A while back there was an amazingly informative post to rec.games.video.classic
about the movie Cloak and Dagger and its related video
games. Interestingly, around the time the movie was made Atari Corp.,
the home game division of Atari, was sold by Warner to the Tramiels.
There's some juicy information here about unreleased video games, cancelled
when the Tramiels decided to instead focus on their computer
line. Anyway, read on to learn all about it.
(By the way, I should note a few inaccuracies in the below article -
Ms. Pac Man WAS released for the 5200; Atari's coin op division Atari
Games wasn't sold to Namco. It remained Atari Games until recently
becoming Time Warner Interactive.)
Cloak and Dagger is now in MAME!
rec.games.video.classic
From: atariman@athena.mit.edu (Shane D Shaffer)
Subject: 5200 Cloak and Dagger cartridge
Date: Sun Sep 11 1994
I came across this interesting bit during the summer. Many of you will
recognize Cloak and Dagger not only as an Atari coin-op game, but
also as the movie in which a box for the elusive 5200 Tempest appears
on a store shelf. During the summer I found a book called "The Films
of the Eighties" or something to that effect. It was a beautiful book
with tons of great photos, including one from "Cloak and Dagger".
Unfortunately it was not a picture of Tempest. It was however a very
large and clear picture of the kid from ET holding a very clearly labled
5200 Cloak and Dagger cartridge.
Does anyone know of this game existing in any form? I've never seen
it listed among the prototypes in any list. It is of course very possible
that
the cartridge was just a mock-up, but knowing how Atari was in those
days, it very well could have been the only copy of Cloak and Dagger.
Discuss amongst yourselves.
- Shane Shaffer
atariman@athena.mit.edu
From: rbarbaga@cs.uml.edu (Ralph Barbagallo)
Re: 5200 Cloak and Dagger cartridge
Date: Sun Sep 11 1994
I'm under the impression that the cartridge was a mock-up. (In the film
they had tons of Cloak and Dagger boxes lying around etc.) The
arcade game is real though. It's a pretty good Robotron clone from
what I hear. I've never seen it myself.
I love how in the movie (C&D) they access the secret chip and this
rotation all-singing-all-dancing vector display comes up with speech etc.
Geez, if the 5200 could do all that, it would be on the cutting edge
today. :)
--
Ralph A. Barbagallo III --- rbarbaga@cs.uml.edu --- Only AMIGA makes
it
URL: http://www.uml.edu/~rbarbaga
Possible...
R.I.P. Jay Miner: June 20th 1994 Father of the 2600, Atari 8bit,
Amiga
-=-VAPS Member=-=-Classic Game Collector=-=-Broke Freelance Journalist=-
From: alexr@apple.com (Alex Rosenberg)
Re: 5200 Cloak and Dagger cartridge
Date: Mon Sep 12 1994
I can give the definitive answer here. I used to work with the author
of the 5200 version of Cloak and Dagger. I've previously asked him
about it, and he had sent me the following message:
--- CUT HERE ---
Yes, I can answer your question about the Atari 5200 version of Cloak
& Dagger.
When Warner Communications sold the consumer side of Atari to Jack Tramiel
(who founded Commodore) in mid-1984, I was working on
the Atari 400/800/1200 version of Cloak & Dagger. Since the Atari
5200 was basically just an Atari 400 with a different controller, when
I
completed the home computer version, I was supposed to modify the game
to use the "360-degree" 5200 controller (as opposed to the
9-position home computer joystick).
By the way here's a little known fact about Cloak & Dagger: someone
at Atari actually explored doing an Atari 2600 version of Cloak &
Dagger, but very quickly decided that it couldn't be done, even with
major simplifications...
If you've ever seen the Cloak & Dagger movie, you'll know that the
cartridge shown in the movie was a 5200 cartridge. Actually, the 5200
cartridge didn't even exist: it was a 5200 cartridge of another game
with a "Cloak & Dagger" label slapped on it. Also, in the game store
scenes, there were Atari 5200 Cloak & Dagger boxes shown. Those
were also just mockups made for the movie.
But wait a second! Wasn't the Atari 5200 Cloak & Dagger game actually
PLAYED in the movie (and didn't it look damn good)? Hollywood
movie magic! They took the output of the coin-operated game, converted
the signal, and piped it to a TV set. So if you thought it looked a lot
like the coin-op game, you were right. Another interesting fact: Henry
Thomas wasn't really playing the game; instead, Atari sent down the
game's software developer, Rusty Dawe, to play the coin-op game for
the movie! So they showed Henry Thomas furiously working the 5200
controller, cut to the television showing Rusty's progress in the game
(sometimes even with Henry's reflection in the screen), and back again.
