Dominos / Surround

[liquid_sky]

Well, I just finished playing Dominos on MAME, and well, it is basically 2600 Surrond. I don't know why they changed the names between systems, maybe because Domnios is a pretty bad name for a surround style game, confusing I would guess.. just curious and felt like posting

[Nukey Shay]

...maybe the name comes from the "domino" effect when a player loses.

Just a guess.

 

/sarcasm

 

The name was changed for the 2600 version, since this effect would be difficult to pull off in a 2k cart (so the "Domino" name would be out of context anyway).

[mos6507]

Atari Coin-op and Atari consumer were two very different divisions and the idea of porting coin-op to console was new, unlike today with, let's say, Sega, where it's a standard and well-accepted practice.

 

Surround was one of the first generation cartridges, created when the Stella group was still enshrouded in internal secrecy. Basically the consumer guys were the new kids on the block and the coin-op guys felt a little intimidated by the upstarts who, by and large, used their coin-op games as inspiration without their prior knowledge.

 

I think that's why most of the ports of Atari coin-ops have the names changed. Tank -> Combat, Anti-Aircraft -> Air-Sea Battle, etc... That way they could claim the game was merely inspired by rather than being a straight port.

 

The thing is, this practice of porting over mid-70s Atari coin-op titles continued even beyond Atari at Activision.

 

Drag Race became Dragster, Avalanche became Kaboom, and 1973's Space Race became Freeway.

 

They weren't limited to copying Atari titles, though. Some were inspired by Midway or other company's games.

 

This isn't well known these days because most of these titles are considered obscure, but they weren't at the time.

 

Slot Racers was based on, I think, an Exidy coin-op game called Crash or something.

 

Street Racer was based on an old Midway game.