September 4, 2023 • 25 mins
This week I’m recounting the story of Alligator People for the Atari 2600. This is a story of ill-advised licensed merchandise, scrappy startups, and the collapse of an entire industry. Alligator People: how did it get made, how was it lost, and how was it rediscovered?
Show Notes:
- Addams Family Values Videogame Rebate Offer Promo (YouTube)
- Evil Dead: A Fistful of Boomstick | Playstation 2 Trailer (YouTube)
- Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game Promo (YouTube)
- David Crane (Atari) – Interview (ArcadeAttack)
- John Marvin Interview (Wayback Machine)
- E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600) (YouTube)
- Electronic Fun with Computer & Games - Vol 01 No 10 (Archive.org)
- The Alligator People (1959) Theatrical Trailer (YouTube)
- John Russell Video Game Credits (MobyGames)
- John Russell Innovations ST4096C (AtariMagazines.com)
- The History of Atari's Planet of the Apes Video Game (DailyGrindhouse)
- Atari 2600 - Planet of the Apes (YouTube)
- The Alligator People (AtariProtos.com)
- 2600 Planet of the Apes (AtariAge)
- Screen shot of ALLIGATOR PEOPLE! (AtariAge)
- Alligator People (Prototype) for the Atari 2600 (YouTube)
If you want to watch an entertaining documentary that touches on the Video Game Crash of 1983, check out Atari: Game Over!
This episode of Mount Molehill was written, produced, and edited by Chris, with music by Chris and Alex Bainter / CC BY. Any voices featured on the podcast are computer generated unless otherwise noted. This podcast features materials protected by the Fair Use guidelines of Section 107 of the Copyright Act. All rights reserved to the copyright owners.
If you have a molehill that you’d like us to turn into a mountain, email us at mountmolehillpodcast@gmail.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:09):
Over the years, a lot of very strangelicensed video games have been released.
We're talking very strange, gamesbased on corporate mascots, games
based on classic literature, evengames based on aging rock bands.
Those odd cases aside though, moviesare definitely the media properties most
(00:29):
likely to be adapted into video games.
After all, who wouldn't want the chanceto become James Bond, train as a Jedi,
or compete in epic light cycle races?
There's been a lot of them.
Some good, some bad, and some that are sostrange that they almost defy explanation.
Sometimes they're adapted from movies thatreally don't make sense as video games.
(00:55):
That's right, Adam's FamilyValues is coming to your Super
Nintendo Entertainment System!
Other times they're based on a moviethat came out decades before they
decided to turn it into a game.
Evil dead.
Judging.
A fistful of boomsday.
Ha Woo!
And sometimes, well...
(01:16):
They're based on movies thatweren't very popular to begin with.
Street Fighter, the movie.
For Sega Saturn and SonyPlaystation will blow you away.
Today, we're going to be talking abouta licensed horror movie video game that
is all three of those things, and 1959was turned into a video game in 1983.
(01:41):
And subsequently lost for nearly20 years before being rediscovered.
Welcome to Mount Molehill.
A place where even the smallestmysteries become mountains.
I'm Chris, and this week I'mrecounting the story of Alligator
People for the Atari 2600.
This is a story of ill advised licensedmerchandise, scrappy startups, and
(02:05):
the collapse of an entire industry.
Alligator people.
How did it get made?
How was it lost?
And how was it rediscovered?
Let's make a mountainout of this molehill.
A lot of words and a lot of celluloidhave been dedicated to documenting
(02:27):
the meteoric rise and cataclysmic fallof the early video gaming industry.
There are so many documentariesabout this, like, a lot.
So I'm not going to spendtoo much time rehashing that.
And if you'd like a more in depth accountof the video game crash of 1983, I'll link
to a few documentaries in the show notes.
(02:48):
But there are a few things that areimportant to know about the early
video gaming industry in order tounderstand how this game came to be.
The landscape of the business wascompletely different from how it is today.
Nowadays, you buy a Sony PlayStation5, and you buy games for it.
Games that are developed bythird party companies like
(03:09):
Capcom, Square Enix, or Ubisoft.
But in the early days of videogaming, there were no independent
third party console game developers.
Games for the Atari VCS were createdby developers working for Atari.
Magnavox Odyssey 2 games wereproduced by developers working
(03:29):
for Magnavox, and so on.
That is, until 1979, when four programmersfrom Atari, David Crane, Larry Kaplan,
Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead, teamedup with attorney and venture capitalist
Jim Levy to break away from Atari andstart their own company developing
third party games for the Atari VCS.
(03:50):
They named their company Activision,and although at the time what they were
doing was legally a bit murky, Activisionproved that the third party development
model was viable by producing a slew ofcritically and commercially successful
games, most notably 1982's Pitfall.
And this, in a way, Is what ultimatelyled to the big video game crash in 1983.
