1983/84 Fox Video Games
Platforms: Atari 2600 and ColecoVision
Our next entry is nothing to do with the Elite licence that came later on the Commodore 64, though that too had an unreleased version of some kind that you can read about here. No, this is an entry which covers two cancelled editions of the game that were being done for the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision, and released under a 20th Century Fox label.
At the time, Sirius were working on a new game called Squish ‘Em on the Atari 2600, when Fox Video Games made a deal with them to take a number of their games and tie in various TV shows or just release in their original form. Squish ‘Em was to become The Fall Guy, on the Atari 2600 at least.
For reasons as yet unknown, the The Fall Guy rebranding of Squish ‘Em was never released. Sadly no prototype has yet surfaced either.
Squish ‘Em would go on to be released under Sirius for a whole range of platforms, including the Commodore 64 and VIC 20. Does this mean that The Fall Guy was due out for all of those platforms too? It’s early days, but we hope to confirm this very soon. If you know anything more about the deal and what happened – please do get in touch.
However, what is particularly strange is that although a ColecoVision edition of Squish ‘Em existed (released by Interphase instead of Sirius), The Fall Guy development on the platform was a very different game design altogether. Thankfully, a prototype of this different ColecoVision development of The Fall Guy has managed to sneak out, so you can play it for yourself.
Firstly, the main part of the game has you driving with a 1st person viewpoint, where you have to avoid driving over the speed limit in some areas and use speed to get past certain obstacles in other areas. There are stuntman obstacles such as ramps and flaming roads. At one point, the action changes to inside of a building, where you must make your way to the bottom to arrest the criminal. There is a great thread over at AtariAge which talks about the game and how to play it.
It is believed that the game isn’t complete, but isn’t too far off from it. The suggestion so far is that the game was cancelled due to fall out from the video game crash of 1983. If you know anything about either of the developments, please do let us know. For now, check out the ColecoVision edition and hopefully more will surface in the future.
With thanks to Karl Kuras for highlighting, Ikrananka for the new instructions scan via AtariAge forum and corrections, and www.atarimania.com for the advert.
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Hey, thanks for the thanks :)
Just a small clarification, Squish ‘Em was released for the ColecoVision, but by Interphase and not Sirius and this was the same alien/monster squishing platform climbing gameplay as that on the C64 etc. What’s funny is that Interphase added the subtitle of “Featuring Sam” to the title, a reference to the trademarked Interphase character from the game Sewer Sam.
So shouldn’t the sentence “…particularly strange is that although a ColecoVision edition of Squish ‘Em existed…” actually say “Fall Guy” and not “Squish ‘Em”?
No problem at all Ikrananka, and thank you for the corrections and amends! I agree – that sentence wasn’t reading correct, so I’ve adjusted accordingly.