Pogo Joe

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Pogo Joe

Developer(s)
Publisher(s)	Screenplay
Designer(s)	William F. Denmen, Jr. and Oliver Steele
Release date(s)	1983
Genre(s)	Platform game
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	Atari 400/800, Commodore 64
Input	joystick

Pogo Joe is a computer game for the Commodore 64 and Atari 400/800, written by William F. Denmen, Jr. and Oliver Steele. Michael Haire did the artwork, and Steven Baumrucker wrote the sound and music subroutines, designed and named the levels, and wrote the music. It was published by Screenplay in 1983.

Pogo Joe is a Q*Bert clone with several extra features. The player takes the role of the eponymous Pogo Joe, a boy on a pogo stick. The game takes place over 65 different levels, each consisting of a different arrangement of barrels. To complete a level, Pogo Joe must jump on every barrel.

To make Pogo Joe's job harder, several enemies inhabit the levels. They first start out as spherical "eggs" of different colours. Colliding with these "eggs" kills the enemy within them, but if left alone for a few seconds, the "eggs" hatch into different sorts of enemies, contact with which is fatal to Pogo Joe.

The tops of the barrels have different colours depending on their status or functionality:

White: The default state.
Red: The barrel has been jumped on.
Cyan: The barrel has been jumped on twice (required on some levels).
Green: A "smart bomb" barrel. Jumping on this kills every enemy on screen, and reverts the barrel to white.
Black: A teleport. Moves Pogo Joes instantly to another black-topped barrel.

On later levels, some enemies change red barrels back to white when jumping on them.

This was one of the first software projects that used a "team" approach, with game designers, programmers, musicians, and artists coming together to make the software work. Today this is the norm, but in 1983 this was a novelty.

[edit] Levels

Most of the level names are clever allusions to 1970s and 1980s popular culture, including references to Frank Zappa, Maxwell Smart, Pee Wee Herman, Baumrucker's friend, Stuart Troutman, and Japanese culture. Baumrucker was in his first year of medical school and the influence is pretty obvious.