Circus Atari

Released in 1978
Atari 2600

Circus Atari is Breakout with a twist. You now control a teeter-totter with the Paddle controller, and must bounce "clowns" up into 3 rows of moving brick- uh.. "balloons" and pop them. If you fail to bounce the clown, the clown dies, and his twitching corpse is removed from the playing field as the next identical "clown" prepares to jump into the field.





I mention the "twitching corpse" because that's the image that stuck with me as a kid since you see it happen a lot. You little guy is still kicking his legs in the air despite the obvious fact his spine is broken and his head caved in. Grim stuff. This is balanced out by the lovely pastel colors. Everything is pink, blue, red or white. It's a very cheerful looking game, which is of course to help reinforce the "circus" feeling. Apparently circuses had this sort of event all the time in the 80s.


You get free lives every time you take out a row of balloons, and the score rolls over at 9999. There really isn't much else that can be said about the game, but it's worth no ting that this is the first video game my conscious memory ever encountered. I've mentioned before how I remember watching my mom play it, and it's an image that's stayed with m e, since she's never played any other games in the past 20 years until I gave her a Nintendo DS. Curse you Nintendo, for awakening retired gamers, and take note! Release an updated "Circus Atari" and you'll have a million seller on your hands. The retirees will pick it up, I'm sure.
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