I, Robot

- Move robot over all red zones. When red zones are eliminated jump to eye to complete each wave.
- Do not jump if eye is red.
- To jump: Go to an edge and push joystick in desired direction (flashing squares indicate where you can land).
- Avoid all enemy objects. Some can be destroyed by using fire button.
- In the space waves shoot all pyramids to get maximum points. Some objects cannot be destroyed.
- Hints: The shield counts down the number of red zones remaining. To select higher levels enter transporter. To change perspective press start buttons.

# 2012-06-16 08:47:40 - official description - mameinfo.dat

software: Emulated on MAME,

hardware: Custom arcade hardware,

display: flat polygons

The game was completed and ready for market in 1983. But it wasn't liked by Atari management and ultimately did not make it to market until June of 1984 when management at Atari was in a full panic about the market crash and was making quite a few seemingly random choices since all the conventional choices weren't doing them any good. In fairness, they were probably not overly concerned with the existential gameplay and content, nor the extreme difficulty that resulted. The hardware was singular, expensive, and unreliable.

The game has a fire button but no jump button. Jumping takes place when the player moves the joystick in a direction that selects one of the highlighted jump targets.

The game contains numerous references to dystopian works and concepts.

The title I, Robot of course refers to Isaac Asimov's 1950 collection of short stories that introduced the three laws of robotics and was foundational to his Robots and Foundation seriesum.

The protagonist is designated, "1984" in reference to George Orwell's Ninteen Eighty-Four. Notably, that novel is set in a society that no longer has "laws".

The game does not make reference to "rules", or "programming", but rather, uses the word "law" both in-game and the instructions printed on the cabinet. Another reference to Asimov's robots.

The most present enemy and main threat throughout the game, is an eye on top of a pyramid.
The eye on top of a pyramid enemy is called, "Big Brother". Another reference to Ninteen Eighty-Four

Big brother is protected by a shield with depletable armor value referred to as "REDS".

Many people complain about the unfairness of this game. There are multiple modes of play with different ruleslaws and they are notably not specified in the instructions on the game cabinet nor are they specified in advance in the game itself. Rather the game instantly kills the player, then informs the player of the law they violated. This should not be credited to poor game design. Rather this is intended to fit the dystopian themes. It should not be forgotten that Dave Theurer previously designed a game based on a nightmare of insects emerging from a hole in the ground to kill him and a game about nuclear holocaust the player must lose by design.

The game has a unique mechanic concerning the adjustable camera which can be taken to the extremes of overhead view and directly behind the robot protagonist view, with any other angle in between being available. The lower the angle of the camera is, the more points the player can score. There is a viewer killer enemy that does not Target the robot protagonist but instead targets the camera. If the player is unable to successfully dodge the viewer killer enemies ( by adjusting the camera ), the viewer killers will stick to the camera and block the player's view. This tends too quickly lead to the robot protagonist's death.

There is an enemy that destroys the floor from the front of the screen forward. Which of course requires the player to hurry you complete the level as quickly as possible. And it adds an even more urgent threat than the timer that pounds down to an instant death.

At any time the player can switch over to the "ungame" known as _Doodle City_. Hear the player can paint the screen by moving, spinning, and rotating the various three-dimensional polygons used in the game, as if they were paint brushes. The lives of the robot protagonist are spent as the clock ticks by during a Doodle City session. The player can switch back to the game at any time or remain a dual city until all the robot's lives are lost. Doodle City could be interpreted as the sentient robot protagonist spending his literal life on pursuing an artistic hobby.

This game is the subject of an urban legend. As the story goes, Atari put 500 unsold units in a shipping container bound for japan. But made arrangements for the shipping container to 'accidentally' fall overboard and sink to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Thus allowing the expensive cabinets to be used as a tax loss. Rusty Dawe as stated the personal appeal the idea holds for him, but confirmed that it did not actually take place.

This game came out of a project that Atari worked on for almost a decade to try and make a fully polygogonal racing game. The project would eventually produce hard driving in 1988. But in the meantime the games of Battle Zone and Star Wars developed out of the project. And in a roundabout way, I, Robot. The game began as Ice Castles, also called Ice World and Heart of Ice. The story was about a prince navigating a polygonal world to rescue a princess whose heart had been frozen. It was roughly based on the Grimm's Fairy tale, Heart of Ice. Development was to be led by Mark Cerny, who was currently busy with Marble Madness. At the same time, The Davids were working on a piece of arcade hardware to make a fully polygonal game. Making a race car game with non-flat terrain proved to be too difficult as the cars tended to clip through the terrain and no efficient way was yet found two properly calculate the clipping at a speed that let games run at a decent frame rate. One of the David's noted that a blocky computer world would be much better suited to the limits of current hardware, than a racing game or a fairy tale game that required navigating natural looking non-flat terrain. Thus, we got a game that was filled with more existential nightmare fuel than anything the Grimm Brothers ever created.

The polygonal racer was not working well but the David's had been working on a game where the player climbed into a car and drove to different buildings in an open game world. The player could then get out of the car and enter the buildings where they would play one of Atari's arcade games. This concept would eventually be used by Namco for their Namco Museum series. But in 1983, it was not to be used by atari. This mechanic of going into doors to play different games, was somewhat translated into the I, Robot game. The player has the option of entering doors and thus different modes of gameplay than the main one.

There is a warp and continue feature. On the first level the player can quickly move towards one of the teleporters then start the game on any of the first five levels. If they have previously lost all their credits and then enter the teleporter using a new quarter, the game will begin at whatever level the player was last at, including levels beyond level 5. There's also a built-in infinite lives cheat. Bus to continue feature and infinite live feature seem to be intentionally placed in the game for the players to discover.

The game suffered from technical issues. It required a massive amount of RAM by 1984 standards and individual chips of the cheap RAM that it shipped with would fail often. Okay I want to display the message "you have entered a black hole". Also problematic was the hall effect joysticks. These were a very Innovative concept and eventually it would be put to very good use. But the ones used for i, robot where first generation technology. They relied on using magnetic force to calculate the position of the joystick rather than potentiometers. They spent magnetic disturbances, sources of magnetism in the arcade, or even nearby sources of magnetism such as a magnetic crane, when cause anomalous movement of the joystick in contrast to the players input or lack of it. The system also required calibration and could discalibrate quite easily. The cabinets also shipped with a terrible power supply that had a tendency to fail and begin smoking. There was also a problem with the hardware on the board heating up beyond its functioning temperature range.

zerothis # 2024-03-23 11:07:04

The first game to feature shaded 3D polygonal graphics. Also the first game to have a continue option. Guide a robot in his mission to destroy the giant eye of Big Brother. The game also featured an alternate mode called "Doodle City" where the player could draw using polygons from the main game.

(Jacquismo) - # 2006

has influenced
Star Fox (SNES)