I, Robot

Big Brother has said no jumping, but it is all poor robot1984 loves to do. He must travel through each maze-like level, eliminating the shield protecting Big Brother's watchfull eye and then destroy the eye itself. After each level, he gets to fly though space to the next level, where he begins his task anew.

The game play consists of moving robot1984 over all of the red tiles while avoiding objects flying at you from the back of the screen. Eliminating the red tiles diminishes the shield at the back of the playfield which prevents you from flying to the next level. To get to all the red tiles, players sometimes need to leap across empty space which creates a permanent bridge between the two points. Leaps across empty space have to be timed so that the "eye" of Big Brother in the back of the playfield, which randomly opens and closes, does not see robot1984 and destroy him.

When all of the playfield's red tiles have been eliminated, the shield disapears and the player can then leap to the final red tile on the level which destroys the "eye" and ends the level. The victorious robot then jumps off the playfield and flys through space to the next puzzle-like playfield.

While flying through space, the player needs to avoid polygon obstacles while blasting stars. Every five levels, the space flight sequence is replaced with a flight through space ending with a large "head." The head, when faced, shoots spikes at the player in the real world - not robot1984. All the spikes need to be shot while in front of the robot or they will circle behind and destroy him.

The playfields are not randomly generated. However, they always vary from level to level. A unique feature of the game, which greatly aids game play on some levels, is the ability to change one's perspective of the playfield at anytime by moving the "camera" viewpoint through a certain range of possible locations. The camera viewpoint always remains behind robot1984.

An interesting option called "Doodle City" allows the player to spend a few minutes drawing and experimenting with the game's polygon objects. Drawing objects can also be animated, spining or orbiting on one of their axis. Players chosing to spend time in "Doodle City" can switch to the game with a diminished number of lives based on how long they spend doodling.

I, Robot was, apparently, originally to be called "Ice Castles". The game was a complete flop at the time, players were really unable to cope with the surrealism and "newness" of the graphics.

Although probably not the entire reason why the hall-effect joystick was not copied by other manufacturers, Atari was granted a patent now expired for a "finger control joystick utilizing Hall effect", which can be viewed at http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pnUS04459578__s_clms1

I, Robot's cabinet was identical to the Firefox upright, and similar to the Major Havoc dedicated. It featured a narrow "waist" area, a small control panel and an angled "top box" that held the monitor and seemed to be almost "winged" by the vertical speaker grills that flanked the sides of the monitor. The base flared out about 6 to 9 inches from the floor I could measure it if you want to form a sturdy base that angled in to a smaller flat front. The cabinet only had artwork around the "waist area" and control panel.

The game has 99 different playfields with 99 different space sequences between them. Completing certain levels allows the player to jump to higher levels, thus bypassing intermediate playfields. Legend has it that only 1000 were produced. Atari was only able to sell 500 in the US so the rest were shipped to Japan. If this is true, the serial numbers must not be sequential. A production run of 1200 to 1500 is probably more likely.

The game uses a 6809 microprocessor and four Atari Pokey sound chips.