Kool-Aid Man [Model MT4648]

On December 6, 1982, all of the programmers and graphic artists were herded into a conference room and shown a series of TV commercials -- the new Kool-Aid ad campaign. It was announced that Marketing had made a tie-in deal to release Intellivision and M Network Atari 2600 Kool-Aid Man cartridges. The games were scheduled to be ready in about 6 months, which meant that programming had to begin immediately. Worse, they wanted game-screen mockups to appear in the 1983 Mattel Electronics catalog at the Consumer Electronics Show -- one month away. A two-week contest to come up with the best game concept was announced. Separate ideas were developed for Intellivision and Atari 2600.

This led to a confrontation with Marketing. The programmers' viewpoint was that the features of a game should be tailored to the system it would be played on, to take full advantage of the system's strengths. Marketing, on the other hand, wanted games designed for multiple systems, with the features being the same on each system. If a game couldn't be ported to other systems, it shouldn't be done on any system.

The programmers argued that this meant all games would have to be designed for the lowest common denominator -- the Atari 2600. Marketing argued that keeping the features the same would make games easier to advertise and make word-of-mouth among customers more favorable.

This was the programmers' chance to make a stand, insisting that because of the tight schedule, the Intellivision and Atari versions of Kool-Aid Man would have to be developed independently and differently -- there was no time to create a design that could be implemented on both systems.

Reluctantly, Marketing agreed, and two entirely different versions of Kool-Aid Man were developed, designed to take best advantage of each system. The winning design for the Intellivision version came from programmer Vladimir Hrycenko. Steve Tatsumi did the design and program for Atari Kool-Aid Man.

Programming won the battle, but Marketing won the war -- they never again allowed different versions of a game tailored for different systems.

Have the TV Type switch on B&W. During a game you need to be at the top of the screen when the timer is at 40 seconds. At that moment, hit Select and you'll turn into the letters JT (for Jane Terjung) and all the Thirsties will turn into ST (for Stephen Tatsumi). If you turn into Kool-Aid Man, you'll be a large JT.