Platform Atari 8-bit family | ||
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Scram is an Atari 8-bit family game written by Chris Crawford and published by Atari in 1981. It involves involving a scram, or emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor. Written in Atari BASIC, Scram uses differential equations to simulate reactor behavior. The player controls the valves and switches of a nuclear reactor directly with the joystick.
Contents
An unrelated game with the same name was written for the DEC Alpha.
Gameplay
The game display shows a schematic-like representation of a light water reactor, typical of nuclear reactors in use in the United States at that time. The reactor core is on the left of the screen, with the primary coolant loop to its immediate right. Further right is the secondary cooling loop, and finally the tertiary cooling loop and its associated cooling tower.
The user interacts with the game by moving the joystick, which makes a cursor jump from one "hot spot" to another on the screen, each one controlling one part of the reactor systems. There are hot spots for the control rods, cooling pumps and valves. The user can experiment with the reactor systems by moving the joystick up and down, operating the equipment. It is possible to simulate a meltdown by shutting off the primary cooling pumps and withdrawing the control rods all the way.
The game has several skill levels, which control the frequency of earthquakes and the obviousness of the damage. In the event of an earthquake the screen shakes, and a breaking sound is heard if there is damage. The user then has to watch the on-screen displays to try to isolate where the problem is.
Reception
Softline in 1981 criticized the documentation, calling it "needlessly wordy and confusing".
Legacy
Around 2013 Crawford released source code of several of his games, among them Scram, from his career to the public, fullfilling a 2011 given promise.