Page 32 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #40 FREE Edition

ARCADE
In 1980 Atari released a game in the arcades with the name Warlords. This game was an
interesting and competitive take
on the Pong formula that would allow up to four people to play at the same time depending on the cabinet being played. The upright cabinet allowed for two players, while the cocktail version supported up to four players. These cabinets were different as well. The upright cabinet used a black and white screen which reflected the screen into a mirror that had castles drawn. Players would work as a team on the two-player version of the game. The cocktail table used a color screen and allowed up to four players and did not use team play in four-player games. Two-player
games ran like the upright cabinet version, however.
As the name of the game suggests, there is a battle between warlords, four of them to be exact. This
is represented with “castles” positioned at each corner for the screen. These are made up of brick walls that get slowly destroyed
by a fireball that bounces off the walls and the shields of the four knights who protect each castle. Within the castle there are different icons: crowns representing Kings
or helmets representing Dark Lords. Kings are protected by players, while Dark Lords are protected by the computer. Each of the castles has a different color and a floating shield that is used to protect the player’s castle while also deflecting the fireballs to destroy enemy castles and the icon within. The shield can hold onto a fireball to
then shoot it but this will cause the wall of the protected castle to degrade as well. When the game starts, a dragon flies between
the castles and it shoots the first fireball at one of the players. Additional fireballs are released as icons are destroyed, with a maximum number of four fireballs allowed in the playfield.
Warlords was well received by players and it won an award for “Best ‘Pong’ Variant” at the 3rd annual Arkie Awards. As was to
be expected, Warlords did see an “official port” for the Atari 2600. Apparently both the arcade and
the 2600 versions were developed simultaneously, according to Atari’s creative designer Roger Hector.
Mr. Hector came up with the idea for the game while watching the TV show Charlie’s Angels and thinking of how to make a four- player version of Pong. Mr. Hector shared storyboards he had drawn of what the game would look
like at an internal brainstorming Atari meeting with a suggested
title of Castles and Kings. Upper management must have liked his idea because he later learned of
the game being developed with the title Warlords. The arcade version
of Warlords was developed by Norm Avalaire and Craig Rivera for Atari. Though the 2600 version was the only official port of the game, there have been homebrew versions releases for the 2600, 5200, and the Bally Astrocade, all under different names.
WARLORDS FROM ARCADE TO CONSOLE By Eugenio Angueira
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OLD SCHOOL GAMER MAGAZINE • ISSUE #40
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