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Pompeii
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Name:
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Pompeii |
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| Company: |
Apollo |
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Model #:
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AP2011 |
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Programmer:
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Unknown |
| Year: |
1983 |
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Released?
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No
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Notes:
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Discovered in 2001 |
Pompeii was one of the last titles announced by Apollo, but
went unreleased when Apollo became one of the first 2600 game
companies to fold in the wake of the crash. From box art
and a few brief descriptions we can surmise that the game
revolved around an Indiana Jones like archaeologist who is
trying to find treasures in the ruins of the ancient city of
Pompeii. For those who aren't up on your ancient History;
Pompeii was an ancient Roman city at the base of the volcano Mt.
Vesuvius which was destroyed when the volcano erupted in 79 AD.
Since the eruption caught the people off guard everything
in the city was covered in volcanic ash, this makes the ruins a
treasure trove for archaeologists because all city and its
contents were protected from the elements over the centuries by
the very ash that killed them. How's that for irony?
Unfortunately the only prototype that's surfaced so far is very
incomplete. The background graphics are very well done and
depict a smoldering volcano (Mt. Vesuvius) and two strange
shapes on either side (treasures?). Your character hardly
looks anything like the Indiana Jones character depicted on the
box, but since this is a prototype he may have been "Indyized" in
later versions. Your character does have some slight walking
animation, but it's far too slow for how quickly he moves.
The brown columns on the playfield are really place holders
for enemy creatures which had yet to be defined or possibly rock
ledges to stand on.
This prototype is little more than a movement demo. Your
character can walk around the bottom half of the screen, but if he
gets to close to the top his head becomes truncated (an obvious
programming glitch). When your character walks over the
column placeholders, a number (from 1 to 47) is displayed in
hexadecimal notation in the lower right of the screen.
Pushing the left controller button will also make a
hexadecimal number appear in the lower right corner (from 47 to
8E). These numbers may have something to do scanline you're
currently on, and were probably used to check collisions between
your character and the lava or enemy creatures.
You can make the lava level rise by pressing the
right controller button. The lava pool can extend all the
way to the middle of the screen, but once you start raising the
lava level there's no way to bring it back down. As usual,
the lava has no affect on your player and he can safely stand in
it all day. Beyond the excitement of walking around and
watching the lava rise, there isn't anything else to do in this
prototype although bits of leftover code indicate that other
features were planned such as being able to fire bullets and
something to do with rocks. Unfortunately variable names
(BULLETR and DNROCK) are all that remains of these.
Its hard to judge a game based on such an early
prototype, but from what's been implemented Pompeii was looking
pretty good. After several mediocre titles Apollo may have
actually had a decent chance with this game, but the crash
wouldn't wait for them to prove themselves. Supposedly
there was a finished version of the game that was ready to be
ported to the Atari 800, but this rumor hasn't been verified.
Two prototype
labels also surfaced in an eBay auction in 2019.
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