(04:16):
In an interview with Arcade Attack,David Crane said, We used to attend
and display our new products at theConsumer Electronics Show twice per year.
In one six month period between CESshows, the number of Atari 2600 game
publishers went from 3 to over 30.
These were venture capital backed attemptsto duplicate Activision's success.
These companies failed to realizethat making fun, compelling video
(04:38):
games, particularly for the Atari2600, is massively difficult.
They had no game designers, but insteadhired programmers from other fields.
These companies all failed, but not untilthey had built 1 to 2 million copies
of the worst games you can imagine.
Those awful games flooded themarket at huge discounts and
ruined the video game business.
One such game development company,Abacus Systems, is a shining example of
(05:02):
a flash in the pan start up attemptingto ride the wave of Activision
success and make a quick buck.
According to programmer John W.
S.
Marvin, There were two venture capitalistsfrom Los Gatos, California, who saw
some of their neighbors getting richout of Atari and Activision, and
they wanted to do the same thing.
The guys that started the start up wereon the board of directors for Silicon
(05:22):
Valley Bank, and they opened accountsin their own bank for each of us.
And then we would get directdeposits into our accounts.
So we didn't get any paychecks becausethey wanted us to use their bank.
These guys were pretty clever.
The building that we worked in,they leased it to 20th century Fox.
They knew what they were doing.
This whole deal was very profitable.
And it became even more profitablein 1982 when, without ever having
(05:47):
published a game, Abacus Systemswas sold off to 20th Century Fox's
newly formed gaming division.
Now at this point in time,in 1982, licensed games
were a relatively new thing.
There had been a few, likeSuperman, Adventures of Tron,
Raiders of the Lost Ark, but notnearly as many as we see today.
(06:08):
And while it's not too surprisingthat 20th Century Fox really pressured
their newly acquired programmersto develop games based on their
films, the types of movies that theychose to develop into games were
a bit perplexing to say the least.
You see, with modern consoles, itmakes a certain amount of sense to
adapt movies that aren't necessarilyaction packed into video games.
(06:31):
Because modern consoles have thecapacity to tell a complex story,
or create an immersive experience.
But when your console could onlydisplay 128 different colors, and
was only capable of displaying chunkypixel art, and sounded like this...
(06:52):
It's probably best to stick withhigh concept, action based films over
character and plot driven propertiesfor your video game adaptation.
Unfortunately for 20th Century Fox,they hadn't quite figured that out yet.
And so, some of the ideas they had forwhich of their properties should be turned
into games seriously boggle the mind.
(07:14):
9 to 5 is a comedy film from 1980 starringJane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton
as three working women who hatch a plotto blackmail their sexist and exploitative
boss, played by Dabney Coleman.
It's hard to imagine how this wouldwork as a video game for the Atari
2600, but it was apparently plannedat some point, as evidenced in a 1982
(07:37):
press release from 20th Century Foxthat described the game as follows.
A secretary's work is never done.
Dictation, typing letters, filing,and it all has to be done on time.
Now, the boss wants coffee,and time is running short.
Can she keep up with the pace?
It was never released, and it's unknownif development had ever actually started.
(07:58):
M.
A.
dramedy television series thatran from 1972 to 1983 that follows
a group of military doctors andsupport staff stationed in South
Korea during the Korean War.
The 20th Century Fox games adaptation forthe 2600 tasks the player with controlling
a helicopter to rescue wounded soldierswhile North Korean tanks shoot at you.
(08:22):
It was, unsurprisingly,panned for its insensitive
handling of the subject matter.
Mark Berman said in a review in Issue10 of Electronic Fun with Computers
and Games, First off, and for therecord, to make a video game out of M.
A.
S.
H.
is risky.
As a movie and TV show, the pointwas to show the triumph of the human
spirit over the inhumanity of war.
(08:44):
Take away the humans we know and love,and you've got a heartless trivialization
of a gruesome international war.
He did praise the gameplay though.
And these are just a couple of examplesof the bizarre video game adaptations that
20th Century Fox games had either releasedor planned to release at one time.
There was also an alien game that wasbasically just Pac Man, a Porky's game
(09:08):
that was basically just Frogger, and agame based on The Entity where you force
a shuriken through multi colored gates.
I think it's safe to say that 20thCentury Fox had an anything goes attitude
towards which of their properties theywere willing to adapt into a video game.
And that is probably as good anexplanation as any for why programmer John
(09:32):
Russell felt confident that he could takea poorly received horror sci fi film from
the 1950s and turn it into a video game.
Long Chaney has the hookarmed, hate maddened Cajun.
I'll kill you, alligator man, justlike I'd kill any four legged gator.
Suspense that will clutchyou like quicksand.
(09:54):
To give a quick rundown on the film,The Alligator People follows Joyce
Webster, played by Beverly Garland.
