Anteater (video game)

Anteater

Screenshot of Anteater
Developer(s) Stern Electronics
Publisher(s) Tago Electronics
Designer(s) Chris Oberth
Platform(s) Arcade
Release date(s) 1982
Genre(s) Maze
Mode(s) Single player, Up to 2 players, alternating turns
Cabinet Vertical
CPU Z80
Sound Sound CPU : Z80
Sound Chips : AY8910
Display Raster, 224 x 256 pixels, 99 colors

Anteater ("The Anteater" in Britain; "Ameisenbaer" in Germany) is a maze arcade game released in 1982 by Tago Electronics.[1]

Contents

Gameplay

The player controls an anteater that elongates his proboscis through maze-like anthills eating ants. The player can only eat ants with the tip of the anteater's proboscis. If an ant bites your proboscis at any other location you lose a life. Pressing the second button will quickly retract the anteater's proboscis. Worms will not harm you unless eaten head first, in which case you lose a life. Worms can be safely eaten from behind. Eating queen ants at the very bottom of the nest will temporarily clear all ants and worms from the screen. Once you've cleared approximately half of the screen, a spider will appear which prevents you from retracting your proboscis. The object is to eat all of the larvae before time runs out, clearing the screen.

Ports and clones

The game was ported to the Atari 2600 by Mattel in 1983 but never released.[2] No official ports were released but Datamost's Ardy The Aardvark (1983), which is almost identical, was written for the Apple II by Anteater's creator Chris Oberth.[3] That game was also converted to the Commodore 64 and Atari 8-bit by Jay Ford.

A similar game, Ant Eater, was released by Romox[4] for the Commodore VIC-20, Texas Instruments TI-99/4A and Atari 8-bit home computers but, while it was inspired by Anteater, it plays differently[2].

Other games that more closely resemble Anteater, while changing the setting are Sierra's Oil's Well (1983) and Blue Ribbon's Diamond Mine II (1985). A more straight forward clone is Bug-Byte's Aardvark (1986).

External links

References

  1. ^ Anteater at Arcade History
  2. ^ a b Anteater at Atari Protos
  3. ^ Interview with Programmer Christian Oberth - part 2: The classic programming years, Alan Hewston, Retrogaming Times, Issue 24, May 2006 (cited 29-Oct-11)
  4. ^ Ant Eater at AtariAge