro Users Software Exchange, Inc., doing business as Muse Software, was an American video game developer based in Baltimore, Maryland, focusing on the development of games for the first generation of home computers. The company began with de ...

1982 Events January * January 1 – In Malaysia and Singapore, clocks are adjusted to the same time zone, UTC+8 (GMT+8.00). * January 13 – Air Florida Flight 90 crashes shortly after takeoff into the 14th Street Bridge in Washington, D.C., Un ...

. The game was released on cassette tape and on

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, or a diskette) is an obsolescent type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined ...

. Warner previously created ''

Castle Wolfenstein ''Castle Wolfenstein'' is a 1981 action-adventure game that was developed by Muse Software for the Apple II home computer. It is one of the earliest games to be based on stealth mechanics. An Atari 8-bit family port was released in 1982 and w ...

'' for the Apple II in 1981.

Gameplay

The player controls a "firebug," a 3-by-3-

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the s ...

square with a tail stretching behind it. The player picks up gas cans—each represented by a single pixel—and drops a can by pressing the

joystick A joystick, sometimes called a flight stick, is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal cont ...

button. The end of the player's tail glows white, and ignites any gas can that it is adjacent to, including cans the player had dropped. Once a gas can ignites, it burst into colorful flames, which ignites any walls they touch. The goal is to burn down the highest possible percentage of the walls on the level, and escape down the stairs to the next level without touching any flames with the body of the firebug. Tail collisions with fire are expected and ignored. As the game progresses, each level features tighter mazes of walls, increasing the penalty for player mistakes; and the player's tail is shortened, causing player-dropped gas cans to explode sooner.

Visuals

''Firebug'' uses the Apple II's lo-res graphics mode, which displays 16 colors but has a resolution of only 40 wide by 48 high. Hence, the game looks more colorful than hi-res Apple games, but the low resolution gives a crude appearance, even by the standards at the time of release.

Reception

Johnny L. Wilson reviewed the game for ''

Computer Gaming World ''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through t ...

'', and stated that "''Firebug'' seems to have the ingredients necessary for a successful arcade game: interesting graphics, sufficient challenge, moderate strategy, and ample flexibility. Indeed, "ash" far "ash" this reviewer is able to "ash-certain," this game is an "ash-set" to an "ash-tute" arcade lovers "ash-sortment" of games. Unab-''ash''-edly." In ''Microcomputing'', Jim Hansen wrote "Neither I nor my kid-game testers found ''Firebug'' a game worth playing more than once or twice at most." In 1982, the city council of

Kentwood, Michigan Kentwood is a city in Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 54,304 as of the 2020 census. The city is bordered on the northwest by Grand Rapids and is the third most-populated municipality in the Grand Rapids metropolitan ...

asked dealers to not to sell the game because they felt it encouraged arson.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Firebug (Video Game) 1982 video games Action games Apple II games Apple II-only games Muse Software games Single-player video games Video games developed in the United States