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:
“Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Wild Bill was indulging in his favorite pastime of a friendly game of cards in the old No. 10 saloon. For the second time in his career, he was sitting with his back to an open door. Jack McCall walked in, shot him through the back of the head, and rushed from the place, only to be captured shortly afterward. Wild Bill’s dead hand held aces and eights, and from that time on this has been known in the West as “the dead man’s hand.””
—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)