Crazy Climber

[smile_walle]

Wow, I did played with Atari 2600 Crazy Climber for my first time ever today! I really enjoyed challeages crazy buildings!

 

Sound like Crazy Climber is really good game!

 

 

Jason

[ATARIPITBULL]

It is a good game. I always thought that Atari did a very good job on this game, plus I used to love to play the full size arcade version of it.

 

[Nukey Shay]

Me too...of course I was a natural-born climber. And people used to pelt me with heavy objects for no reason at all. So I could identify with the character pretty well.

[ATARI TROLL]

Favorite game of all time. I love the 2600 version...good sounds also!

[Godzilla]

yea they definately did good work with the 2600 version. I prefer the 2600 version to the arcade. Hard to believe Atari wouldn't want to sell a known arcade title at retail. And why didn't they sell it (or quadrun for that matter,) during the red box days? One wonders...

[King Atari]

And why didn't they sell it (or quadrun for that matter,) during the red box days? One wonders...

 

I never thought of that, good point. I can see why they didn't sell Waterworld during the red label days, the contest had long been over, and the series was a proven failure, but they did re-release Gravitar, why not the other two?

[Room 34]

Perhaps they re-released Gravitar as a test, and it didn't sell well enough (judging by the fairly large number of unsold sealed copies still available from O'Shea and that "Sunny South" overpriced seller who's always on eBay), so they decided not to re-release Crazy Climber and Quadrun.

 

Speaking of CC, there was a Crazy Climber cocktail table at the arcade auction I went to last weekend. It was one of the few interesting things there... except for the pair of Roy Clark cocktail pinballs!

[Godzilla]

didja buy any of the coctails?

[Room 34]

Nah... the auction was so lame overall that I didn't even stick around for the bidding to start!

 

The uprights were almost all awful... lame games AND in horrible shape. There were some interesting cocktails... An Asteroids Deluxe that was actually Asteroids, a Missile Command that would've complemented my Asteroids nicely and which I WOULD have bid on if the screen weren't screwed up and the start button didn't work, etc. And of course the Crazy Climber. They had a bunch of nice Pinballs but I'm out of that now. They also had at least a HUNDRED Japanese slot machines which all had crazy Pokemon-esque characters on them and played unbelievably annoying music. Wild.

 

I'm gonna keep my Asteroids cocktail... but I think I'm going to focus now on building a MAME cabinet instead of buying more originals.

[King Atari]

I'm gonna keep my Asteroids cocktail... but I think I'm going to focus now on building a MAME cabinet instead of buying more originals

 

I've thought about doing that, but I don't know, I guess I'd rather have something that was actually played back in the day, seems more authentic to me.

 

Anyways, I can see them doing Gravitar as a test, but CC was an actual arcade, too, should've been just as valid. But then, they could've also released Quadrun with a big ol' sticker bragging about how it actually talked, too.

[Room 34]

I don't know... it was just a suggestion.

 

Possible reasons... (All with question marks since they are just ideas off the top of my head.)

 

1. Arcade Gravitar was actually an Atari title while Crazy Climber was not? Unlikely that this would matter to them by the late '80s when the company was just a shell of its former self anyway.

 

2. Gravitar was more popular in the arcades than Crazy Climber? I don't know if this was actually true. As far as I know both games flopped in the arcade.

 

3. Someone involved in the decision-making process just liked Gravitar more? This seems like the most likely answer to me.

[SS]

Possible reasons... (All with question marks since they are just ideas off the top of my head.)

 

1. Arcade Gravitar was actually an Atari title while Crazy Climber was not?  Unlikely that this would matter to them by the late '80s when the company was just a shell of its former self anyway.

 

 

Hmmm … maybe Atari no longer had the rights to publish Crazy Climber by the late 80’s?

[King Atari]

2. Gravitar was more popular in the arcades than Crazy Climber? I don't know if this was actually true. As far as I know both games flopped in the arcade.  

 

Really? I thought Crazy Climber was pretty popular. I had heard of it before Gravitar, not that that matters though .

[Room 34]

Remember I said those were just ideas I had... I wasn't saying they were backed by facts.

 

I honestly had never seen EITHER arcade game in my life, until a week ago when there was a Crazy Climber cocktail table at an arcade auction I went to.

[Godzilla]

CC & Gravitar were both flops, if memory serves, CC was more of a flop back then. Though both games sure have grown a following. Id say gravitar, much more so, as there are litereally DOZENS of remakes of gravitar out there. Maybe even hundreds. Hell there are dozens of gravitar remakes on the Amiga alone.

[Room 34]

I definitely think Gravitar is the better game. I love how it zooms in when you get close to the planet surface. I've only played it in MAME but I think it is very cool!

 

I think Gravitar and Space Duel were both attempts to colorize and update Atari's early B/W vector hits -- Lunar Lander and Asteroids, respectively. Too bad neither game did very well as they are both excellent.