Mountain King review and retrospective

[Jess Ragan]

http://www.1up.com/do/blogEntry?bId=9087553

 

I've been writing blogs for 1UP's Retronauts series, and my latest might be of special interest to Atari 5200 fans. Give it a look and let me know what'ya think.

[CRV]

More Mountain King posts are good. Here's another one from June.

 

Mountain King was by Robert W. Matson, not E.F. Dreyer. (I don't know if this is him. I suppose I should e-mail him one of these days.)

[Jess Ragan]

The funny thing is, both of these guys are from Michigan!

 

I just sent Matson an E-mail. I'd like to have this cleared up one way or another.

[Jess Ragan]

I just got a reply from Bob. Okay, you were right... guess I owe you a Coke!

 

Here's what he had to say:

 

I'm afraid your on line acquaintance is right. E.F. Dreyer was a company founded by Keith Dreyer and his friend Torre, whose last name eludes me at the moment. They were friends of my brother, and they provided me with the resources I needed to do programming on the Atari 800. I bought the computer myself. They copyrighted my game and promoted it. Torre and Keith's game, K-Razy Shootout was manufactured by K-Byte as was my game. CBS Electronics acquired the rights and did the marketing.

 

I created and programmed the game entirely on my own, though with lots of technical support from Keith and Torre. When CBS was ready to market the game they insisted that my name be removed from the title page, so I put it in an Easter egg instead. The Easter egg only appears in the Atari 400/800 and Atari 5200 versions of the game, because those were the only ones I coded. The Easter egg involves clearing all the diamonds from the very lowest levels and then proceeding as if to get the crown. After making the skull visible, instead of proceeding up to the crown you go back down to the very lowest point. At this point you can fall out of the bottom of the mountain. You fall a short distance before landing on the words Mountain King by Bob Matson. My initials, RWM are also visible to the right of the blue spider web at the bottom of the mountain.

 

Just this past week I discovered, or probably rediscovered -- my memory's not great, that there was a second way to fall out of the bottom which involved letting the introductory music play to completion. I happened to come across it in this YouTube video:

 

I hope this helps. Sorry that you lost the argument. If you have other questions I'd be happy to answer them.

-Bob

[CRV]

That's my video.

 

I guess you might as well ask where he got the idea for the game. Is the player character taken from K-Razy Shootout? Is there a Glitch Heaven like the 2600 version?

[fiddlepaddle]

I remember playing this after finding it at the flea market for a quarter and not figuring it out. Then, years later, I read something saying it was a great game and looked up instructions and played it (for quite a while, though didn't get very far). I often see people using it as a demo at game shows.

[moycon]

I only ever played the 2600 version. I remember I used to be able to "beat" the game, or at least the first level of it.

I was amazed by the song in the 2600 version. Easily one of the best sounding games on that system.

The 5200 version looks way better. I need to try and play it soon.

Thanks for the review!