2010: The Graphic Action Game is a puzzle/maze game with elements from 2010: Odyssey Two where the player must save the Discovery from crashing onto the surface of Jupiter's volcanic moon, Io. The player must choose one of about five circuits to work on in one of the ship's critical systems: Engine, Power, Communications, Life Support, and the HAL 9000. Successful power routing of a circuit makes each system slowly come on-line. It takes three powered circuits for minimum function, but four provides more leeway for success. On-Line engines and power can be activated for an orbital boost, but too long a burn will damage circuit components. HAL 9000 can power undamaged circuits you assign to him, although at a much slower pace than the player. Communications allow a powered HAL 9000 to inform you of success/failure at powering a circuit assigned to him. Life Support gives more protection against EMPs damaging powered circuits, which require repair and repowering.
The principal designer was Coleco staffer Thomas Fulton. The HAL circuit portion of the game was designed by Rob Harris, a programmer at Coleco at the time.
The game features randomized circuit board patterns that are generated when the game is played. This makes it virtually impossible to memorize circuit patterns to win. HAL circuits are a logic puzzle instead of a pathway puzzle.
A poster of the Discovery One was included in the original packaging, with signatures of the design team appearing as engineers.
Famous quotes containing the words graphic, action and/or game:
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—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
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