Air Traffic Controller

Air Traffic Controller is an arcade game for the Apple II.

The player takes on the role of an air traffic controller, who tries to guide 10 planes or helicopters towards a safe landing on a landing strip. The landing strip and planes are graphically displayed on the screen from a top-down point of view. To control planes, the player must select individual planes, and can tell them what direction to travel, and whether to ascend, descend, or level out. Planes automatically switch to landing mode when they descend beneath 200 feet and attempt to land, and all other planes become locked out from player control. To successfully land a plane, it must descend on the east third of the runway and be travelling west. The player can receive a computer read out at any time of all planes and their current direction and altitude. Intermittently a plane can either be hijacked or have their engine fall off. This situation must be quickly remedied, or the plane will crash. If a plane leaves the screen, a new plane on a landing trajectory will replace it. Planes can be lost by striking other planes, or hitting the ground not going the correct direction on the runway. UFOs cannot be controlled, but pose a danger to other aircraft.