Keystone Kapers
Atari 2600
Nostalgia Factor:
My first Atari 2600 review! So many “firsts” have been happening with this blog lately, and I just love it. Here’s to many more!
Back in the 1980s when I was growing up, my grandparents had an Atari 2600 in their living room. When I was over, a good way to keep me entertained was to plop me in front of the TV and let me play video games to my heart’s content. There was a good variety of Atari games to pick from. Dig Dug, Ghostbusters, Joust, Vanguard, Warlords, even E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial. But if you were to ask me what my favorite game was out of all of them, I would have said it was Keystone Kapers.
I just loved the premise of playing as a cop and chasing a bad guy through a shopping mall while avoiding carts and all the other crazy objects that would come flying my way. I’d end up playing a lot of this game when I was a kid, but when my grandparents got rid of their Atari 2600 that was the end of Keystone Kapers for me. Here we are in the year 2022. I haven’t played Keystone Kapers in at least, Jesus, 32 years. But I still remember how much I loved that game.
How would it hold up today? Let’s find out!
Story:
You play as a cop named Keystone Kelly. Your goal is to chase a crook named (aptly) Harry Hooligan through a series of stages, all taking place in shopping malls.
Like most games of its time, there is no “ending” to Keystone Kapers. The game just keeps looping and getting more difficult until you eventually die. But yeah, that’s all you need to know about this game’s story. You’re a cop chasing a bad guy, and that’s really all there is to say about that.
Gameplay:
Each stage contains a map that shows the location of both you, the player, and Harry Hooligan. The very basic gist of the game is that you have to chase Harry down and touch him, leading to his arrest. You always start on the bottom right section of the map, and Harry is somewhere above you in the middle of the map. There is a timer in the top left corner of the screen. If you can’t catch him before the timer hits zero, you lose one of your lives. Lose all your lives and it is game over for you.
As you run through the mall, you have to dodge a series of obstacles such as bouncing balls, toy airplanes, and out-of-control shopping carts. If you get hit by one of them, precious seconds are taken away off of your timer. As you get deeper into the game, getting hit by one of these things can even kill you outright.
There are two strategies you can take to catching Harry. The first strategy is to use an elevator (located in the middle of the mall). But these elevators are extremely slow and also require precise timing if you are going to pull off catching Harry properly. If you take the elevator in an attempt to cut off Harry on the top floor, he will turn around and start going back downstairs, again causing you to lose some precious time. You want to take the elevator to the second floor, head to the escalators to the right, and try to chase down Harry before he can escape off the roof.
An alternative to using the elevators is to just simply run all the way through the mall, hoping you are lucky (or skilled) enough to dodge everything in sight. The first escalator that will take you to the second floor of the mall is on the far left side of the map, and the second elevator which takes you to the third floor is all the way on the right side of the map on the second floor. You’re basically running in a zig-zagging pattern towards the top of the mall, hoping you aren’t using up so much time that you’ll lose a life.
I always prefer to take the elevator in the middle of the map. It seems a lot safer as far as getting hit and losing time goes, and if you can get up to the second floor unscathed it gives you a nice little lift that you might not have gotten from taking the long way up. Taking the elevator is a bit risky, though, because you have to be lined up with it PERFECTLY in order to get on it. And if you accidentally miss the elevator and it goes back up without you? Congratulations, you basically just lost a life.
As I alluded to before, this game just keeps going and going. There is no end to it. As you get deeper into the game, the obstacles start moving much faster and are much more difficult to avoid. You have to be completely perfect in order to catch Harry, or you’ll find yourself running out of lives fast. I did find, however, that once you reach a certain point, the difficulty level of the game plateaus and stays the same until you run out of lives.
On my very last run of this game before sitting down to write this review, I was absolutely killing it, beating level after level after level. I had to turn the system off, though, because once the difficulty plateaus you’re essentially playing the exact same level over and over again – and what is the fun in that?
This is a very challenging game, especially if you have never played it before. You need quick reflexes and you need to think fast if you want to have success with Keystone Kapers. It was something I wasn’t very good at as a kid, but it still kept me coming back for more. As an adult, I quickly mastered this game to the point where it stopped being fun after a while. All in all, however, I’d say I enjoyed my time with this game.
Graphics:
I mean, it’s an Atari 2600 game. There really isn’t much to look at here. It’s very basic, using the same colors and level design over and over again. I wouldn’t say this game necessarily looks ugly, especially when compared to some other games of its time. But it definitely ain’t pretty. Back in the 80s I am sure this was one of the best looking 2600 games out there. Heck, that’s probably one of the reasons I was drawn to this title to begin with. By present day’s standards, however, there is absolutely nothing special to see here.
Sound:
There’s nothing special to hear here, either. The jumping sounds and the sound you hear when you take damage are your standard Atari beeps and bloops. There’s no stage music, so the game is for the most part eerily silent as you play it. This is definitely a game you don’t play for its presentation.
Overall:
I can see a lot of younger gamers taking a look at Keystone Kapers, maybe playing it for about five minutes, and then turning it off and moving on to the next game. And that’s fine. If you didn’t grow up in this era of gaming, you may not understand the appeal of some of these old games. I think even if I myself hadn’t grown up with Keystone Kapers I probably wouldn’t have given it much of a chance.
Even with my experience playing it as a kid, I only played this game for an hour or two before I got bored with it. You can only do the exact same thing, over and over again, for so long. If it’s an all-time classic like Frogger or Donkey Kong, I don’t mind as much. The challenge of the game is addicting and keeps you coming back for more until you’ve mastered it completely. But despite the initial challenge, you can master Keystone Kapers pretty darn quickly.
Normally I’d give a game like this a final score of a C, or maybe even something below that. But nostalgia is going to win out here – just by a little bit. For all the fun memories I had as a kid, for all the times I boasted about how much I loved Keystone Kapers and it was my favorite Atari game, for all the times in the years between the 1980s and today that I longed to come back and play this game again – it gets a C+.
Definitely still one of my favorite Atari games, and a game that, despite its flaws, still holds a warm place in my black heart.
Final Score:
C+
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