Pacific Coast Highway (video game)

Pacific Coast Highway
Developer(s) Datasoft
Publisher(s) Datasoft
Programmer(s) Ron Rosen
Platform(s) Atari 8-bit
Release 1982
Genre(s) Action
Mode(s) 1-2 player simultaneous

Pacific Coast Highway (stylized as Pacific Coast Hwy)[1] is a Frogger clone programmed by Ron Rosen for the Atari 8-bit family and published by Datasoft in 1982.[2] The key gameplay differences are that Pacific Coast Highway allows two-player simultaneous play, and the highway and water segments are split into separate, alternating, screens.[3] The game was not ported to any other systems.

Ron Rosen later wrote the 1984 platformer Mr. Robot and His Robot Factory[2]

Gameplay

Each player starts at the bottom of the screen and the goal is to reach the top. The first screen is the highway from the title, with eight lanes of traffic to avoid, divided in the center by a median strip (called a "rolling sidewalk" in the manual).[4] The second screen is water-themed, and players must hop on the boats and rafts to reach the top. The median strip equivalent for the water is a row of connected life preservers. In later levels the median strip and life preservers move, first in one direction only, then randomly switching.[5]

Getting hit by a vehicle results in an ambulance taking the character away (or a rescue boat for the water sequence).[5]

Player one is a rabbit and player two, if present, is a tortoise. Both creatures play the same, and the tortoise and hare theme is not present elsewhere.

The manual describes the second screen as crossing a beach of hot sand by jumping on towels and surfboards, but this isn't present in the game itself.[4]

Reception

Compute! editorial assistant Charles Brannon wrote, "A frustrating aspect of the game is that if one player gets hit (or takes a plunge), both players have to start over."[3]

In a D+ review from 2014, the Video Game Critic disliked the inability to move while the start of level music is playing and expressed annoyance at the moving median strip. He concludes: "once you start counting the ways it's inferior to Frogger, it starts to lose its appeal."[5]

See also

Preppie! - another Atari 8-bit Frogger clone from 1982

References

  1. ↑ "400 800 XL XE Pacific Coast Highway". Atari Mania.
  2. 1 2 "The Giant List of Classic Game Programmers". dadgum.com.
  3. 1 2 Brannon, Charles (October 1982). "Review: Four Atari Games". COMPUTE! (29): 127.
  4. 1 2 Pacific Coast Highway Manual. Datasoft. 1982.
  5. 1 2 3 "Pacific Coast Highway". The Video Game Critic.

Pacific Coast Highway can be played for free in the browser at the Internet Archive

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