On the night of their honeymoon, Joyce andher new husband Paul, played by Richard
Crane, board a train, whereupon Paulreceives a mysterious telegram, and after
reading it, abandons Joyce on the trainat the next stop without any explanation.
(10:16):
For months, Joyce attempts to find herhusband's whereabouts to no avail, until
one day, she discovers that, at one point,Paul had used an address in the small
swamp town of Bayou Landing, Louisiana,to fill out a college enrollment form.
Joyce travels to the Cypresses Plantationin Bayou Landing and eventually discovers
(10:37):
that Paul's disappearance is relatedto a plane crash that he had been in
one year prior to his disappearance.
You see, there's a doctor on theplantation named Mark Sinclair who
has been conducting experiments usingreptile hormones on human patients
to The treatment works, and Dr.
(10:58):
Sinclair used this treatmenton Paul after the plane crash.
The only problem is that ayear after a patient receives
this treatment, they begin totransform into an alligator person.
And upon learning this via thetelegram he received on the train,
Paul quickly returned home so thatJoyce wouldn't see him turn into
(11:18):
an alligator person and so that Dr.
Sinclair could devise a cure.
As is often the case in Adam Agescience fiction movies, it turns out
that the cure is a blast of radiation.
But unfortunately, Paul's treatmentis interrupted by the plantation
handyman, Manon, and Paul receivestoo much radiation, turning him
(11:39):
into a full blown alligator man.
It's a somewhat unremarkable film, apartfrom featuring makeup design from Ben Nye
and Dick Smith, which is admittedly a bitropey due to the budgetary constraints.
There really isn't much to distinguishThe Alligator People from any number
of sci fi films released in the 1950s.
(11:59):
Its plot follows similar beats to otherfilms of the time such as The Neanderthal
Man, The Hideous Sun Demon, and The Fly.
In fact, The Alligator People wasdeveloped as a co feature to the sequel
of The Fly, 1959's Return of the Fly.
But overall, I'd say The AlligatorPeople is a cut above your average
(12:20):
Adamage science runamuck horror film.
It's nicely photographed and paced,features solid performances from
Beverly Garland and Lon Chaney Jr.,
and it's quite an enjoyable film, ifnot a bit silly by today's standards.
As I was watching it in preparationfor this podcast, I couldn't help
but wonder how someone could possiblycreate a game based on this movie
(12:42):
for the Atari 2600 that at alldepicted the events of the film.
And the answer to that, as we'll discusslater, is that they really didn't.
But, in 1983, one mad lad did attempt to.
Now, I wasn't able to find out muchinformation on the programmer for the
Alligator People game, John Russell,apart from that he helped to port Zack
(13:07):
McCracken and the Alien Mindbendersfrom the Commodore 64 to the Atari
ST, and that he has a few creditsas a playtester in the early 90s.
There really wasn't much I could find.
I did find a company called JohnRussell Innovations that produced
expansion boards for the Atari ST inthe 80s, and that's likely the same
(13:27):
guy, but I wasn't able to confirm that.
It seems like he just made thisalligator people game and slowly
faded out of the industry.
And this is just speculation on my part,but part of John Russell's quiet exit from
the gaming industry may have had to dowith the fact that The Alligator People,
the only game that he ever programmed,was never actually released, although
(13:49):
the game was apparently nearly finishedand had entered the playtesting phase.
Unfortunately, the playtestersdidn't like the game all that much.
They felt that it was too easy, andnobody at 20th Century Fox Games
was interested in releasing it.
In fact, they shuttered their entiregame development business not long
(14:09):
after The Alligator People had beencompleted in 1983, as the video game
crash reached terminal velocity.
And so, like so many otherpieces of unreleased media, The
Alligator People for the Atari2600 was lost and forgotten about.
Nobody except for the programmerswho had worked at 20th Century
(14:30):
Fox Games at the time and AtariSuperfans even knew it existed.
And for the better part of twodecades, the fact that it did exist
could not be confirmed or denied.
It was a thing of rumor, the type ofthing that might get mentioned every
once in a while on a thread burieddeep in a niche online forum that very
few people dared or cared to frequent.
(14:53):
That is, until a prototype Atari cartwith a handwritten label that simply
said, Alligator People, surfaced in 1996.
The cartridge was purchased bycollector Marlon Bates for a
rumored price tag of 3, 000.
And once the cart had been dumped,the Atari enthusiast community finally
(15:14):
got a glimpse of a game that had notseen the light of day in 13 years.
Alligator People's existence had notonly been confirmed, but Atari fans
were now able to play a mostly completeversion of it via Atari emulators.
The game itself was not all thatinteresting, and played much the same as
(15:34):
many other jump and run Atari 2600 games.
