Rescue on Fractalus!

a.k.a. Behind Jaggi Lines

published by Epyx in 1985, developed by Lucasfilm Games, running on Atari 400/800
type: shooter, flight
genre: Science Fiction
perspective: 1st person
player options: single player
languages: eng
4.2/5

Technical specs

display: raster

Editor note

Loren Carpenter was the computer Guru that did the programming necessary to create the 'Genesis Effect' scene in the movie Star Trek II. David Fox challenged him with the idea of doing the effect on the 1.79mhz Atari 800. He did.

Tricks usually used in stop motion animation were utilized for this game to get the more out of the graphics than the computer could actually do. Such as dimming the screen when there was a bright object seen (explosion or laser), making the object seem brighter and giving the illusion that the computer has more shades of colors than it actually does.

The game designers and a few other people from Lucasfilm appear in the box and manual pictures.
  • David Fox is the Valkyrie pilot on the outer box cover.
  • Loren Carpenter is the middle pilot inside the front cover of the manual and is on the inside of the back cover.
  • Charlie Kellner is the right pilot inside the front cover of the manual and is on the inside of the back box cover.
  • Peter Langston is the right pilot inside the front cover of the manual and is on the inside of the back box cover.
  • Gary Winnick is on the inside of the back box cover.
  • David Levine, and Noah Falstein are on the inside of the back box cover.


The name of the Jaggi homeworld is 'Tepdi Vad Neroleil Rahcre' which are the backward names of the programmers (loren daVid peTer charlie)

Non-copy-protected disks containing beta versions of this game were reluctantly loaned by Lucasfilm to the marketing department of Atari. This was so marketing could check out the game. About a week later Lucasfilm discovered pirate versions of the game in all the usual pirate hangouts. These beta copies contributed to poor sales of the Atari 8-bit version. This is how the joke title 'Behind Jaggi Lines' became known to the public.

Just before this game was about to be released, Jack Tramiel purchased Atari and all of Lucasfilm's contracts had to be renegotiated. Negotiations failed and Lucasfilm went to Epyx who insisted the game be released on disk instead of cartridge. All this delayed the release by nine months. RoF was finally released in Spring, 1985.

The term 'jaggies' is used to describe when straight lines in a computer image appear like stair steps. Antialiasing is a coloring process that smooths out 'jaggies' making lines appear less stair like. Observe:

Jaggies were the enemies. For movie images, home system graphics, and for this game (both literally and figuratively). The programmers never found a way to antialiase on the Atari 800 so they made fun the situation by referring to the game as 'Behind Jaggi Lines'
Many years later, a way to antialiase was found

Zerothis - # 2006

Authors / Staff

design

David Fox (designer)

writer

David Fox (story)

coding

Charlie Kellner (programmer)
David Fox (programmer)
Loren Carpenter (programmer)
Peter Langston (programmer)

graphics

Gary Winnick (character art)

other

Charlie Kellner (cameo)
David Fox (cameo)
David Levine (cameo)
Gary Winnick (cameo)
Loren Carpenter (cameo)
Noah Falstein (cameo)
Peter Langston (cameo)

Tags (4)

other
hardware
software
creatures

External reviews (5) - average: 75.8% - median: 83%

review sourceissuedatescore
C&VG (Computer & Video Games) 001-084uk491985-117/1070%
view
Jeux & Strategie (1-54)fr361985-123/560%
view
Micro 7fr201984-105/683%
view
Tilt 1-38fr231985-075/683%
view
Tilt 1-38fr281986-015/683%
view

Contributors (5)

AndreaD
teran01
zerothis
dandyboh
Air Head

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