Atari Poop

Atari Poop – Venture

Before I start, I need to thank @thedancinpanda for suggesting Soylent Green.  You’ll get what I’m talking about by the end.  Anyway, on with the poop!

Apparently, the “official” story for this game is that the dude with the sword is named “Winky” and he’s the only person who’s potentially “clever enough” for the job of getting the world’s most priceless treasures.  Many treasure hunters have disappeared in this dungeon. Only one person has managed to escape with his life. Apparently, one should be ready with his bow and arrow.  Authorities cannot explain the disappearances.

The problem with the above story is that it makes no fucking sense!!  I’m serious, everything above is essentially paraphrased from the booklet.  It uses the words authorities and bow and arrow.  What time period is this taking place in?  Bows and arrows?  Ok, it could be set in medieval times or or earlier.  That would certainly fit with the box art.  Fighting snakes and shit using a bow is plausible, but, it’s the “authorities” that throws me off.  Plus, the whole thing is presented like it’s some kind of news report.  It all makes it sound like the story takes place in the present.  Screw arrows, bring a damn gun!

It only takes about a minute of playing the game that what the booklet describes couldn’t be further from the truth.  The game does have snakes.  It also has aliens, robots (lending my credence to my “the game takes place in the present” theory), mutant pigs, skeletons, and two-headed monsters, just to name a few.  However, when I say it has these characters, what I really mean is that it has toy snakes, aliens, robots, and so on.  That’s right, this whole game is about toys.

Winky has to manage to navigate the halls of a house without being touched by the humans who live in it.  While doing this, he has to get into the different rooms found in the house.  It is in these rooms that he must face other toys hellbent on protecting their treasure.  Winky can “shoot” at them and they die.  It’s a toy-eat-toy world out there.  If Winky takes too long to get the treasure and leave the room, Skeletor shows up and attacks him.

What?  I didn’t mention Skeletor?  Oh, well he’s kinda like the boss of the game, well, only kinda since you don’t really fight him on account of he can’t die.  He can’t even be slowed down.  OH NO!  As soon as he appears, he just heads straight for Kool Aid Man… what?   Yeah, they’re both totally in this game.  As a matter of fact, YOU are Kool-Aid Man.

 I’m sure you’re thinking, if you really play as Kool Aid Man and fight Skeletor, they why don’t they say so?  Simple: they couldn’t get the license to do so.  Since the game was already made, they just changed the names, but you cannot deny the evidence.  Just take a look at “Winky”: 

And now the “Hallmonster” and Skeletor:

I rest my case.

Anyway, years later a movie would be made that was loosely based on this game.  No, not The Brave Little Toaster.  It was set to have Yahoo Serious voice the main character, but he was busy starring in the all-Aussie cast version of the Soylent Green musical, so they got Tom Hanks instead.