Oscar’s Trash Race

How to play Oscar’s Trash Race online

A note on controls: this cartridge was made for the Atari Kid’s Controller, a large children’s keypad with a picture overlay. The overlay has three buttons for choosing a grouch, four arrow buttons and a jump button. The emulator on this site handles joysticks and paddles but not keypads, so the grouches will most likely not respond to the arrow keys or Space. You can pick a game and start it to see the screen, but you cannot really race here.

• Choose one of the seven games: F11 (the console’s Select switch); the game number appears at the lower left
• Start or restart: F12 (the console’s Reset switch)

The difficulty switches are not used.

Gameplay

A dump truck drops pieces of trash onto the ground at the bottom of the screen, while three numbered grouches wait at the starting line at the top. The child counts the pieces and presses the button for the grouch with the same number; a wrong choice sounds a buzzer. The chosen grouch, a yellow trash can on little feet, then runs down to collect the trash and back up to the starting line. Each completed race scores a point.

• Games 1 and 2: practice and beginner games for one player. The trash falls one piece at a time, so it is easy to count along.
• Games 3 and 4: puddles appear on the course, three in game 3 and many in game 4. Jumping over a puddle earns a point.
• Game 5: a timed game. Slimey the Worm crawls across the screen, and the game ends when he reaches the far side.
• Games 6 and 7: rainy-day games. When it rains the puddles fill with blue water, and jumping a blue puddle is worth two points.

From game 3 on, two players can take turns, with their scores shown in the lower corners of the screen.

History

The game belongs to the series of children’s cartridges that Atari made with the Children’s Computer Workshop, starring Jim Henson’s Sesame Street Muppets. The series was partly an answer to critics who saw video games as violent or a waste of time. It was programmed by Christopher Omarzu and Bruce Williams, with graphics by Preston Stuart. AtariProtos has archived development versions dated from October 1982 to May 1983, including a self-playing demo. The cartridge is scarce today.