The game may not have been thatentertaining, but at the very least,
the Atari enthusiast community wasrelieved to finally have closed the
case on the Alligator People Atari game.
But was the case truly closed?
There were some Atari aficionadosthat did not believe that this
(15:56):
newly discovered game was infact the Alligator People game.
The game bore littleresemblance to the movie.
The player controls a human characterthat begins in a forest and travels
through a desert and a series of canyonsuntil reaching the final screen, at
which point the game starts over.
And there are no alligators oralligator people to speak of.
(16:20):
There are three different kinds ofmonsters in the game, but they are
all humanoid in appearance, and theyare all different shades of brown.
Not green like you'd expect to see ifthey were supposed to be alligator people.
But the Atari 2600 really didn't havethe power to accurately represent things
though, which you'll know if you've everplayed or seen gameplay from the notorious
(16:42):
ET video game for the Atari 2600.
So the fact that the Alligator Peopledidn't closely resemble the movie
wasn't all that much of a shocker.
For a few years, it was generallyaccepted that the game was,
in fact, Alligator People.
That is, until one Ataricommunity member by the name of
Tempest did a little digging.
(17:04):
In March 2002, Tempest found a1999 interview on CyberRoach.
com with programmer John W.
S.
Marvin, former programmer at 20thCentury Fox Games and creator
of Crypts of Chaos for the 2600.
And in that interview, John W.
S.
Marvin describes theAlligator People game.
(17:25):
A developer found out that Foxowned it and so he worked on it.
It was almost like a frogger whereyou have to run through a moving
maze and all these alligators.
But there were also syringes that youhad to dodge, and if a syringe touched
you, you slowly turned into an alligator.
Now, this was the VCS, sowe're not talking too graphic,
but I was quite amazed by it.
And that doesn't really sound like thegame that was found in 1996, because,
(17:49):
as I mentioned, there is nary analligator to be found in it, let alone
a moving maze and flying syringes.
But, in that same interview, Marvinalso describes another game that he had
programmed while at 20th Century Foxthat was completed, but never released.
There was a lot of pressure doinggames that were based on movie titles.
(18:10):
I actually worked on a Planet ofthe Apes game that never shipped.
You had this human and you were chased byapes, and the only way to win the game.
You had to find the Statue ofLiberty like in the first movie.
There were different kinds of apes,the orangutans, the chimpanzees
and the gorillas, but like any VCSthing, they were big and blocky.
It was a jump and run and itnever saw the light of day.
(18:30):
This confirmed Tempest's suspicionsthat the Atari cartridge labeled
Alligator People did not actuallycontain the Alligator People
video game because John W.
S.
Marvin's description of his unreleasedPlanet of the Apes game perfectly
matches the gameplay of the game that wasformerly thought to be Alligator People.
(18:51):
The 1996 cartridge was apparentlymislabeled, so the Alligator People
game was once again considered lost.
Fortunately, not for very long,as on September 14th, 2002,
user CastleWolfenstein posteda thread on the AtariAge.
com forums titled simply,Screenshot of Alligator People.
(19:15):
And sure enough, CastleWolfensteinposted a screenshot of an Atari 2600
game that was exactly as John W.
S.
Marvin had described it.
The true prototype for AlligatorPeople had been rescued from a salvage
yard by Castle Wolfenstein, whopromptly sold it to another collector.
That collector posted a dump of thegame online, and finally, finally,
(19:39):
the Alligator People case was closed,and Atari heads were able to play a
game that had been lost for 19 years.
Was it worth the wait?
I decided to find out formyself, and play the game.
The Alligator People for the 2600 isslightly different from how John W.
(19:59):
S.
Marvin remembered it.
Rather than dodging syringes thatare trying to inject you and turn
you into an alligator, the playeractually controls a flying syringe.
And the object of the game is tocure your six friends as they are
slowly turned into alligators.
To do this, you collect vials of theantidote, represented by brownish colored
(20:21):
lines, all while navigating your waythrough a moving maze of green obstacle
blocks and shooting your way throughwave after wave of vicious alligators.
Once you've collected enough antidote,you bring it to your friends at the
top and bottom of the screen andinject them until they're cured.
Once you've cured all six of your friends,the screen resets and you have to do
(20:43):
the whole thing over again until youget bored or until you die three times.
There are nine different difficultylevels to choose from that range from the
easiest version with no obstacles to thehardest version with a bunch of obstacles.
There are little S shaped itemsrepresenting serum that you're able to
collect, and the more serum you have,the easier the game is supposed to be.
(21:06):
Although, honestly, I didn'tnotice much of a difference myself.
I mean, it's pretty much a variationof Frogger, but for an Atari 2600
game, I'd say it's pretty good.
Does it resemble the movie at all?
Well, not so much, but that's prettymuch to be expected on the 2600.
