Blast-Off! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Kaboom

"Kaboom" was designed by Larry Kaplan and was one of the most beloved of all games played on the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, and Atari 8-bit Family consoles. The game is fairly simple with the player using a paddle controller to move three buckets from left to right in order to catch bombs that the Mad Bomber is throwing from the top of the screen. Estimates suggest over one million copies of the game were sold between 1981 and 1983. Top score possible was 999,999 which not only took great skill coordination but robbed you of almost three hours of your life.

Answer: Asteroids

"Asteroids" was designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg for Atari Inc. It was first released as an upright arcade game before being adapted for the smaller Atari game consoles. The concept was addictively simple. The player controls a triangular ship that shoots at large asteroids.

These large asteroids break up into smaller asteroids and are harder to hit. The player can go up, down, right, and left and must destroy all the asteroids before completing a level. For those interested in going for a world record, you must be prepared for over 40 million points and at least 60 hours of continuous gameplay.

Some people really have too much time on their hands.

Answer: Breakout

One of the great legacies of Atari lies in the simple one word names for many of their coolest games. "Breakout" was developed by Steve Wozniak, Steve Bristow and Nolan Bushnell and released in 1976. Although originally created as an arcade game, "Breakout" was adapted for the Atari 2600 and 5200 game consoles and spawned two exceptionally fun additional games in "Super Breakout" and "Breakout 2000." The original game was not that difficult to beat with a score of 896 enough to earn the champion moniker.

Answer: Space Invaders

"Space Invaders" was one of my all-time favorite games and many a 10-pence piece was lost in the bowels of the arcade game version. The game was developed by Taito, designed by Tomohiro Nishikado and released to the market in 1978. The game brought over $500 million in profits to the Taito Corporation, which amazingly outdid the gross ticket sales for the Star Wars movie.

When the game was released on the Atari 2600 and Atari 5200 consoles it quadrupled sales figures for the Atari company. "Space Invaders" was such a phenomenon that it inspired a medical condition in America diagnosed as "Space Invaders Elbow." It also inspired a 1981 political bill in England called the "Control of Space Invaders Bill," that was an attempt to ban the game on account of its addictive property and potential for promoting deviancy. Ah, that explains why I turned out the way I did!

Answer: Galaga

Galaga was published and developed by the Namco Corporation with Nobuyuki Ohnogi the lead programmer. The game was released as an arcade machine in 1981 and was a sequel to the 1979 game "Galaxian." To start the game a player is in charge of a spaceship at the bottom of the screen that has to blast lines of alien insects that appear at the top. Over the course of the game those insects swarm lower and shoot at the player controlled ship. Once a player destroys all enemy insects the game moves to another level. "Galaga" was released for the Atari 7800 game console in 1987.

The game is so popular that it even gets a call out in the 2012 "Avengers" movie.

Answer: Space Station Games

"Air-Sea Battle" contained 27 variations of fixed shooter games. Larry Kaplan was the designer and Atari published and created the game for the Atari 2600 gaming console. There were six basic types of games including: Anti-aircraft games, torpedo games, shooting gallery games, Polaris games, bomber games, and Polaris versus bomber games.

Although not an overly popular Atari game, it was re-released for Xbox 360 through Microsoft's Game Room download service in 2010.

Answer: Missile Command

Dave Theurer was the designer of "Missile Command" that was developed and released for the Atari 2600 console in 1981 and for the Atari 5600 console in 1982. The game requires players to move a crosshair across the screen and then release a counter missile from the appropriate battery.

There are ten missiles that can be fired from each of three batteries. A level ends when all enemy missiles have landed on their targets or been destroyed by the missile commander. On December 27, 2013, a Swedish gentleman by the name of Victor Sandberg played continuously for 71 hours and 41 minutes reaching a cumulative score of 103,809,990.

Answer: Star Blast

"Star Raiders" is a space combat simulation game that was released by Atari for the 2600 game console in 1982. In this game a star ship pilot maneuvers around a two-dimensional grid blasting enemy ships. "Star Fire" was first developed by Exidy as the first ever sit down cockpit arcade game.

It was ported to the Atari 8-Family Bit console in 1983. "Star Fire" has the distinction of also being the first arcade game that allowed players to type initials when earning a top score. "Star Ship" was created in 1977 for the Atari 2800 console.

This single-player game allowed players to destroy enemy spacecraft and robots while dodging asteroids. Another objective included avoiding space debris and asteroids in order to cover the greatest distance. Another cool part of the game was attempting to land a space module on a lunar landing pad.

Answer: Yars' Revenge

"Yars' Revenge" was one of my all-time favorite blast-em, shoot-em-up games. The game was developed by Howard Scott Warshaw specifically for the Atari 2600 game system. Players controlled an insect-like creature called Yar who attempted to kill the enemy Qotile by activating the Zorlon cannon. Over 20 years after its initial release, a sequel named "Yars' Return" was released on the Atari Flashback 2 platform.

Answer: Pac-Man

Todd Frye was the architect of the "Pac-Man" game that was released in 1982 for the Atari 2600 game console. The object of the game is beautifully simplistic with the player having to use a controller to maneuver through a maze eating wafers and avoiding the ghosts. Once the wafers were all consumed, the player could move to the next level. Later sequels were spawned for the game that included the successful "Ms Pac-Man" and "Jr Pac-Man."