Alley Cat

Moby ID: 190
Atari 8-bit Specs
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Description official description

Alley Cat is an action game consisting of several mini games tied together. You're a little black cat who wants to make love to a pretty lady cat that lives in an apartment complex. Play all kinds of cat-themed mini games in order to reach her and score as many points as you can while doing so.

You start out in an alley and need to get inside the apartment by climbing on garbage cans and a fence. Next, jump on a clothesline and through several open windows while big dogs try to eat you and people throw garbage at you. Outside of the apartment complex you can score points by eating the mice that run across the clotheslines. Once you've jumped through a window you enter a room where you play a randomly assigned mini game.

These mini games include: eating all the fish in a fish bowl, stealing milk from a bunch of bulldogs, pushing a birdcage from a table and eating the bird, catching mice inside a big cheese, pushing vases from a cabinet. To make things harder there's always a broom inside every room that tries to knock you around. You score points by completing the mini games within a certain time (the faster the better).

After you've completed a mini game you're back in the alley. Make your way back inside the apartment complex and you get a chance to play the love-cat game: try to reach the lady cat on the top row of hearts while rival male cats and cupid's arrows knock you down. After you've mated, the difficulty gets cranked up a notch.

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Credits (Atari 8-bit version)

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 80% (based on 1 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 82 ratings with 5 reviews)

Probably one of the first PC games I ever saw

The Good
Pc-speaker music is good. (It almost has a feeling of many instruments... which is quiet hard to do with Pc-speaker)

The game is easy to learn.

The game is just so GOooooooooooooooood!

The Bad
When the dog catches the cat the animation and sound are quiet bad. But it's not a big problem considering the game is as old as I am.

The Bottom Line
You play a cat and try to manage odd tasks. Try it now!

PC Booter · by Heikki Sairanen (75) · 2000

Cute and exciting...

The Good
This was one of the first games I played that has Tweaked Pc Speaker sound effects. It really amazed me. When you "die" you can hear a real "Me-oooow" out of your Pc speaker, I loved it! Just like the music. It was very cool and it gave the game more life. Also the different scenes of the game. It was a very small game but you could do a lot of different things... A Masterpiece!

The Bad
Uh... :-)

The Bottom Line
A nice cute kitty kitty game. Do what Real Cats do. Very cool Game!

PC Booter · by Donny K. (451) · 1999

Just about the cutest game ever made.

The Good
Everything -- what's not to like? It's challenging, it's beautifully drawn, it's smooth on a 8088, it has funny sounds and it's SO DARN CUTE!

The Bad
Possibly the annoying higher levels, where the dog is pretty much constantly on the screen.

The Bottom Line
Be there, or be square! (Then again, it may be the opposite, but you never know...)

PC Booter · by Tomer Gabel (4539) · 1999

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Compatibility

Alley Cat was one of the few games of the 1980s that was programmed with full attention to different PC speeds. It's an early, old game--yet it runs perfectly on any machine. The reason it runs on any computer today is, upon loading, the first thing it performs is a mathematical routine to determine the speed of your processor, and as of 2003 we've yet to build an Intel PC too fast to play it.

PCjr / Tandy support

The game supports the PCjr out of the box and uses an alternate CGA palette. However, Tandy support wasn't available until an amateur patch was created in 2015. It can be found here.

Hidden message

Bill Williams hid the message, "MAY GOD BLESS YOU AND KEEP YOU" within the programming code of the game.

Sales

Bill Williams only made $600 on Alley Cat.

Information also contributed by: WizardX

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Related Games

Alley Cat 2
Released 2006 on Windows
Alley Cat: Remeow Edition
Released 2018 on Windows
Blade Alley
Released 1986 on Galaksija
Blade Alley
Released 1983 on ZX Spectrum
Alley Rally
Released 1976 on Arcade
The Alley
Released 1973 on Mainframe
Cold Alley
Released 2013 on Windows Apps
Alley Oops
Released 1983 on Commodore 64
Torpedo Alley
Released 1985 on DOS, Commodore 64, Apple II

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  • MobyGames ID: 190
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Donny K..

Atari 8-bit added by Kabushi. PC-88 added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: Roedie, Jeanne, j.raido 【雷堂嬢太朗】, Neville, Patrick Bregger, br33ch.

Game added August 9, 1999. Last modified March 8, 2024.