How to play Lost Luggage online
- Move your skycap(s): arrow keys, in all eight directions
- Start the game: Space bar, or F12 (the console’s Reset switch)
- Choose one of the six game variations: F11 (the Select switch)
- One or two skycaps: F4 (the Player 1 difficulty switch)
- Player 2: T/F/G/H, used in the games where the other player steers the flying suitcases
Gameplay
The carousel sits in the middle of the baggage claim area and throws suitcases off in all directions. You move around the floor and catch each one before it lands. You start with three bags already claimed, shown at the bottom left of the screen. Every suitcase you miss costs you one of them, and when the last is gone the game is over. Each new wave throws out more luggage than the last.
Scoring is simple: each suitcase is worth four points in the first wave, and the value goes up by one point with every wave after that, so surviving longer pays off quickly.
Variations and switches
The six variations combine three options. In the two-player games, players take turns wave by wave. With suitcase control switched on, the player who is waiting uses their joystick to decide which way the bags fly, which turns the game into a duel. The terrorist suitcase option mixes black cases in with the normal luggage; if one of them hits the floor, the game ends at once, however many bags you have left.
The difficulty switch sets how many skycaps you control. In position B you move two of them at once, which covers more of the floor. In position A you have only one.
Tips
- Learn on difficulty B. Two skycaps cover twice the ground, which makes the first waves much easier.
- Black bags come first. In the terrorist games, a missed normal case costs one life but a missed black one ends everything, so always go for the black one.
The story behind Lost Luggage
The idea came to Apollo programmer Ed Salvo while he stood at a baggage carousel at Dallas/Fort Worth airport, waiting for his own bags. He worked on the game with artist Ernie Runyon, and Larry Minor made the sound and music. The team considered other titles, including “Airport Mayhem”, before settling on Lost Luggage. Salvo said the game took about four weeks to finish. Runyon would have liked to add a luggage train, but there was no room left in the 4-kilobyte cartridge.
The game came out in September 1982, shortly before Apollo filed for bankruptcy in November, and it was sold in two versions with blue and green labels. The blue-label version has an opening scene in which your character takes out the three starting bags; in the green-label version, pressing fire restarts the game. Neither Salvo nor Runyon knew that the second version existed.
Reviews were mixed. Many critics compared it with Activision’s Kaboom!, which has a similar catch-everything idea, and felt Lost Luggage was the weaker game. Others liked its charm: Texas Monthly called it a “fiendish little amusement”.
Similar games to play next
- Kaboom! – Activision’s paddle game about catching falling bombs
- Eggomania – catch the eggs a mischievous bird drops from above
- Big Bird’s Egg Catch – a gentler catching game for young players
- Space Cavern – another cartridge from Games by Apollo