Quadrun

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Quadrun
Quadrun screenshot
Developer(s)	Atari
Publisher(s)	Atari
Designer(s)	Steve Woita
Platform(s)	Atari 2600
Release date	1983
Genre(s)	Third person shooter
Mode(s)	Single-player
Media	Cartridge
Input methods	Joystick

Quadrun was published in 1983 by Atari. One of the four Atari Club games available exclusively via mail order, this title may have been available later in stores in very limited quantities. This is one of the rarest games from Atari, as only approximately 10,000 were initially made. According to programmer Steve Woita, the game was play-tested by a group of young girls. Not surprisingly, they did not like the game and found it too difficult, so Atari decided to distribute the game, but not heavily. It was also the first Atari game that featured voice synthesis, and is one of only two non-homebrew or hacked games that were ever made for the Atari 2600 that actually talk (the other is Open Sesame, which was made by Bit Corp). Today, Quadrun is highly sought after by collectors, often selling for hundreds of dollars on auction sites. However, it is available to play at a relatively cheaper price on either the 2005 Xbox/Playstation 2 collection Atari Anthology, or the Atari Flashback 2, where Quadrun is one of the forty included games.

[edit] Gameplay

Long ago, the peaceful land of Quad was invaded by cruel Captors who rounded up all the helpless inhabitants and imprisoned them in cages. The Captors called their prisoners "Runts". And the name has stuck. Now you've come to Quad to rescue the Runts and destroy their Captors with your special weapon: phaser balls.

Shoot the Captors with a phaser ball, then run to the opposite sector and catch the phaser ball so that you can reuse it. Be quick and accurate: you have only three phaser balls with which to destroy the Captors. The game ends when you lose all three phaser balls.
The Quad consists of four sectors, with a Runt cage in the center. You can run to any sector on the screen. But to switch from a vertical sector to a horizontal sector, or vice versa, you must touch one of the side walls.
The captors There are five Captors per wave. Each wave begins with the a voice that says "Quadrun! Quadrun! Quadrun!" (The voice speeds up as a type of enemy is extinct, and each wave features a different type of Captor. Captors patrol the quad vertically. You can shoot at Captors only while you're in the vertical sectors. If a Captor crashes into you, you lose a phaser ball.
After a bad guy is destroyed, Runts Runts escape from the center cage and race madly left or right toward their doom: an electrified toaster grid. Catch each Runt before it runs into the grid or it will fry. You can catch Runts only while you're in the horizontal sectors.
Don't let the critter counter disappear! The white line located at the top of the screen is the Critter Counter. Every time you fail to destroy a Captor or fail to catch a Runt, the Critter Counter decreases in length. When it disappears, the game ends.
Crazy Crazed Wave After you complete five waves, you begin the CRAZED WAVE. At the start of the CRAZED WAVE, the Critter Counter returns to its full length and you receive bonus points for all remaining phaser balls. During the CRAZED WAVE, you face constant attacks from a random assortment of the five types of Captors.

SCORING