How to play Codebreaker online
Important: Codebreaker needs the Atari Keyboard Controller, a 12-button keypad. The emulator does not emulate this keypad, and the game has no joystick controls, so you cannot enter guesses or moves here. You can only use the console switches: F11 (Select) cycles through the 20 games, F12 (Reset) starts one, and F9 is the right difficulty switch.
How the games work
In Codebreaker (games 1–12), the computer or the other player sets a secret code of three or four digits, using the numbers 1 to 6 or 1 to 9. You key in a guess and press #. Each black line in the reply means one digit is right and in the right place; each white line means one digit is right but in the wrong place. You have 12 guesses, or 8 with the right difficulty switch on A, and your score is the number of guesses you needed, so lower is better.
In Nim (games 13–20), players take turns removing any number of objects from one stack. In regular Nim, taking the last object wins; in the misère version, it loses. The computer can lay out stacks of 3, 4 and 5 objects, or a player can build up to four stacks of up to nine. In one-player Nim, the right difficulty switch on A makes the computer play better.
History
Codebreaker came from Atari’s early effort to present the VCS as more than a games machine; the keypad was launched with it partly to support advertising that called the console a computer. Reviewers mostly compared it to Mastermind and found it unoriginal but pleasant.
Similar games to play next
- Othello – a classic logic board game, playable with a joystick
- 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe – Atari’s thinking game on four stacked boards
- Video Checkers – checkers against the computer
- Brain Games – its keypad launch partner (also needs the keypad)