Toobin'

You are in a river race pitted against the computer or another player. Outscore your opponent by swishing the gates, hitting obstacles and other game characters with cans, collecting hidden letters to spell Toobin', and collecting treasures.

The player characters are Bif and Jet. Whenever there is only one player in the game, there will be a computer-controlled opponent called Flotsam.

The game has three different classes, each with five rivers, for a total of 15. When you reach class 4 it repeats the classes until the last class of the game: number 6. The rivers in each class are as follows:

1. Colorado, Amazon, Okeefenokee, American and Nile
2. Yukon, Argentum, Left Bank, Cuprum and Canals Of Mars
3. Jurassic, Black Forest, Rio Grande, Styx and Nightmare

Collect as many points as possible and try to push your opponent into obstacles. Swish up to five gates in a row and you will correspondingly advance your score multiplier (very important). Basic gates start at 2000, 1000, 500, 250. Once passed through the gates will decrease in points until they reach 100. Swishing a gate and then bumping it numerous times before your opponent can pass is an effective move. Pick-up cans (you can carry up to 9 at a time) or a sixpack (which gives you unlimited cans). The cans are used as "ammo" to hinder your opponent, stun other game characters, or to destroy certain obstacles (some obstacles are only temporarily destroyed). When you have a blowout you lose your sixpack and your score multiplier resets to 1. Your multiplier will go down each time you miss a gate.

Obstacles in the water (icebergs, bushes, mines, etc.) can reveal hidden points, sixpacks, patches(extra life), beachballs(speedup), including the fabled colorful letters. These letters are worth 10,000 points a piece. Try to have your score multiplier as high as possible to maximize the letter bonus at the end of each class. Be on the lookout for the 25,000 point gate since swishing it can give you up to 125,000 points if your score multiplier is 5! Unlike the other gates however, you only get one chance at the 25,000. Also be on the lookout for falling rocks, jumping penguins, submarines with nasty torpedoes, etc. On the first and second start gate you can utilize the warp whirlpool that will send you to a higher class. Many non-player characters chase you along the way. Watch out for the alligator, he likes to come out when you stall and he always comes from the top of the screen. You must go through a gate to repel that alligator before he appears or before he gets you.

When you pick up a six pack of cans you can park yourself close to a non-player character and rack up points by hitting them with the cans. The faster you are the better, so the beachball speed-up helps a lot. When the alligator comes to chomp you (because you are stalling) just pop him with one of the cans. This also works for certain objects such as the floating mines (seeking or not). If you are quick enough you can re-destroy the same mine multiple times and release multiple goodies such as letters, treasures, sixpacks, etc. You can only throw one can at a time so any can already thrown will disappear once you press "throw" again.

As a promotion, Atari Games offered t-shirts to players who collected all of the game's letters during play.

Toobin' has a large marquee with two rotating drums behind it that give the illusion of a flowing waterfall.

There is a contest screen that shows how you can collect balloon letters during the game to spell Toobin' and win a free T-shirt. Unfortunately, the offer expired December, 1988.

The main CPU is a 7.15 MHz 68010. The sound is generated by a standard Atari JSA I board, which is a 1.57 MHz 6502 driving a YM-2151 (3.57 MHz) and a POKEY (1.79 MHz). Speech effects were generated using the YM-2151.