UFO (1979)

Atari's only known wall game was UFO, a space battle game where players defend their spacecraft against an onslaught of attacking flying saucers.  UFO is a timed game, played with limited ammunition.  Little is known about this game, or Atari's work on wall games in general.

Owen R. Rubin, an early coin-operated game programmer for Atari, had this to say, when questioned by a collector:

Q: Heard of this one (description is second game down): http://www.arcadeflyers.com/?page=flyerdb&subpage=flyer&id=3510&image=1 (NOTE: A game called UFO).??

Brian

Owen: YES!

In the last 70's early 80's there were bar wall games making the rounds. Basically there was a wireless controller with 1 button (typically, this may have had three) and two controllers, one for each player if multiplayer, which this was. On the wall was a rather large game (rather flat, but maybe 5 to 6 feet wide and 3 to 4 feet tall, Êwith a series of graphics on plex with lights behind each graphics, so that if you sequenced the lights correctly, an animation of a sort will show up. These wall games included horse shoes, duck hunting, and Atari did one called UFO.

The UFO would "streak" across the sky on one of several paths. You pressed the button to shoot at the UFO, and a shot would come up from the bottom. If your shot sequence hit the UFO (basically, the lamps would light at the same time) the UFO would sequence to a crash.

Typically, the game required you to press the button to start the animation, and then after some time, let it go, or press it again to release. I do not recall the exact game play for UFO. In horseshoes for example, pressing the button started the throwers arm moving. You presses again to release. The closer to the exact release timing, the closer the horse show would get to the pin. The UFO game played much in the same way.

Somewhere in the back of my sick mind, I recall doing some software for this machine, but I may be wrong. But it was NOT my game by any means. I wish I could remember more.