Tunnel Hunt

Arcade Video game published 45 years ago:

Tunnel Hunt (c) 1979 Atari.

- TECHNICAL -

Game ID : 136000

Main CPU : MOS Technology M6502 (@ 2 Mhz)
Sound Chips : (2x) POKEY (@ 1.2096 Mhz)

Screen orientation : Vertical
Video resolution : 240 x 256 pixels
Screen refresh : 60.00 Hz
Palette colors : 16

Players : 1
Control : stick
Buttons : 2

- TRIVIA -

Owen got the idea from the opening of the original 'Alien' movie during the landing sequence.

Originally called "Tube Chase" as a vector game. Using the vector system from "Asteroids" and some software from "Night Driver", a prototype was created where you could fly down tunnels. However, He could not do hidden line removal, and all those lines got very confusing. A hardware engineer at Atari came up with an expensive hardware that drew ellipses. Owen re-wrote the game to use that. The game looked great. Multiple tunnels with splits and rotates. But it was too expensive. Then the hardware was changed to circles, but still too expensive. Then it was changed to rectangles. That was what finally shipped. But marketing felt just flying was not fun enough, so we added 'Star Wars'-like objects that flew down the tube at you and you had to shoot them. It was killed and brought back at least 3 or 4 times at Atari under the same name. It became 'Vertigo' when Exidy first took it, but they decided to pass on it when it did not test well at the arcades any more (at that time, it was only 3rd for 10 weeks!), and then finally 'Tunnel Hunt' at Centuri.

- STAFF -

Designed & programmed by : Owen Rubin