Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HM5J5t4Z100
Newly Discovered Atari Tarzan Prototype Hands On
Introduction
The Video Game History Foundation recently discovered this unreleased Atari 2600 Tarzan game from 1983 and have made it available for everyone to enjoy. So let’s see what it’s all about!
Script
Hey everyone, Rees here and welcome back to the second channel and I’ve literally just had the chance to sit down and check out this new and exciting thing and I thought I’d bring you along for that journey as well as I’ve got everything hooked up ready for recording so yeah, let’s do my first impressions on this.
This is, of course, the Tarzan prototype, which has been released in the past week. So really exciting stuff. And I should just say, before we dive into this, that I wanted to check this out on my Atari 2600+. There have actually been - way back in December, there was a firmware update for this and then there’s basically been nothing, just radio silence from Atari’s side and Plaion’s side who actually developed the hardware.
And yeah, as predicted by me at the time, the community have taken matters into their own hands and there has actually been experimental updates based on that beta firmware, which update the actual emulator code itself and the cartridge dumper code built into the 2600+. Loads of cool stuff added and I just kind of wanted to put that information out there.
This will be a separate video where I test that but the reason I couldn’t use that for this video is because I don’t have my Harmony cart with me here at the studio. I think I’ve left it at home or it’s buried somewhere under all the junk. So I’m going to be testing this on my MiSTer system here, but hey, you know, this actually works in emulators and all the other stuff, so no problems at all there.
And that is thanks in part to the people that have actually preserved this over at the Video Game History Foundation. So there’s a whole article over here, and I will link this if you haven’t seen this, but there’s a whole article over on their website all about how this game was first announced at CES way back in 1983 and how it’s a kind of a rare movie tie-in for the time.
And it’s actually quite a technically proficient and complex game, as we’ll see. It’s got multiple screens to it, and it’s got platforming elements and all sorts of stuff. So, yeah, it was initially announced as a ColecoVision release at the 1983 Winter Consumer Electronics Show held in Las Vegas, with a 2600 port announced later that year during the summer CES for a November release.
The date slipped, and then of course there was the whole 1983 business that I won’t get into because it’s all hotly disputed. But essentially, Atari weren’t going through the greatest of times financially at the time.
But yeah, this has been preserved, and not only has it been preserved, but the way that the cartridge was actually originally designed is that it used a weird and unique bank switching technique to get all of the actual code loaded into the 2600.
And it’s not one that’s supported by emulators and flash carts and, and the like. So what they’ve actually done is they’ve gone and modified it to make it compatible with pretty much everything that’s out there, which is really cool. So you can actually get on and play this.
They have released it on archive.org - you can go there and download that - of course, I’ll link to that as well down in the description.
So there’s the original version, just completely untouched, a bit for bit direct copy of that original prototype cartridge, and there is the modified version that you can run in your emulator, or indeed on MiSTer.
And it does indeed work, because I have it up and running here in front of me, so we’ll just switch back to this.
And there we go - this is the wonderful MiSTer core, this is running in the Atari 7800 core, which is kind of the official way to play Atari 2600 games on the MiSTer and like I say, I literally just copied this over, I’ve kind of had a wander around on the first and the second screen just to make sure that it’s working, but I haven’t got any further than that. So I thought I would bring you along on this journey.
So, without any further ado, let’s get this unpaused and see where we are.
And the first thing you’ll probably notice is the music - this has some really amazing music in it for the 2600, especially considering the complexity of the rest of the game.
So I’ll just shut up for a second.
And as you can see, it’s got this tree climbing and-
oh, there you go, I’ve just been eaten by a crocodile-
…and rope swinging mechanic going on.
So yeah, already on the first screen we’ve climbed a tree, we’ve swung on a rope, we’ve been chased by a crocodile, you can actually swim and climb out of the water.
I mean, it’s amazingly technically proficient for what it is.
Like I say, just literally on the first screen.
So you have to time these rope jumps very carefully.
Get away from the crocodile!
There is this weird bit of graphical corruption just here in this top left corner, which I noticed before as well.
I have no idea how to do this rope jumping bit.
Come on! Doh!
And you’ve actually got you know, in these kind of older games as well it’s unusual to have a health bar at the top.
Of course, something that we’d be used to in modern times.
What am I doing?
The second screen seems to be identical to the first…
This isn’t the same second screen that I got before - are they randomly generated, or do you have to swing across the top to get to the next one? I don’t know.
Oh no!
So these two yellow dots, what are these?
Oh! That’s a snake!
There’s a snake hiding in the bush!
Go away!
Ow!
Stupid snake!
It’s gonna chase me, isn’t it?
So what do we do? Do we have to climb up this tree in the middle?
Ah yeah.
So now we’ve got this dude who shoots at you - I mean, who would shoot Tarzan!? That is not cool!
No! Don’t shoot Tarzan!
Can we duck?
Oh, we can go down here…
Oh, and then he actually follows you down!
So yeah, unlike Pitfall or something, I guess, we can actually kind of move almost three dimensionally. We can actually move kind of up and down towards and away from the from the player.
