Ballblazer

aka: Ballblaster
Moby ID: 10471

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Ballblazer appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Delayed release

Ballblazer was, like Rescue on Fractalus!, originally supposed to be released in 1984 for Atari computers and the Atari 5200 console. Both games were presented at a press conference in May. But around that time, the Atari 5200 was discontinued and a short time later Atari changed management when Jack Tramiel bought the company. Reporting such as in Computer Entertainer (e.g. February 1985 issue) and copyright dates indicate that the retail versions of these games were not available before 1985, when computer versions were released through Epyx. The Atari 5200 version was eventually released as part of a last wave of titles in 1986.

Tim Schafer and the name of the game

Tim Schafer was an avid player of this game back in high school. When he was calling David Fox from LucasFilm Games to ask for a job in the company he told him that he loved Ballblaster to which Fox answered: "Well, the name of the game is Ballblazer. It was only called Ballblaster in the pirated version."

Schafer eventually got the job thanks to the original resume he sent simulating a semi-graphic adventure of the time.

The whole story.

Unique features

"Ballblazer" had a musical score which reacted to what was going on, giving the player important audio cues as to their current status. For its time, the use of music that reacted to the player's actions and therefore never repeated itself, was groundbreaking for the industry and has only ever been replicated in a small number of games of that times.

The very first

Together with "Rescue on Fractalus!", "Ballblazer" was one of two games that was the very first titles of LucasFilm Computer Division Games later rebranded to LucasArts.

Awards

  • Commodore Format
    • January 1991 (Issue 4) - listed in the A to Z of Classic Games article (Great)

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Trivia contributed by MichaelPalin, Trypticon, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, FatherJack.