How to play Frisco online
- Move in any direction: arrow keys
- Fire button: Space bar
- 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
Gameplay
No Frisco manual is known, but a leaflet survives for Square Game, another release of the same cartridge. You are a treasure hunter in a maze built from squares, and monsters roam the maze looking for you. To make a path you kick squares out of the way or smash them. A kicked square that slides into a monster scores points, and catching several monsters with one square scores more.
Three squares in the maze flash. Line all three up in a row and you earn 3,500 points, and the monsters freeze for a short time so you can clear them away. Now and then a magic square appears, and touching it gives you bonus points. A monster that is only stunned can be finished off for extra points, but leave it too long and it wakes up and hunts you again. The game is for one player and also has a demo mode that plays by itself.
Tips
- Let the monsters come to you. Stand in line with a square and wait until a monster walks into its path before you kick it.
- Finish stunned monsters quickly. They recover fast, and a recovered monster is back on your tail.
- Keep an eye on the flashing squares. Lining them up is worth 3,500 points and freezes the monsters, so work towards it whenever the maze allows.
One game, many names
Like a number of European cartridges of its time, Frisco went on sale under several labels. Besides Home Vision’s Frisco, the same game appeared as Peter Penguin from ITT Family Games, as Jagd auf Diamanten-Frisco (“hunt for diamonds”) from the German mail-order firm Quelle, and as Square Game from Funvision. Atari’s own licensed version of the arcade game came out a year later as Pengo.
