Paperboy

Paperboy is a 1984 arcade game by Atari Games. The players take the role of a paperboy who delivers newspapers along a suburban street on his bicycle. This game was innovative for its theme and novel controls.

The player controls a paperboy on a bicycle delivering newspapers along a suburban street which is displayed in a cabinet perspective view. The player attempts to deliver a week of daily newspapers to subscribing customers, attempts to vandalize non-subscriber's homes and must avoid hazards along the street. Subscribers are lost by missing a delivery or damaging the subscriber's house, and can be recovered after a perfect day's delivery.

The game begins with a choice of difficulty levels: Easy Street (easy), Middle Road (medium) and Hard Way (hard). The object of the game is to perfectly deliver papers to subscribers for an entire week and avoid crashing (which counts as one of the player's lives) before the week ends. The game lasts for seven in-game days, Monday through Sunday.

Controlling the paperboy with the handlebar controls, the player attempts to deliver newspapers to subscribers. Each day begins by showing an overview of the street indicating subscribers and non-subscribers. Subscribers and non-subscribers' homes are also easy to discern in the level itself.

The paperboy begins his route at the start of the street (bottom of the screen) and progresses towards the end. The player can control the paperboy's speed: faster delivery earns a higher score. But the paperboy is in constant movement and cannot stop moving forward until the level (day of the week) has ended. Should he slow down or stop for more than a few seconds, bees will appear.

The primary objectives of the game are to keep as many subscribers as possible and to stay alive. Secondary objectives include vandalizing non-subscribers' homes and hitting nuisances with newspapers.

Keeping subscribers is fairly straightforward: the player must deliver a paper to them. While the player may deliver more than one paper to each customer, they have to avoid accidentally damaging their homes, such as by throwing a paper through a closed window. Delivering a newspaper directly into the customer's newspaper box (or mailbox, as the voiceover calls it) earns bonus points. Accidentally damaging a customer's home or failing to deliver a paper causes the customer to cancel his subscription and may cause him to set traps for the paperboy the next day. In more advanced rounds, the homeowner may immediately run after the Paperboy after the house was vandalized.

The player must stay alive by avoiding obstacles that appear along the street. Some obstacles include everyday nuisances such as bees, fire hydrants, storm drains, break dancers, cars, skateboarders, drunks, and kids playing with radio controlled toys and even rather bizarre foes such as a tornado, oversized house cats, and even the Grim Reaper himself. The player must also cross street intersections successfully (which gets harder each day). Some obstacles can earn the player bonus points. For example, the breakdancer and some men brawling in the street can be "smacked" with a newspaper for extra points. Hitting any of the obstacles with the bike results in the loss of a life.

Along the way, the paperboy can pick up extra bundles of papers since he can carry only a limited number. These are usually located in difficult-to-reach spots.