Seaquest

About Seaquest

Seaquest (1983) is Steve Cartwright's Activision underwater shooter for the Atari 2600, in which a submarine rescues divers from sharks and enemy subs while racing to surface before its oxygen runs out.

Seaquest in Depth

The player steers a submarine that fires an unlimited supply of torpedoes at sharks, which attack both divers and the player, and enemy submarines that fire torpedoes of their own, while rescuing divers swimming through the water. Enemies are worth 10 points at first, rising as the game goes on. The sub holds up to six divers, and each time it surfaces with fewer than six, one of the divers is taken away.

Oxygen is limited, so the player must surface often to refill it, but surfacing with no divers aboard costs a life, while surfacing with a full load earns a bonus for the oxygen remaining. Every trip to the surface makes the game harder, with more and faster enemies, until an enemy sub starts patrolling the surface itself and there is nowhere safe. Players begin with three extra lives and earn another every 10,000 points, alone or with two players taking turns.

Making Seaquest

Cartwright designed Seaquest for Activision, and it was released for the Atari 2600 in February 1983. He felt the 2600 adapted arcade games well, which was why most games of the era were "fast-paced arcade games". Contemporary reviewers in Video and Computer Gaming Illustrated, Micro & Video, Electronic Fun and Video Games Player praised its graphics as up to Activision's usual standard, and Games liked its sound, "a welcome change from the usual munch and crunch", while Micro & Video noted the warning sound when oxygen runs low. Jim Clark said it "splendidly creates an underwater environment", but his colleague E.C. Meade found it slow and not very hard, "too complex for kids and too slow for real enthusiasts", "good but nothing more". TeleMatch found the graphics "a little too abstract", and Electronic Fun concluded that once players got the hang of it, it was "a little like shooting fish in a barrel". Cartwright also made Megamania and Frostbite.