I know that you can-
Last time, there we go, I managed to punch him and run past him!
So it looks like we’ve got another snake here.
So as predicted I just run straight into it, but how do we get past it because the rope’s going back that way…
And we’re back to this screen, so, yeah, just the gameplay in this game, just the varied gameplay - it’s just incredible, really, for the Atari 2600.
I mean, I appreciate it probably doesn’t look like much if you’re not used to the system specifically, but yeah - if this had actually been released in 1983 for Christmas, as planned,
I think people would have found this very impressive.
Eugh, what’s that!?
Some kind of ape!
Argh!
With a backpack! Go away!
Don’t just smack me in the head! Go away!
Am I dead? I think I’m dead.
Oh, what have I done there?
So the starting screen - I’ve just restarted the game there, and that-
Is the starting screen random then? Because I must admit, I did have a quick go on this just before I started recording, and I actually started on a different- yeah, so now we’re back to the giant bug-like ape thing.
Can we outrun it?
C’mon!
C’mon, get up!
Yes we can.
And now we’re back to the crocodile again.
I’m determined to work out how to time these rope jumps.
Ah, you have to grab onto the tree in the middle!
Go away!
Oh, it’s this guy again…
No, you don’t shoot Tarzan!
And back onto this…
Hehe! Oh dear.
Oh, okay.
See, we’ve got some slightly different shading effects in the trees now, and we’ve got this hedge at the bottom.
Let’s punch that guy again…
Oh!
As you move around the level and climb up the trees and things, he actually shoots at you, so he shoots upwards and stuff.
Can we-
I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go here.
He’s gonna wake up in a second.
Nope! Go away!
What on Earth!?
There’s a monkey up there! What was that!?
Yeah, that’s shading in the background - obviously it’s got that kind of pink and blue gradient on the sky and obviously on a kind of-
Oh! okay.
Yeah, on a CRT TV, maybe a slightly poorer quality RF signal, obviously that would be kind of naturally dithered, wouldn’t it? So that would look quite cool.
Not this perfectly crisp, clear, digital signal that we have here.
I’ve never played the the ColecoVision version of this, so I’m not sure how it compares - I’m not sure how complete this version is compared to that version.
Monkey Man back again.
And that’s that.
So I guess it looks like these levels kind of loop and only kind of have minor differences - which to be fair I mean obviously we’ve been spoiled by stuff like Pitfall-
Go away!
Apparently you can’t hit the monkey…
Oh!
Oh this is new - okay.
I’ve got another one of those monkey things and this time it’s…
Is that a cage?
I mean that’s not really threatening at all is it - or am I supposed to go up there?
Okay, I think I’m supposed to go up there.
Ah, and I bet the goal is to get to that rope in the middle…
So how do we do that?
They just instantly warp over to the other side - and I’ve got barely any health left.
Oh, yes! Heroic!
I can’t see where to go from there…
I can’t go up or down - I don’t get it.
Press the button. Nope!
Go away!
Of course this was a prototype so I’m not quite sure how complete it was, or indeed how completable the game is.
[A little longer than a few minutes later…]
Oh!
Aha!
Oh - Okay…
You can punch the monkey!
So, do we have to beat up these monkeys before we can continue?
You can’t beat attacking random wildlife, can you?
That’s always a good moral message for a game.
Oop!
Now I’m not all that familiar with the story of Tarzan, I must say, but I’m sure I remember him kind of, living more in harmony with nature and not not beating up random animals.
Perhaps I’m misremembering.
Oh, now we’re back at the beginning - okay.
So, very interesting. Very interesting indeed, I think we’ll leave it at that.
So yeah, that was a quick look at the Tarzan prototype that’s been released this week by the Video Game History Foundation. And yeah, it’s looking really cool. I’m going to have to have a bit more of a play with this, and I’ll probably have a bit more of a thorough look at it, but I thought I’d bring you along for my first impressions.
Of course, this is running on the MiSTer and it’s not a proper Atari joystick, so there’s only so much of an impression that I can get from this.
I mean, it’s really advanced for its day - I mean, obviously it’s no Super Mario Brothers, but by the Atari 2600’s standards I’m quite impressed with that, you know, comparing it to some of the more advanced platformers on that platform, it would have held up really well.
Bit of a shame that it didn’t get released, but of course we can enjoy it now. The links to download it, and of course the link to the actual story behind how it was discovered and how it was preserved - and there’s a lot of documentation and stuff, a lot of development documents and things that were discovered alongside this, which have also been preserved and put online for your perusal - so, I’ll link to all of that down in the description.
Thank you ever so much for watching, and yeah, interesting stuff.
I’ll be doing a video on the 2600+ - that third party firmware at some point in the near future on this channel so don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and indeed don’t forget to go and check out my main channel ctrl-alt-rees.
So I shall see you next time!
Original Video Links
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VGHF Article: https://gamehistory.org/atari-2600-tarzan
Download Link: https://archive.org/details/tarzan-Atari
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