(21:29):
And there's nothing I love more than ahappy ending to a lost media mystery.
Mount Mole Hill is written, produced,and edited by me, Chris, with
music by myself and Alex Bainter.
Any voices other than mine featuredon the podcast are computer
(21:52):
generated unless otherwise noted.
All of the sources used in thisepisode can be found in the show notes.
This podcast features materials protectedby the Fair Use Guidelines of Section
107 of the Copyright Act, all rightsreserved to the copyright owners.
If you have a molehill that you'd likeme to turn into a mountain, whether it's
(22:13):
a mystery that you just can't solve,or just an interesting topic that you'd
like me to delve into, please reach out.
You can email me atmountmolehillpodcast at gmail.
com or you can call and leaveme a voicemail at 505 218 6894.
Follow us on Instagram to see updatesand supplemental material for the show.
(22:37):
Thanks for listening.
I'll be back with anotherepisode in two weeks.
Over the years, a lot of very strangelicensed video games have been released.
We're talking very strange, gamesbased on corporate mascots, games
based on classic literature, evengames based on aging rock bands.
Those odd cases aside though, moviesare definitely the media properties most
(00:29):
likely to be adapted into video games.
After all, who wouldn't want the chanceto become James Bond, train as a Jedi,
or compete in epic light cycle races?
There's been a lot of them.
Some good, some bad, and some that are sostrange that they almost defy explanation.
Sometimes they're adapted from movies thatreally don't make sense as video games.
(00:55):
That's right, Adam's FamilyValues is coming to your Super
Nintendo Entertainment System!
Other times they're based on a moviethat came out decades before they
decided to turn it into a game.
Evil dead.
Judging.
A fistful of boomsday.
Ha Woo!
And sometimes, well...
(01:16):
They're based on movies thatweren't very popular to begin with.
Street Fighter, the movie.
For Sega Saturn and SonyPlaystation will blow you away.
Today, we're going to be talking abouta licensed horror movie video game that
is all three of those things, and 1959was turned into a video game in 1983.
(01:41):
And subsequently lost for nearly20 years before being rediscovered.
Welcome to Mount Molehill.
A place where even the smallestmysteries become mountains.
I'm Chris, and this week I'mrecounting the story of Alligator
People for the Atari 2600.
This is a story of ill advised licensedmerchandise, scrappy startups, and
(02:05):
the collapse of an entire industry.
Alligator people.
How did it get made?
How was it lost?
And how was it rediscovered?
Let's make a mountainout of this molehill.
A lot of words and a lot of celluloidhave been dedicated to documenting
(02:27):
the meteoric rise and cataclysmic fallof the early video gaming industry.
There are so many documentariesabout this, like, a lot.
So I'm not going to spendtoo much time rehashing that.
And if you'd like a more in depth accountof the video game crash of 1983, I'll link
to a few documentaries in the show notes.
(02:48):
But there are a few things that areimportant to know about the early
video gaming industry in order tounderstand how this game came to be.
The landscape of the business wascompletely different from how it is today.
Nowadays, you buy a Sony PlayStation5, and you buy games for it.
Games that are developed bythird party companies like
(03:09):
Capcom, Square Enix, or Ubisoft.
But in the early days of videogaming, there were no independent
third party console game developers.
Games for the Atari VCS were createdby developers working for Atari.
Magnavox Odyssey 2 games wereproduced by developers working
(03:29):
for Magnavox, and so on.
That is, until 1979, when four programmersfrom Atari, David Crane, Larry Kaplan,
Alan Miller, and Bob Whitehead, teamedup with attorney and venture capitalist
Jim Levy to break away from Atari andstart their own company developing
third party games for the Atari VCS.
(03:50):
They named their company Activision,and although at the time what they were
doing was legally a bit murky, Activisionproved that the third party development
model was viable by producing a slew ofcritically and commercially successful
games, most notably 1982's Pitfall.
And this, in a way, Is what ultimatelyled to the big video game crash in 1983.
(04:16):
In an interview with Arcade Attack,David Crane said, We used to attend
and display our new products at theConsumer Electronics Show twice per year.
In one six month period between CESshows, the number of Atari 2600 game
publishers went from 3 to over 30.
These were venture capital backed attemptsto duplicate Activision's success.
These companies failed to realizethat making fun, compelling video
(04:38):
games, particularly for the Atari2600, is massively difficult.
They had no game designers, but insteadhired programmers from other fields.
These companies all failed, but not untilthey had built 1 to 2 million copies
of the worst games you can imagine.
Those awful games flooded themarket at huge discounts and
ruined the video game business.
One such game development company,Abacus Systems, is a shining example of
(05:02):
a flash in the pan start up attemptingto ride the wave of Activision
success and make a quick buck.
According to programmer John W.
S.
