High Score

I was surprised to find that the shooter Alligator People is not in the system here. As I own it on cartridge I'd like to submit some scores for it. Maybe noone wanted to take on the task of submitting all 9 Game Variations. I have just finished doing so.

Alligator People was for several years thought to be a lost prototype from 20th Century Fox. A shooter. Atari Age has offered a repro of it for several years. I know because I've own a cartridge of it for quite some time. It doesn't come with a manual, but after experimenting with it quite a bit today, and doing some research on it tonight online, I now feel that I understand this game well enough to request all 9 Game Variations with confidence. It's available at Atari Age for only $25. It doesn't come with a manual, but then 20th Century Fox never made one to begin with.

Alligator People

Jane (she looks like a syringe) must save her husband and his friends from turning into Alligator People after a botched experiment. She must gather vials of the antidote (they look thin bars) and serum (represented by large letter S's). She must then inject her husband and friends, which are dipicted at the top and the bottom of the screen (3 each), to cure them. If she is too slow they will turn into alligators. Curing all six people triggers the next level of the game.

The alligators that are seen in the main area of the screen are really alligators. Therefore they can't be injected or 'cured.' But you can shoot them for points. At the bottom/left of the screen can be found and S: The represents the current Serum Level. The maxium level is 9. In that case you'll see S:9. At the bottom/right of the screen can be found A:00. This represents the number of Anididote Vials that Jane has collected.

Each of the 9 Games are meant to be played with the Left Difficulty switch set for A. Setting it to B will run all of the 9 Game variations in Practice Mode. You can earn points, but you never die either. So I've only requested each Game variation for A Difficulty.

Game 1: Moving walls turned off
Game 2: Jane can move through the walls
Game 3: Walls on. Jane can't pass through them
Game 4: Moving walls turned off
Game 5: Jane can move through the walls
Game 6: Walls on. Jane can't pass through them
Game 7: Moving walls turned off
Game 8: Jane can move through the walls
Game 9: Walls on. Jane can't pass through them

Atari Age 'Alligator People' Link:

https://atariage.com/store/index.php?l=product_detail&p=199

AtariProtos 'Alligator People' Article:

http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/alligator/alligatorpeople.htm

Youtube Play Video of Alligator People:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn1kXOa0qbw

Mark

As I'm not playing Alligator People every day lately, I thought that I would add some play tips for each game variation.

Game 1: No walls, moving or otherwise. No Serum to collect. You do collect vials of the antidote; maximum strength of the antidote is 9.

Collect 9 vials of the antidote to get it up to maximum strength. You will need to do this at the start of each level to do well.
There are 6 patients to cure on each stage. 3 at the top of the screen; 3 on the bottom. The patients on the far left mutate at a slower pace than the ones to their right. Shoot the patients on the left as quickly as you can. If you can collect 9 vials of antidote, then it will take only one shot from your syringe to cure the first stage patients.
You can see the patients transform to the higher levels of mutations stage by stage. The more stages of mutations they go thru, the more shots they will need to cure them. As you shoot them, you will see them transform to a lower state of mutation with each shot.
Extra Lives are possible. Once you reach a high enough score you will begin to get an Extra Life at the end of each stage, assuming that you don't collide with a real alligator during the stage. The Extra Lives are depicted at the bottom of the screen as syringes.
You earn 5 points every time you shoot a real alligator, but as you go from the lower stages to the higher ones the more of them there are filling the screen, making collisions more likely.
Another way to avoid some collisions is to shoot the vials of antidote that are near the edges of the screen, as an alligator (a real one) will most like appear from off-screen as you try to collect the vials. It's not that they're rare. As soon as all of the vials are either collected or shot, a new batch of them appear.

My current Game 1 High Score is 172, 540. I had three Extra Syringes (Lives), but there is no way to pause a 2600 game on a 7800 and I needed to quite for dinner.

Posted by Mark on 2019-02-12 23:03:06

Topic: A Really Good Atari Shooter Missing From The Database