Atari and Activision always makes for a good week!
Activision’s Atari 2600 lineup is generally very, very good – its sports titles are great deconstructions of the games on which they are based (Ice Hockey is unironically one of my favorite Atari games) and others like Pitfall! are true classics. Keystone Kapers is not quite one of its best, but definitely still worth a look.
In Keystone Kapers, you play the role of the police officer Keystone Kelly, who must traverse a mall in pursuit of the appropriately-named Harry Hooligan. The game’s instruction manual notes that he’s robbing the mall on a Sunday, which somehow makes it even more egregious.
There’s a very helpful Defender-esque mini-map at the bottom to help you work your way around the mall. While pursuing the criminal, you’ll need to avoid obstacles such as beach balls, shopping carts, and…old-timey radios?
So dangerous. Hitting enemies costs you time (something you don’t have a ton of to begin with), and running out of time means the hooligan escapes and you lose a life. You receive a big point bonus for catching him, at which point the level resets with more obstacles. Like most old games, there’s no finite ending – much like life itself, it goes on until it kills you.
The folks at Activision truly had a way of pushing the graphical capabilities of the Atari 2600, and Keystone Kapers is no exception – it runs smoothly with a good amount of sprites on the screen, and it’s surprisingly bright and colorful.
What seemed a bit odd about Keystone Kapers to me was that movement throughout the level felt weirdly limited. The escalators at the far ends of each level only move you up, meaning you can only use the mall’s elevator to move downward (and you’ll definitely need to). Overall, the game is reasonably enjoyable, though its shortcomings are hard to look past.
Keystone Kapers was designed by Garry Kitchen, who ported Donkey Kong to the Atari 2600 and programmed the truly excellent Atari release Pressure Cooker. Like other Activision titles of the time, you could earn a merit badge-esque patch for achieving a super high score. Here’s what the Keystone Kapers patch looks like:
A weird-colored rainbow, that hat, and a sweet font for “Billy Club” – this patch really has it all! To my surprise, this patch goes for upwards of $40-50 on eBay. The game itself can probably be had for about a tenth of that if you want to check it out.
Next week, I’ll be checking out a classic game from one of my favorite genres, which has aged…interestingly. We’ll see you then!