Marvin, There were two venture capitalistsfrom Los Gatos, California, who saw
some of their neighbors getting richout of Atari and Activision, and
they wanted to do the same thing.
The guys that started the start up wereon the board of directors for Silicon
(05:22):
Valley Bank, and they opened accountsin their own bank for each of us.
And then we would get directdeposits into our accounts.
So we didn't get any paychecks becausethey wanted us to use their bank.
These guys were pretty clever.
The building that we worked in,they leased it to 20th century Fox.
They knew what they were doing.
This whole deal was very profitable.
And it became even more profitablein 1982 when, without ever having
(05:47):
published a game, Abacus Systemswas sold off to 20th Century Fox's
newly formed gaming division.
Now at this point in time,in 1982, licensed games
were a relatively new thing.
There had been a few, likeSuperman, Adventures of Tron,
Raiders of the Lost Ark, but notnearly as many as we see today.
(06:08):
And while it's not too surprisingthat 20th Century Fox really pressured
their newly acquired programmersto develop games based on their
films, the types of movies that theychose to develop into games were
a bit perplexing to say the least.
You see, with modern consoles, itmakes a certain amount of sense to
adapt movies that aren't necessarilyaction packed into video games.
(06:31):
Because modern consoles have thecapacity to tell a complex story,
or create an immersive experience.
But when your console could onlydisplay 128 different colors, and
was only capable of displaying chunkypixel art, and sounded like this...
(06:52):
It's probably best to stick withhigh concept, action based films over
character and plot driven propertiesfor your video game adaptation.
Unfortunately for 20th Century Fox,they hadn't quite figured that out yet.
And so, some of the ideas they had forwhich of their properties should be turned
into games seriously boggle the mind.
(07:14):
9 to 5 is a comedy film from 1980 starringJane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton
as three working women who hatch a plotto blackmail their sexist and exploitative
boss, played by Dabney Coleman.
It's hard to imagine how this wouldwork as a video game for the Atari
2600, but it was apparently plannedat some point, as evidenced in a 1982
(07:37):
press release from 20th Century Foxthat described the game as follows.
A secretary's work is never done.
Dictation, typing letters, filing,and it all has to be done on time.
Now, the boss wants coffee,and time is running short.
Can she keep up with the pace?
It was never released, and it's unknownif development had ever actually started.
(07:58):
M.
A.
dramedy television series thatran from 1972 to 1983 that follows
a group of military doctors andsupport staff stationed in South
Korea during the Korean War.
The 20th Century Fox games adaptation forthe 2600 tasks the player with controlling
a helicopter to rescue wounded soldierswhile North Korean tanks shoot at you.
(08:22):
It was, unsurprisingly,panned for its insensitive
handling of the subject matter.
Mark Berman said in a review in Issue10 of Electronic Fun with Computers
and Games, First off, and for therecord, to make a video game out of M.
A.
S.
H.
is risky.
As a movie and TV show, the pointwas to show the triumph of the human
spirit over the inhumanity of war.
(08:44):
Take away the humans we know and love,and you've got a heartless trivialization
of a gruesome international war.
He did praise the gameplay though.
And these are just a couple of examplesof the bizarre video game adaptations that
20th Century Fox games had either releasedor planned to release at one time.
There was also an alien game that wasbasically just Pac Man, a Porky's game
(09:08):
that was basically just Frogger, and agame based on The Entity where you force
a shuriken through multi colored gates.
I think it's safe to say that 20thCentury Fox had an anything goes attitude
towards which of their properties theywere willing to adapt into a video game.
And that is probably as good anexplanation as any for why programmer John
(09:32):
Russell felt confident that he could takea poorly received horror sci fi film from
the 1950s and turn it into a video game.
Long Chaney has the hookarmed, hate maddened Cajun.
I'll kill you, alligator man, justlike I'd kill any four legged gator.
Suspense that will clutchyou like quicksand.
(09:54):
To give a quick rundown on the film,The Alligator People follows Joyce
Webster, played by Beverly Garland.
On the night of their honeymoon, Joyce andher new husband Paul, played by Richard
Crane, board a train, whereupon Paulreceives a mysterious telegram, and after
reading it, abandons Joyce on the trainat the next stop without any explanation.
(10:16):
For months, Joyce attempts to find herhusband's whereabouts to no avail, until
one day, she discovers that, at one point,Paul had used an address in the small
swamp town of Bayou Landing, Louisiana,to fill out a college enrollment form.
Joyce travels to the Cypresses Plantationin Bayou Landing and eventually discovers
(10:37):
that Paul's disappearance is relatedto a plane crash that he had been in
one year prior to his disappearance.
You see, there's a doctor on theplantation named Mark Sinclair who
has been conducting experiments usingreptile hormones on human patients
to The treatment works, and Dr.
(10:58):
Sinclair used this treatmenton Paul after the plane crash.
