How to play Dukes of Hazzard online
- Drive the General Lee: arrow keys
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it – useful in a game this hard
The goal of the game
Daisy has been locked up, and you have to drive the General Lee to the top of a large, maze-like board and touch the jail to free her. Boss Hogg is shown at the top of the screen, and you have to get there before he grabs Daisy, so the clock is always ticking. Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane and Deputy Enos chase you in their patrol cars. Nails are scattered around the board: pick them up and drop them in front of a police car to stop it for a short time.
Be warned that this is an unfinished game. The collision detection is unreliable, the police cars can jump to ramming speed in an instant, and you will often crash into the nails you meant to collect. Getting past level 2 is already an achievement, and the game resets itself if you somehow reach level 20.
Why it was never released
Hahn asked for a 16K cartridge so he could fit in the 256 levels he had planned, and Atari management agreed. Even so, the game was still being worked on when Atari had the ROMs made, and then cancelled it at the last moment. No clear reason is known; a mix-up somewhere in management is the usual guess. Hahn’s team worked in New York, far from Atari’s main programming staff in California, and he has said they got little help or direction from headquarters.
This was not Atari’s only attempt at the licence. Earlier, it had tried turning its unreleased motorcycle game Stunt Cycle into a Dukes of Hazzard game by changing the graphics, but that idea was dropped too. Hahn’s prototype was later sold to collectors by Best Electronics.
