Game Name: Paperboy
Developers: Atari Games (Arcade), Eastridge Technology (NES)
Publishers: Atari Games, Elite Systems, Mindscape
Release Date: April 1985 (arcade)
Platforms: Arcade, Nintendo Entertainment Systems and various others
Introduction
When I was researching for this review, i realized something. Someone that has been born in the last 10 years or so, may not actually know what a Paperboy is. That realization has made me feel very old. :( This is one of my favs growing up. I would rent it very often as I always tried to get better at the game. Has this game stood the test of time? Let us see.
Gameplay
So you play the role of a paperboy. For those of you who may not know what this is. A long time ago, there were very few jobs out there for students. So one of the jobs available was a paperboy. This is someone who will deliver newspapers to citizens of a city. This was done normally every morning before school started. Now this has evolved to adults with cars as it is faster. Also, many adults now read their news online and not in the form of a newspaper.
So you play the above character and the goal of the game is to go through the whole week without losing any subscribers or at least lose the least amount of subscribers. The thing is that the run is not that easy. You have obstacles that you need to avoid in order to complete a level. There are dogs running at you, random breakdancers, rogue lawnmowers and even tornados. There are others but those are the main ones.
At the end of each level you have a bonus section where you can get extra points by shooting newspapers through hoops. There are blue and red ones and you get different points for both. You can find below some sample gameplay for this game.
Sample Gameplay
Bottomline
This game is still fun today. It is not a long game by any means. This started as an arcade game so I can see why it was so short. Tt is a good game that you can just pick up and play. It may bring some of us to our childhoods but I am not sure the newer gamers will have fun with this. There are no power ups and no special acquired moved.
This is a game where the obstacles are out of this world. I am not sure that I have ever seen a rogue lawnmower or breakdancer stopping a paper run. That is just insane. Also, there are weather issues like tornados. If I had to go through that to deliver my papers, I would have asked for a raise after day 1.
Joking aside, it is still a fun game and I think that it should be in any NES collection. I would love to play the original arcade version one day. Hopefully someone has it somewhere.
Rating: 8.0 newspaper runs out of 10
What do you think? Did you like this game when you were younger? Did you ever play the arcade version? Let me know below.
