Sabotage was an iconic Apple II game written by Mark Allen in 1981. The player controls a turret at the bottom of the screen. Helicopters and planes fly overhead, dropping paratroopers and bombs to try to destroy the player’s gun. The player must shoot down the waves of enemies, earning points for hitting them, and spending points with each shot.
The game is etched into the memory of most players due to an odd detail: shooting paratroopers head on kills them, but a lucky shot can take out only their parachute - after which they plummet to the ground with a gruesome splat. Better yet, if you’re strategic about it, you could have the falling paratrooper splat onto one who was already on the ground, killing both.
Planes and helicopters generate shrapnel when destroyed, which can in turn kill other aircraft or paratroopers. The physics in the game is simple, but remarkably convincing.
Another memorable detail is if four of the paratroopers reach the ground on one side of the player’s gun, they form a human pyramid to destroy it.
Games aren’t the only thing author Mark Allen was known for. While at UCSD, he worked on the 6502 interpreter which eventually became the basis of Apple Pascal. So if you enjoyed Wizardry, which was written in Apple Pascal, you have Mark Allen to thank.
Sabotage inspired many, many clones, including Commando Raid on the Atari 2600, Paratrooper for MS-DOS, and even a game that was preloaded on the third-generation iPod, called Parachute.
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11 апр 2020