Rusty -- er, make that Russell B. Dawe -- got his own full-screen credit
at the end of the movie for the game design.
Although the rest of the game shown in the movie was taken from the
real coin-op game, the spectacular 3D "secret plans" finale of the game
was pure Holywood animation: the real game ends somewhat anti-climactically
with one of several static, crudely-drawn blueprints. I don't
recall whether Rusty ran short of ROM space or time, but the secret
plans weren't up to the quality of the rest of the game, much less the
movie game's ending.
Oh, and another piece of trivia: the original name of the Cloak &
Dagger coin-operated game was actually...Agent X (hence the name of the
protagonist in the game and the off-hand comment by Dabney Coleman
in the movie that he "used to be known as Agent X"). The game had
been under development at Atari as "Agent X" for quite a while, and
was nearly completed. The movie studio (can't remember which one
off-hand, but I have the Laserdisc) had the movie under development
as Cloak & Dagger. The game cartridge that was in the original
screenplay was...Donkey Kong (at the time, the most popular home videogame)!
Someone at either the movie studio or Atari found out about
the other, "the secret agent recovers secret plans from bad guys" plots
sounded like they were made for each other, the deal was signed, and
the Agent X game was renamed Cloak & Dagger.
Anyway, back to the layoff. My half of Atari (the half that just released
the Jaguar videogame system; it's still known as "Atari, Inc.") got sold,
and they laid off almost all the game developers who didn't have experience
writing operating systems, myself included. When the layoffs
happened, I was close to halfway done with the game. The basic structure
of all the levels was done (conveyor belts, boxes, bubbling acid
pits, box manufacturers, minefields) and you could move Agent X around,
pick up boxes, and die from touching red boxes, being crushed by
the box manufacturing thingies (what the hell were they called?), stepping
in an acid pit, or touching a landmine (although the death animation
wasn't in yet, so you just turned pitch black).
But none of the enemies were done, you couldn't shoot yet (although,
without enemies, you would only be able to shoot the boxes anyway),
and the bomb in the center didn't explode (the animation of the bomb
exploding in the coin-op game is fast, but it's actually pretty crude).
No
elevator scenes yet, either, although since the cartridge was supposed
to be the first Atari home computer cartridge to reach a whopping 32K
(all previous cartridges had been 16K or less!), there was enough room
for many -- if not all -- of the elevator animations. (If you look
closely, you'll notice that very little of Agent X actually moves in
the elevator scenes: an arm, a facial expression, smoke, an arm and a yo-yo,
etc.)
In 1983, at one of Atari's periodic auctions of prototype and no longer
needed coin-operated machines (including games like DigDug and
Berzerk whose translations to Atari home computers and/or videogame
systems had already been completed), I bought one of the original 25
(I believe) Agent X machines. These prototypes, which had been sent
to arcades for test-marketing, had stereo sound (Atari went with mono
sound for the final hardware) and the pre-Cloak & Dagger faceplates.
The ROMs were upgraded to reflect the name change, however, so,
on the inside, my machine is a real Cloak & Dagger!
Anyway, hope you enjoyed the history and stories. I'd always wanted
to finish the home computer version of Cloak & Dagger, but over the
years, my free time has almost completed vanished. The Atari 5200 version
of Cloak & Dagger, as well versions of many other classic Atari
games -- Crystal Castles (which was nearly finished when the layoff
happened), Major Havoc (one of my favorite coin-op games, but the
home computer conversion was barely started at the time of the layoffs),
and Ms. PacMan (completed, but not released), to name just a few
-- were all casualties of the sale of Atari's consumer business to
Tramiel and the resulting layoffs. Everyone who was left immediately switched
from developing games (new as well as conversions of coin-operated
games) to working on the operating system for the Atari 520ST and
1040ST.
By the way, the coin-operated half of Atari remained with Warner Communications
for several months before it was sold to Namco, the
Japanese company that became famous with PacMan. The coin-operated
company is known as "Atari Games Corporation", as opposed to
Tramiel's "Atari, Incorporated".
Sorry to dash your hopes about the Atari 5200 Cloak & Dagger...
Dave Comstock
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