Air-Sea Battle

Air-Sea Battle is a fixed shooter developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS). The game was designed by Larry Kaplan who joined Atari in 1976. It was the first game he developed for the company. Air-Sea Battle involves the player controlling a gun to shoot down various targets to earn points in different themed areas. In the various gameplay modes, the player can either control the angle of the gun or move the gun across the screen or adjust the guns speed as it automatically moves for aiming.

Inspired by the game Combat (1977) that was in development at the same time, Kaplan created various modes to the game. The game was inspired by various arcade games of the era, with video game historians identifying the similar gameplay in arcade games like Anti-Aircraft (1975), Drop Zone 4 (1975), Sea Wolf (1976) and Destroyer (1977).

Sears published Air-Sea Battle as Target Fun and used it as the pack-in game for its Tele-Games rebranding of the Atari VCS. Video gave Air-Sea Battle the award for the "Best Target Game" in 1980.

Gameplay

There are several variants of gameplay in Air-Sea Battle.

Development

In 1976, Warner Communications acquired Atari for $28 million. With new funding from Warner, Atari was able to hire new engineering talent to make games for their new system, the Atari Video Computer System (Atari VCS). Larry Kaplan recalled that when he applied for Atari and joined the company August 1976. Kaplan was told by Bob Brown that he was hired because he mentioned he had purchased an Altair 8800.

The programmers at Atari initially developed their games on a teletype workstation connected to a time-share computer which sent their assembly code to a computer in Oakland that would convert it to binary code that an Atari VCS prototype could understand. This set-up would only display a single line of code at a time and had the programmers using an oscilloscope and analyzer to make sure the display would be synced properly for a television. By 1977, this set-up was changed to PDP-11 machines which featured monitors and floppy disk drives which would speed up game development. Kaplan would design Air-Sea Battle for the system. The initial games for the Atari VCS were all being developed roughly in tandem leading the developers to exchange ideas. As Kaplan saw all the modes of gameplay being created for Combat (1977), he decided to incorporate a variety of alternate modes for Air-Sea Battle. Steven Fulton of Game Developer said Kaplan's game was based on the arcade games Anti-Aircraft (1975) and Destroyer (1977). Kevin Bunch, author of Atari Archive (2023) said the different modes in the games were similar to earlier arcades games, such as Midway's Sea Wolf (1976) and Meadow Games' Drop Zone 4 (1975). Kaplan had acknowledged the influence of Anti-Aircraft, saying that "in those days, we just ripped off anything we could make work." Kaplan found various modes for the games relatively easy to make in regards to the Atari VCS hardware. At the request of Sears, Kaplan changed what were once dogs into rabbits for the "Shooting Gallery Games" mode.

While working on Air-Sea Battle, Kaplan developed a method of moving player objects more than once during a single frame of the picture, despite the ability to do this not being part of the system's initial design. This allowed Kaplan to create more than five objects on screen. The visual artifacts that appear like a comb on the left side of the screen are a result of this trick. When trying to complete work on the game, Kaplan tried to give the computer controlled opponent artificial intelligence. As he was only given two kilobytes (KB) for the final ROM cartridge, he only had the opponent fire continuously, which Kaplan referred to as "silly and not fun at all."

Reception

From contemporary reviews, Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz (under the name Frank T. Laney II) wrote in Video magazine, declaring it "the ultimate game for people who enjoy blowing things up". The two said that the "Torpedo Game" with guides missiles was the best variation on the cartridge due to its addictiveness. The reviewers found the computer's inability to handle guided missile controls in single player mode and recommended playing their previously mentioned "Torpedo Games" variant as a solo game if the player wished to experience a better single-player guided missile game. Katz and Kunkel announced the first game awards in the 1980 issue of Video. For the first awards ceremony, their awards focused primarily on console games and all games released until 1980. Air-Sea Battle received the award for the "Best Target Game".

Later review from the early 1980s include an overview of the Atari home console game catalogue in 1981, a reviewer in Electronic Games said that Air-Sea Battle was still "one of the finest cartridges in the Atari library." In the same magazine, Kunkel and Bill Laney, Jr. echoed this statement saying the game was an "instant classic" on its release and was still a "remarkably fine videogame". In Electronic Games two Software Encyclopedia issues from 1983, the review complimented the graphics such as the shades of blue in sky and the gameplay such as allowing players to steer missiles. Reviewing the game in 1983, Sai Ming Wong of the British video game magazine TV Gamer described the game as a shoot 'em up whose graphics were reasonable for considering it was one of the first games from Atari. They recommended it to younger players for its simple control and easy to hit targets.

Reviews decades after the games release include Howard J. Blumenthal who wrote in his book The Complete Guide to Electronic Games (1981) that Air-Sea Battle's games had only slight variations from each other. He concluded that the game was as "an oldie", with audiences have come to expect more control and interesting gameplay variations. Skyler Miller of AllGame stating that Air-Sea Battle's sound and graphics were plain, while generally praising the game as simple, addictive and fun and best-played with human second player. In Atari Archives (2023), author Kevin Bunch commented that despite the game being even more simple than Combat (1977) it remained one of the more interesting and fun releases for the system from 1977 and that along with Combat, Surround (1977), and Indy 500 (1977), it was one of the games of its era that "really holds up."

Gameplay

Development

Release

Reception

External links

References

title	Air-Sea Battle
developer	Atari, Inc.
publisher	Atari, Inc.
designer	Larry Kaplan
released	1977
genre	Fixed shooter
modes	Single-player, multiplayer
platforms	Atari 2600