| Anteater | |
|---|---|
Screenshot of Anteater |
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| 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 |
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.
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).