The only problem is that ayear after a patient receives
this treatment, they begin totransform into an alligator person.
And upon learning this via thetelegram he received on the train,
Paul quickly returned home so thatJoyce wouldn't see him turn into
(11:18):
an alligator person and so that Dr.
Sinclair could devise a cure.
As is often the case in Adam Agescience fiction movies, it turns out
that the cure is a blast of radiation.
But unfortunately, Paul's treatmentis interrupted by the plantation
handyman, Manon, and Paul receivestoo much radiation, turning him
(11:39):
into a full blown alligator man.
It's a somewhat unremarkable film, apartfrom featuring makeup design from Ben Nye
and Dick Smith, which is admittedly a bitropey due to the budgetary constraints.
There really isn't much to distinguishThe Alligator People from any number
of sci fi films released in the 1950s.
(11:59):
Its plot follows similar beats to otherfilms of the time such as The Neanderthal
Man, The Hideous Sun Demon, and The Fly.
In fact, The Alligator People wasdeveloped as a co feature to the sequel
of The Fly, 1959's Return of the Fly.
But overall, I'd say The AlligatorPeople is a cut above your average
(12:20):
Adamage science runamuck horror film.
It's nicely photographed and paced,features solid performances from
Beverly Garland and Lon Chaney Jr.,
and it's quite an enjoyable film, ifnot a bit silly by today's standards.
As I was watching it in preparationfor this podcast, I couldn't help
but wonder how someone could possiblycreate a game based on this movie
(12:42):
for the Atari 2600 that at alldepicted the events of the film.
And the answer to that, as we'll discusslater, is that they really didn't.
But, in 1983, one mad lad did attempt to.
Now, I wasn't able to find out muchinformation on the programmer for the
Alligator People game, John Russell,apart from that he helped to port Zack
(13:07):
McCracken and the Alien Mindbendersfrom the Commodore 64 to the Atari
ST, and that he has a few creditsas a playtester in the early 90s.
There really wasn't much I could find.
I did find a company called JohnRussell Innovations that produced
expansion boards for the Atari ST inthe 80s, and that's likely the same
(13:27):
guy, but I wasn't able to confirm that.
It seems like he just made thisalligator people game and slowly
faded out of the industry.
And this is just speculation on my part,but part of John Russell's quiet exit from
the gaming industry may have had to dowith the fact that The Alligator People,
the only game that he ever programmed,was never actually released, although
(13:49):
the game was apparently nearly finishedand had entered the playtesting phase.
Unfortunately, the playtestersdidn't like the game all that much.
They felt that it was too easy, andnobody at 20th Century Fox Games
was interested in releasing it.
In fact, they shuttered their entiregame development business not long
(14:09):
after The Alligator People had beencompleted in 1983, as the video game
crash reached terminal velocity.
And so, like so many otherpieces of unreleased media, The
Alligator People for the Atari2600 was lost and forgotten about.
Nobody except for the programmerswho had worked at 20th Century
(14:30):
Fox Games at the time and AtariSuperfans even knew it existed.
And for the better part of twodecades, the fact that it did exist
could not be confirmed or denied.
It was a thing of rumor, the type ofthing that might get mentioned every
once in a while on a thread burieddeep in a niche online forum that very
few people dared or cared to frequent.
(14:53):
That is, until a prototype Atari cartwith a handwritten label that simply
said, Alligator People, surfaced in 1996.
The cartridge was purchased bycollector Marlon Bates for a
rumored price tag of 3, 000.
And once the cart had been dumped,the Atari enthusiast community finally
(15:14):
got a glimpse of a game that had notseen the light of day in 13 years.
Alligator People's existence had notonly been confirmed, but Atari fans
were now able to play a mostly completeversion of it via Atari emulators.
The game itself was not all thatinteresting, and played much the same as
(15:34):
many other jump and run Atari 2600 games.
The game may not have been thatentertaining, but at the very least,
the Atari enthusiast community wasrelieved to finally have closed the
case on the Alligator People Atari game.
But was the case truly closed?
There were some Atari aficionadosthat did not believe that this
(15:56):
newly discovered game was infact the Alligator People game.
The game bore littleresemblance to the movie.
The player controls a human characterthat begins in a forest and travels
through a desert and a series of canyonsuntil reaching the final screen, at
which point the game starts over.
And there are no alligators oralligator people to speak of.
(16:20):
There are three different kinds ofmonsters in the game, but they are
all humanoid in appearance, and theyare all different shades of brown.
Not green like you'd expect to see ifthey were supposed to be alligator people.
But the Atari 2600 really didn't havethe power to accurately represent things
though, which you'll know if you've everplayed or seen gameplay from the notorious
(16:42):
ET video game for the Atari 2600.
