How to play Eggomania online
Eggomania was made for the Atari paddle controller. The emulator switches to paddle mode automatically for this game.
- Move the bear: left and right arrow keys
- Throw an egg back at the bird: Space bar
- Start a new game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Choose the number of players (one to four): F11 (the console’s Select switch)
- Hat size: F4 toggles the Player 1 difficulty switch (A = small hat, B = large hat)
- Switch between paddle and joystick mode: Alt + L
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
Each wave, the bird drops a set number of eggs, and you slide the bear left and right to catch them. An egg you miss smashes on the floor, leaving “egg on your face” as the manual puts it. Catch a complete wave and the tables turn: now you fire eggs up at the bird. Each hit is worth 100 points and also cleans up some of the mess on the floor.
There are ten levels. The waves get longer and the eggs fall faster, but each caught egg is also worth more:
| Level | Eggs in the wave | Points per egg |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 20 | 14 |
| 2 | 40 | 18 |
| 3 | 60 | 22 |
| 4 | 40 | 26 |
| 5 | 80 | 30 |
| 6 | 60 | 34 |
| 7–10 | 80 | 38, 42, 46, 50 |
The speed goes up in steps: levels 1 to 3 share the slowest speed, and from level 7 onwards every level is faster than the one before. Unlike Kaboom!, where you hold a stack of three buckets, you have only one hat, so there is no margin for error.
Tips
- Start with the large hat. Difficulty B gives you a bigger hat, which makes the first few levels much more forgiving.
- Throw from the middle. When it is your turn to fire, stay near the centre of the screen so the bird is never far from your line of fire.
- Aim ahead of the bird. Fire at where it is going, not where it is now. Careful, timed shots hit more often than a stream of eggs.
- Clean the floor. Every hit on the bird clears away some broken egg, so make each throwing round count.
The story behind Eggomania
According to AtariProtos, the game was first called Weird Bird. Henry Will and Wes Trager programmed it, and Todd Marshall wrote the music and sound. It belonged to U.S. Games’ “family fun” line, alongside Gopher, Squeeze Box, Picnic and Entombed. It came out only two months before Quaker Oats, the company’s owner, shut U.S. Games down. Carrere Video released a PAL version in Europe in November 1983.
Magazines of the time liked its bright, animated graphics, and Computer Games named it the funniest game of 1983. Other reviewers felt it borrowed too much from Kaboom! and became repetitive. Some early adverts showed a mock-up screen with a second bird above the player, but it is not known whether that version was ever built.
