You control a kid on a bicycle who delivers papers to the subscribed customers while avoiding people and obstacles found on the street. An obstacle course at the end provides a break from the street scene.
Paperboy was produced by Atari Games in 1984.
Atari Games released 89 machines in our database under this trade name, starting in 1984. Atari Games was based in United States.
Other machines made by Atari Games during the time period Paperboy was produced include: Marble Madness, Last Starfighter The, E.T., Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, and Gauntlet
Name | Paperboy |
---|---|
Developer | Atari Games (United States) |
Year | 1984 |
Type | Videogame |
KLOV/MOG # | 8977 |
Class | Wide Release |
Genre | Platform |
Monitor |
|
Conversion Class | Atari System II |
External Device | HDD |
# Simultaneous Players | 1 |
# Maximum Players | 1 |
Game Play | Single |
Control Panel Layout | Single Player |
Controls |
|
Sound | Unamplified Stereo (requires two-channel amp) |
Cabinet Styles |
|
Control Panel | Paperboy Control Panel Image |
Paperboy says "You realize of course, this means war!" and other sayings.
At the beginning of the game, there are three different streets to choose from for the paperboy to deliver newspapers, each with a different level of difficulty. They are respectively Easy Street (easy), Middle Road (medium), and Hard Way (hard).
The object of the game is to deliver newspapers to all the "customer" houses on the street. There are also black "non-customer" houses which do not require newspaper deliveries. You must deliver the papers by throwing them onto the door mats or into the mail boxes.
On each street, there is a wide variety of obstacles that you must avoid: people, dogs, cats, moving cars, pot holes, kids on skateboards, eldery women pushing shopping carts, men on unicycles, radio-controlled toy vehicles and so on. You can throw newspapers to damage property of a "non-customer" house to score points but if you damage property of a "customer" house, that house will have it's subscription cancelled before the following day and it will become a "non-customer" house, the same thing will happen if you do not deliver a paper to that house at all. You can also throw your papers to knock out certain people like paving-construction workers, men in shabby clothes, break-dancers, one of two men fighting each other, burglers, angry men who start chasing you and so on.
Your supply of papers is limited, so you must ride your bike over a stack of newpapers that occasionally appears on the sidewalk to replentish your supply. If you ride your bike too slowly, a swarm of bees will chase you and force you to ride faster. After you have completed your delivery run on the first row of houses, you must cross the street to get to the next row while avoiding speeding cars or motorcycles.
Once you have completed the delivery run on the second row of houses, you will head straight to the obstacle course, where you will try to hit targets with your papers, jump ramps, pedal your bike safely through and cross the finish line before time runs out. During this sequence, if you crash your bike or run out of time, you will not lose a life but that practice session will end and you will proceed onward to the next day. If you successfully cross the finish line, you will receive a bonus and proceed to the following day.
If you make a perfect delivery on any of the days, a customer will resubscribe or there will be a new subscriber. If you lose all lives, the headline will read "The Paperboy Calls It Quits" and the game will end. Also, if you lose all but one life and cause all customers to cancel their subscriptions, there will be a sequence following after the obstacle course where the headline will read "Paperboy Fired" along with a voice saying "You are Fired!" and the game will end.
There are seven stages, one for each day of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and lastly Sunday. On Sunday, the newspapers are bigger, heavier and do not travel as fast when thrown. If you successfully deliver the papers on all seven days, there will be a special feature with a headline that will read "Paperboy Wins Award For Outstanding Paper-Delivery" along with a picture of the paperboy holding a trophy. Afterwards, the game ends.
Overall Like |
4.29 |
---|---|
Fun (Social) | 2.81 |
Fun (Solo) | 4.24 |
Collector Desire | 4.62 |
Gameplay | 4.43 |
---|---|
Graphics | 4.27 |
Originality | 4.57 |
Sound/Music | 4.43 |
Personal Impressions and Technical Impressions each account for half of the total score.
Within the Personal Impressions category, Like
carries a little more weight than the other factors.
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There was a bug in the game that sometimes permitted the user to go past the end of the obstacle course and cause weird things to happen in the next day of delivering papers.
The steering controller definitely made this game an eye catcher when it first entered arcades.
This cabinet was also used for Championship Sprint. There is a compartment at the bottom that could be removed (this is where the two pedals go).
There are 15,161 members of the Video Arcade Preservation Society / Vintage Arcade Preservation Society, 9,626 whom participate in our arcade census project of games owned, wanted, or for sale. Census data currently includes 166,300 machines (6,975 unique titles).
Very Common - There are 302 known instances of this machine owned by Paperboy collectors who are active members. Of these, 269 of them are original dedicated machines. 5 of them are conversions in which game circuit boards (and possibly cabinet graphics) have been placed in (and on) another game cabinet. 26 of them are only circuit boards which a collector could put into a generic case if desired.
For Sale - There are 7 active VAPS members with a Paperboy machines for sale. There is one active VAPS member with an extra Paperboy circuit board for sale.
Wanted - Very Popular - There are 74 active VAPS members currently looking for Paperboy. There are 2 active VAPS members looking for Paperboy boards sets.
This game ranks a 61 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most often seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on census ownership records.
This game ranks a 85 on a scale out of 100 (100 = most often seen, 1=least common) in popularity based on census want list records.
Rarity and Popularity independently are not necessarily indications of value. [More Information]
Our members have reported that Paperboy is playable at 1 locations:
Name | Location | State | Country | Details | Check-ins |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Upstate Pinball & Arcade Museum | 109A West Trade St, Simpsonville | South Carolina | United States | Arcade | 2 |
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