So the fact that the Alligator Peopledidn't closely resemble the movie
wasn't all that much of a shocker.
For a few years, it was generallyaccepted that the game was,
in fact, Alligator People.
That is, until one Ataricommunity member by the name of
Tempest did a little digging.
(17:04):
In March 2002, Tempest found a1999 interview on CyberRoach.
com with programmer John W.
S.
Marvin, former programmer at 20thCentury Fox Games and creator
of Crypts of Chaos for the 2600.
And in that interview, John W.
S.
Marvin describes theAlligator People game.
(17:25):
A developer found out that Foxowned it and so he worked on it.
It was almost like a frogger whereyou have to run through a moving
maze and all these alligators.
But there were also syringes that youhad to dodge, and if a syringe touched
you, you slowly turned into an alligator.
Now, this was the VCS, sowe're not talking too graphic,
but I was quite amazed by it.
And that doesn't really sound like thegame that was found in 1996, because,
(17:49):
as I mentioned, there is nary analligator to be found in it, let alone
a moving maze and flying syringes.
But, in that same interview, Marvinalso describes another game that he had
programmed while at 20th Century Foxthat was completed, but never released.
There was a lot of pressure doinggames that were based on movie titles.
(18:10):
I actually worked on a Planet ofthe Apes game that never shipped.
You had this human and you were chased byapes, and the only way to win the game.
You had to find the Statue ofLiberty like in the first movie.
There were different kinds of apes,the orangutans, the chimpanzees
and the gorillas, but like any VCSthing, they were big and blocky.
It was a jump and run and itnever saw the light of day.
(18:30):
This confirmed Tempest's suspicionsthat the Atari cartridge labeled
Alligator People did not actuallycontain the Alligator People
video game because John W.
S.
Marvin's description of his unreleasedPlanet of the Apes game perfectly
matches the gameplay of the game that wasformerly thought to be Alligator People.
(18:51):
The 1996 cartridge was apparentlymislabeled, so the Alligator People
game was once again considered lost.
Fortunately, not for very long,as on September 14th, 2002,
user CastleWolfenstein posteda thread on the AtariAge.
com forums titled simply,Screenshot of Alligator People.
(19:15):
And sure enough, CastleWolfensteinposted a screenshot of an Atari 2600
game that was exactly as John W.
S.
Marvin had described it.
The true prototype for AlligatorPeople had been rescued from a salvage
yard by Castle Wolfenstein, whopromptly sold it to another collector.
That collector posted a dump of thegame online, and finally, finally,
(19:39):
the Alligator People case was closed,and Atari heads were able to play a
game that had been lost for 19 years.
Was it worth the wait?
I decided to find out formyself, and play the game.
The Alligator People for the 2600 isslightly different from how John W.
(19:59):
S.
Marvin remembered it.
Rather than dodging syringes thatare trying to inject you and turn
you into an alligator, the playeractually controls a flying syringe.
And the object of the game is tocure your six friends as they are
slowly turned into alligators.
To do this, you collect vials of theantidote, represented by brownish colored
(20:21):
lines, all while navigating your waythrough a moving maze of green obstacle
blocks and shooting your way throughwave after wave of vicious alligators.
Once you've collected enough antidote,you bring it to your friends at the
top and bottom of the screen andinject them until they're cured.
Once you've cured all six of your friends,the screen resets and you have to do
(20:43):
the whole thing over again until youget bored or until you die three times.
There are nine different difficultylevels to choose from that range from the
easiest version with no obstacles to thehardest version with a bunch of obstacles.
There are little S shaped itemsrepresenting serum that you're able to
collect, and the more serum you have,the easier the game is supposed to be.
(21:06):
Although, honestly, I didn'tnotice much of a difference myself.
I mean, it's pretty much a variationof Frogger, but for an Atari 2600
game, I'd say it's pretty good.
Does it resemble the movie at all?
Well, not so much, but that's prettymuch to be expected on the 2600.
(21:29):
And there's nothing I love more than ahappy ending to a lost media mystery.
Mount Mole Hill is written, produced,and edited by me, Chris, with
music by myself and Alex Bainter.
Any voices other than mine featuredon the podcast are computer
(21:52):
generated unless otherwise noted.
All of the sources used in thisepisode can be found in the show notes.
This podcast features materials protectedby the Fair Use Guidelines of Section
107 of the Copyright Act, all rightsreserved to the copyright owners.
If you have a molehill that you'd likeme to turn into a mountain, whether it's
(22:13):
a mystery that you just can't solve,or just an interesting topic that you'd
like me to delve into, please reach out.
You can email me atmountmolehillpodcast at gmail.
com or you can call and leaveme a voicemail at 505 218 6894.
Follow us on Instagram to see updatesand supplemental material for the show.
(22:37):
Thanks for listening.
I'll be back with anotherepisode in two weeks.
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