How to play Cubicolor online
- Player 1: arrow keys to choose and slide squares, Space = fire button
- Player 2: T/F/G/H for up/left/down/right, fire = A
- Choose a game: F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Start a new puzzle: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Save and load a position: Ctrl + 0โ9 saves, Alt + 0โ9 loads
Gameplay
Each player has a 5ร5 grid of 24 coloured squares and one empty space. Player 1’s grid is at the top of the screen and player 2’s at the bottom. At the start the squares are shuffled and a 3ร3 target pattern appears at the sides of the screen. Your job is to make the nine squares in the middle of your grid match that pattern. The sixteen squares around the edge do not count, but you need them to shuffle colours into place.
You can only move a square by sliding it into the empty space next to it, just like a classic plastic sliding puzzle. There is no timer and no real score. Alone, the challenge is to solve the pattern in as few moves as you can. With two players it becomes a race to finish your grid first. A good approach is to use the outer ring as storage and complete the centre one row at a time.
The story behind Cubicolor
In a 1998 newsgroup post, Fulop explained that a trip to relatives in Hungary, where he met Rubik’s Cube inventor Ernล Rubik, convinced him that the 2600 needed more two-player puzzle games. He says he wrote Cubicolor in six weeks and that it fitted in 2K of ROM. Imagic wanted a Demon Attack sequel instead, and decided a slow-selling puzzle game was not worth releasing in a market full of shooters.
Fulop kept a box of the chips. In the mid-1980s he sold numbered copies through the Video Game Update newsletter and a mail-order catalogue, and in 1993 he offered the rest in the 2600 Connection newsletter for $100 each. Accounts of how many exist range from 50 to about 100, and genuine copies are now expensive collector’s items. A Brazilian cartridge called Cubo Magico by CCE is listed in emulator databases as the same game.
Similar games to play next
- Atari Video Cube โ Atari’s Rubik’s Cube puzzle for the 2600
- Rubik’s Cube โ the officially licensed re-release of Atari Video Cube
- Demon Attack โ Rob Fulop’s best-selling Imagic shooter
- Cosmic Ark โ another 1982 Rob Fulop game for Imagic