Western Technologies was a development company that made cartridges for U.S. Games, the video game label owned by the cereal maker Quaker Oats. Its games are family-friendly, and several need no shooting at all. None became a hit, and Quaker closed the label during the 1983 crash. Tom Sloper designed some of them, and Paul Allen Newell worked on others. All six are here:
Entombed (1983): an endless scrolling maze whose generator still puzzled researchers in 2019.
Towering Inferno (1982): firemen rescue survivors floor by floor from a burning skyscraper.
M.A.D. (1982): missile defence, with a two-player mode where a friend drops the missiles.
Picnic (1983): a paddle game of swatting bugs away from your burgers.
Piece o’ Cake (1983): stack cake layers on a speeding conveyor belt.
Raft Rider (1983): pole a log raft down a white-water river.
Pick one below and play it in your browser.
Towering Inferno is a firefighting game released by U.S. Games in 1982, based on the 1974 disaster film The Towering Inferno. It was programmed by Paul Allen Newell at Western Technologies. You send firemen up through a burning…
Play ▸Raft Rider is a one-player white-water game for the Atari 2600, published by U.S. Games and developed by Western Technologies. You steer a log raft down a fast river, dodging rocks, moose and falling trees, and you try…
Play ▸Piece o' Cake is a 1983 paddle game developed by Western Technologies and published by U.S. Games. You are a bakery chef who takes cake layers from the oven, drops them onto platters rolling along a conveyor belt…
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