How to play Actionauts online
- Move between the steps of your program: up and down arrow keys
- Choose the command for a step: left and right arrow keys
- Switch to the maze and run the program: Space bar
- Change the robot’s speed on the maze screen: arrow keys
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
The game has two screens. On the programming screen you build a chain of commands from just four choices: forward, turn left, turn right and shoot. The robot carries them out strictly in the order you entered them. On the second screen you watch the robot follow your program through the maze. If it reaches the cheese, you have solved the puzzle. If it goes wrong, you go back, edit the chain and try again.
There is no score in the usual sense. What counts is how many “runs” you need, a run being each attempt to send the robot through the maze. Solving a maze on the first run is possible, but three or four tries is more typical. The prototype contains nine levels.
Tips
- Get the speed right. The speed at which the robot reads its instructions matters: too fast or too slow and it ends up hitting a wall. Expect to experiment a little on each maze.
- Use your first run to learn the maze. Watch closely where the robot has to turn and how far it travels between turns, then plan the rest of the chain from that.
- Change one step at a time. When a run fails, note where the robot went wrong and fix only that part of the chain.
The story behind Actionauts
Fulop was one of the Atari programmers who left in 1981 to found Imagic. After leaving Imagic and a short spell of freelance work for Parker Brothers, he started Actionauts on his own. Its working title was Microbots, and the prototype is labelled with the date 22 June 1984. Fulop has said that by June 1984 there was clearly no longer a market for new 2600 games. He described the game as only about half finished: he had planned a more robot-like hero, a second character to cause trouble in later levels, and many more mazes. Development moved to the Commodore 64 instead, as the 2600 was fading and a programming game suited a computer better than a console.
In October 2007, 23 years later, Fulop announced a run of 250 cartridges for collectors, with the ROM and program code to follow. That is why some listings date the game 2007 or 2008.
