Video game designer job outlook

At Random Armored Encounter! Sub Chase! Odyssey 2 1978

This weeks random grab from my bag of loose, dusty Odyssey^2 cartridges came up with another double-feature cartridge, crammed into a mere 2K of ROM space: Armored Encounter! / Sub Chase!, produced in 1978 for Magnavoxs keyboard-equipped video game console.

Magnavox often used these two-in-one cartridges to get a couple of weak but playable concepts onto the market, in the hopes that quantity would make up for the lack of quality.  This ones no exception, and as a result, there isnt a whole lot to say about these two titles; they borrow some ideas from Ataris pack-in Combat cartridge, but dont do any of it quite as well.

Sub Chase! is a target-bombardment game -- Player 1s green airplane flies from right to left, trying to bomb the enemy submarine lurking below the oceans surface (denoted by the border where the permanently dawn-orange sky meets the blue, waveless ocean) while Player 2s enemy submarine fires sea-to-air missiles and tries to do the same to the low-flying jet.


Each player can steer his or her craft up and down, and adjust its horizontal speed to a degree.  And while Player 1s jet, a neutral ship (which costs either player a point every time it gets hit), and Player 2s submarine all wrap around at the screen borders, bombs and missiles do not, limiting the available range and opportunities to do damage.  Some compensation is provided by the players ability (under some of the 9 game variations) to steer armaments in flight, but Player 2 is at a decided disadvantage due to the game designers color choices -- the subs missiles almost vanish against the orange sky, while the planes green bombs are still quite visible underwater.  Whoever racks up the most points before the clock runs down is considered the winner.

The second contest here, Armored Encounter!, is a more direct lift from Ataris Combat, pitting Player 1s blue tank against Player 2s red tank.  But the obstacles arent as imaginative or evocative as Ataris rectangular concrete (or so I always imagined them to be) bunkers -- theyre either grid-based lines, or simple Xs from the Odyssey^2s built-in character set.




While Atari recognized a design flaw in this two-player concept, and compensated by allowing successful shots to knock tanks out of the way a bit, Armored Encounter! does no such thing.  This means the first player to get a good shot in can simply camp out with a perfectly lined-up cannon, instantly shooting the other ones tank every time it recovers from the previous hit.  Ammunition is limited, and some variations allow for "guided missiles" that can be steered after firing, but these dont add a whole lot of strategic depth to the contest.  The player with the most hits after the clock runs down is declared the winner, unless excessive use of the "camping out" strategy calls for invocation of the Mom Appeal, which dictates that whomever has been treated most unfairly during play is the real winner.

The Odyssey^2 always had a tough time in the marketplace, consistently running third against formidable competition from the Atari VCS/2600 and Mattel Intellivision.  Magnavox did produce some innovative games for the Odyssey^2 during the consoles struggle to survive.  But Armored Encounter! / Sub Chase! was not one of them.