How to play Elevator Action online
There is no original manual for this prototype, so only the basics are listed.
- Move and ride the elevators: arrow keys
- Shoot: Space bar
- Start a game: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Save and load your progress: Ctrl + 0–9 saves to a slot, Alt + 0–9 loads it
Gameplay
You are Agent 17, codename Otto, working your way down a 30-storey building. Red doors hide top-secret documents, and you have to collect all of them before you reach the bottom, where a getaway car is waiting. Enemy agents come out of the other doors. You can shoot them, jump, and even drop an overhead light on them. Elevators and escalators take you between floors. Unusually for a 2600 arcade conversion, it keeps all of the arcade game’s features.
Because it is unfinished, the prototype has no sound at all, and it has several known bugs. Holding up can make Otto “fly”, bullets can wrap around the edges of the screen, you can sometimes walk across an open elevator shaft, and the elevators are slow to respond.
History
Atari’s port was cancelled before release. According to AtariMania, an internal Atari memo from August 1984 described the game as 85% done and still needing eight more weeks of work, although the title screen shows a 1983 copyright. Collectors first heard of the prototype through an April Fools’ joke, until a real one turned up through a former Atari programmer and was shown at the Philly Classic show. In 2001, CGE Services sold a small boxed run of the game at Classic Gaming Expo.
