Developer(s) Activision Designer(s) Dan Kitchen Release date(s) May 16, 1983 | Publisher(s) Activision Platform(s) Atari 2600 Genre(s) Fixed Shooter | |
Crackpots is an Atari 2600 game designed by Dan Kitchen and published by Activision in 1983. It was Kitchen's first game for Activision; he later did a number of ports to the 2600, including the arcade games Kung Fu Master and Double Dragon.
Contents
In Crackpots, the player controls Potsy, a gardener. Potsy's Brooklyn building is being overrun by spiders trying to climb inside six different windows. The player moves Potsy back and forth along the roof to drop pots on the spiders before they can get close enough to enter the windows.
Gameplay
Each level consists of four waves of twelve bugs each; defeat all four waves and the player will move on to a more harder and faster-paced level. Play then resumes until the building crumbles to the ground. If six or more bugs get through the open windows, part of the building will be eaten away, and you will have to replay the level. The patterns vary for different colored spiders. Black spiders will move straight up the building, blue spiders wiggle from left to right, red spiders move diagonally, and green spiders zig-zag between windows.
Re-releases
Crackpots was later Re-released into compilation packages including Activision Classics (1998) for the PlayStation and the Activision Anthology (2002) for the PlayStation 2.