Blueprint

Name:	Blueprint
Company:	CBS
Model #:	80030
Programmer:	Tom DiDomenico (Bally Midway)
Year:	1983
Released?	Yes
Notes:	"T.DIDOMENICO" can be found in the code.

That nasty troll Ollie Ogre is trying to get his dirty mitts on your girl Daisy Damsel, and it's up to you to stop him.  However you're just a poor handyman, how on earth can you possibly stand up to troll?  Fortunately for you, you do have one talent, you can build!  It's up to you to gather all the parts to the machine laid out on the Blueprint and assemble them into the ultimate weapon.  Sound easy?  Well there are a few things standing in your way...

If you take a look at the top of the screen you'll see what looks like a large blob  chasing a girl.  That blob is Ollie and that girl is Daisy.  If Ollie catches Daisy it's game over, so be quick or Daisy will be Ollie chow.  Our hero must also watch out for Fuzzy Wuzzy, a deadly orange guy which chases the hero around the city.  There's no way to destroy Fuzzy Wuzzy so you'll just have to avoid him.  Thankfully you can use your super speed to help avoid Fuzzy Wuzzy by pressing the fire button.  You only have so much super speed per level and if you use too much you'll see the maze turn yellow and eventually red.  When the maze turns red you can no longer use your super speed until you complete the level.

Blueprint is really a game of memorization.  The pieces of the machine are hidden in the various houses scattered around the board at the start of the round.  It's up to you to remember which houses you've been to and which houses are still left to visit.  Once you've successfully located a machine piece, you must make sure that it's the correct part (you build the machine from the bottom to the top).  If you've grabbed the wrong part you must put it back in the house you took it from and find a different one.  If you've grabbed the correct one all you need to do is drop it off onto the Blueprint at the bottom of the screen.  If you go into the wrong house or a house that you've already taken a part from you'll find a bomb.  When this happens you must quickly drop off the bomb into the monster/bomb pit in the lower right corner.  You can press the button to use some of your super speed to speed up your trip to the pit, because if the bomb blows up before you get it to the pit you're toast.

 Once you've assembled the whole machine, quickly run over to the start button and bring your creation to life!  Now that you have a weapon you can turn the tables on Ollie and blast him to oblivion.  On the shooting screen you can press up to increase the power of the gun.  The more power you use the faster the bullet will travel, but the less points you'll score for blasting Ollie.  Shooting Ollie can be tough due to the long distance the shot must travel and his intense speed.  The key is to shoot a bit ahead of Ollie while using max power.

Blueprint is great game that sports an excellent mix of strategy, memorization, and fast action.  The Atari 2600 version looses a bit of the graphical eye candy that the arcade game had, but the gameplay is solid and mostly intact.  The Atari 2600 version of Blueprint had a contest associated it which was very similar to the Solar Fox contest.  After completing the game, the player is presented with the secret word "TEALPEHN" which was supposed to be a hint to an upcoming CBS game (you earn one letter each time you beat a level).  TEALPEHN can either be unscrambled as The Plane (a possible hint to the unreleased game Wings) or as Elephant which doesn't seem to fit any known CBS game, released or otherwise.  The mystery behind the meaning of these cryptic words continues to this day.

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