Racing the Beam : the Atari Video Computer System - Index of

andom in one of a few locations on the Imperial walkers, remaining for
only a short time. If the snowspeeder fi res into it, the enemy can be dispatched
in a single shot.
Another clever touch gave some 3D sense to the game. As the snowspeeder
is moved to the edges of the screen, the line defi ning the mountains
in the background moves left and right at half the rate that the icy
crags in the foreground move. This technique, commonly called “parallax
scrolling,” also works to make the game more exhilarating and to increase
the feeling of velocity that sets the player’s snowspeeder apart from the
mighty but slow Imperial walkers.
Despite these interesting features, Bradford has looked back modestly
at his fi rst effort for the Atari VCS, created without any offi cial information
on programming the platform, as being “not that technically
advanced” for a VCS cartridge. 9 The design and programming process at
Parker Brothers worked well, though, and the result got Star Wars off to a
good start in the videogame arena.
The Players Are Listening
One of the unusual features of the fi rst Star Wars game is its use of a short
but recognizable tune that plays as introductory and in-game music.
Although continual sound effects were common in VCS games, it is hard
to produce anything that sounds like Western music on the machine. The
frequencies that the TIA can generate miss most of the chromatic scale.
When Garry Kitchen was working as a programmer for Activision, he went
through and marked the notes that the Atari VCS could hit. He then asked
a professional composer of jingles to put something together using only
those notes. The impressive composition that resulted from this constrained
process can be heard at the beginning of Pressure Cooker. Parker
Brothers managed to do pretty well with introductory musical numbers,
too, as it demonstrated in its fi rst release, Frogger, which mimics the music
of the arcade game. Raiders of the Lost Ark also features a opening theme
that recalls that of the movie.
It was not simple to produce melodious music, though. Programmers
at Atari would often not attempt to do so, treating the TIA like a percussion
instrument instead and creating musical sounds through rhythm. 10
The distinctive monotone sound at the end of a Missile Command level
provides an example of the effective use of this technique. James
Andreasen’s 1982 Haunted House integrated percussive sounds (of footsteps)
with short in-game “tunes” indicating the ascent or descent of
a stairway and other sound effects. The game, which was also among the
7 Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back [131]