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Bigfoot Bonkers

Serial 0151
Meadows Games, 1976

In Bigfoot Bonkers, the goal is to surround your opponent with the trail from your constantly-moving "mouse", while avoiding the bigfoot obstacles.  This style of play is often referred to as "light cycle" play, although this game predates Tron by six years.

After inserting a credit, the player can select between a one-player or two-player game, with no additional credits needed for two players.  For the one-player game, the player must use the right joystick.

The bigfoot obstacles are very important for the one-player gameplay.  Until one of these obstacles is encountered the computer simply mirrors the player's inputs, making a victory impossible.  Once an obstacle is encountered, the two paths deviate from each other, introducing the necessary variability to the gameplay.

While this game is emulated in MAME, there are a few issues, most notably that the one-player mode does not work at all.  Also, the attract-mode sounds on the actual game can be reduced by a DIP switch setting on the PCB, which is not emulated.

Bigfoot Bonkers is my first black-and-white game, and I am amazed by it's simplicity.  The 5V power supply and sound amplification are internal to the monitor, so it's basically just a monitor and PCB!

I've included a video of Bigfoot Bonkers in action on the videos page.