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)
“We have seen the city; it is the gibbous
Mirrored eye of an insect. All things happen
On its balcony and are resumed within,
But the action is the cold, syrupy flow
Of a pageant.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say “I do not play bridge” is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn’t “at all a good player, in fact I’m perfectly rotten,” is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)