Atari has once again returned to the pool of arcade conversions for its second of three fall 1980 releases, Dodge ‘Em. Like Circus Atari or Space Invaders, it’s an excellent home version of a fairly popular game from the 1970s, Head-On, meaning that just like those two, it’s a classic home version of a classic game… albeit not an official one. Much as was the case with Circus Atari, Dodge ‘Em – or Dodger Cars, under the Sears branding – is another unlicensed clone of someone else’s game.
In this case, the original Head-On was developed and published by Sega/Gremlin. Sega’s corporate history is a nightmare of mergers, acquisitions and spinoffs beyond my scope, so I’ll be sticking to only the relevant aspects here. According to research from historians Keith Smith for his Golden Age Arcade Historian blog and Ken Horowitz for his Sega Arcade Revolution book, Sega was struggling to get solid footing in the US market in the mid-to-late 70s, having left to focus on its lucrative Japanese business before returning in 1975 with shooting game Bullet Mark. Despite a series of game releases such as Fonz and Heavyweight Champ, and opening a chain of arcades called Sega Centers, the company found itself still losing money in the US market. On the flip side, Gremlin had been involved with coin-op games since about 1973 when it released Play Ball, a baseball-themed wall game. Gremlin eventually moved into the video game market in 1976 with Blockade, a game that sold well to operators and distributors and was itself cloned by Atari for the 1977 VCS release Surround. Following two brutal winters in 1977 and 1978 hurting their supply chain, however, Gremlin needed an influx of money to survive. The two companies began talks, and on September 29, 1978, Sega purchased Gremlin, expanding both entities’ manufacturing and distribution range; Sega got Gremlin’s western distribution and manufacturing business, while Gremlin got access to Sega’s foreign capabilities and financing; this also gave the new Sega/Gremlin a foot in the door for licensing and distributing Japanese arcade games in the west. This proved fortuitous when one of their earliest post-merger games, Head-On, was published around April 1979 and wound up being a huge success.
Head-On was conceived by Gremlin designer Lane Hauck and developed by Bill Blewett shortly before the Sega merger, and puts the player in a space consisting of multiple circular lanes filled with dots. The player is tasked with collecting all the dots by driving over them with their car without being rammed by other cars. Hauck talked about the game in a July 1982 feature that ran in the San Diego Union Tribune, indicating that the concept of fixed lanes filled with dots the player collects just “came to him” in a flash. His original design billed this as a two-player game, but he realized that players would spend their time trying to ram each other, as whoever has the highest score has an incentive to end the game quickly so that they win. After multiple attempts at making this version work and nearly junking the concept entirely, Hauck remembered one part of his initial idea that saved it: turning Head-On into a single player game and having the opposing car be computer-controlled. This would give the player a specific objective and would push people to try and extend their games as long as possible. Both the player and computer cars can only change lanes at the gaps in the middle of the X and Y axes, though the player can also change speed as one way to help avoid colliding with the computer, which will always try to be in the same lane as you. Head-On followed on from the concept of rounds popularized in Space Invaders the year before to feature what was billed as a “multi-phase” game. What this meant is that each round would be more difficult than the previous one, typically with the addition of up to three computer-controlled cars to avoid. In a 2017 interview with Blewett by historian Ethan Johnson, the developer said he was essentially given an example drawing of the playfield and an explanation of how everything would behave. Blewett further explained that he made his own additions, ensuring each of the computer cars had their own “personalities” and added other little touches, such as speeding the cars up when a crash was inevitable and ensuring that cars would slip into a lane if they were about to hit a wall while shifting. Near the end of development, a Japanese Sega engineer suggested that Blewett remove the timer that he originally had in the game and embrace fully the concept of rounds that Space Invaders was popularizing in Japan at the time Head-On was in development, which proved to be a smart decision as well – the game already flies by at a rapid pace and simply doesn’t need the additional wrinkle.
With players maneuvering throughout a single screen “maze” to collect dots and avoid enemies, Head-On does feature some of the key concepts behind 1980’s Pac-Man. It’s possible that this isn’t a coincidence; prior to the Sega merger Gremlin founder Frank Fogleman had Namco’s founder Masaya Nakamura come through to see if Namco would be interested in an arrangement with Gremlin instead, and after giving Nakamura the keys to the main office, Fogleman said his guest ended up spending most of the night playing Head On. About 16 months later Namco went on to publish Pac-Man, another dot-and-maze game, and while there’s been no confirmation from the Namco side of things, Head-On’s success in Japan and Nakamura’s obsession suggest it was at least an influence. What makes Sega/Gremlin’s game particularly devilish if you’re coming to it from Pac-Man is that crashing will cause all the dots to reappear on screen, making it rather tricky to actually finish a stage. Nevertheless, Head-On was a big success for the company; it was reported as one of the top 10 most successful games of 1979, and led the company to produce a sequel later that year called Head-On 2 that added a fourth computer car, tweaked personalities for the computer cars, and turnaround lanes; Blewett remarked that much of the code was reused between the two. Head-On and its sequel would be cloned both officially and unofficially by their competitors as well, with Exidy’s Crash, Nichibutsu’s Rolling Crash, and Konami’s Car Chase copying the first game, and Nintendo cloning the second with Head-On N. With this popular pedigree and a lack of official home conversions, it’s unsurprising that a number of unlicensed clones appeared on home computers such as the Commodore 64, Atari 400/800 and ZX Spectrum in the early ’80s, and on the console side, Atari’s developers would be interested in producing a home version for the VCS.
Dodge ‘Em would be the first project undertaken by Atari developer Carla Meninsky, who was hired on in 1979 with the intention of working on computer animation but instead found herself doing Atari VCS games after the Activision quartet left the company that summer. In an interview with Will Nicholes, Meninsky said she was given a list of game concepts to pick from that included a version of Head-On described as “car crash maze game,” which she thought sounded interesting. Prior to coming to Atari she said her game experience was largely limited to being a big fan of the Adventure text-based computer game and seeing Pong around. Nevertheless, Meninsky picked up on game design quickly, producing one of 1980’s standout titles on her first try.
Much like Head-On, Dodge ‘Em has the multiple lanes, the gaps to shift between them, the dots that will reappear after a collision, an accelerator button, and computer cars that increase in aggression and numbers (up to two, in this version) as you work through the game’s levels. It’s a remarkably faithful take on the arcade title that effectively captures the speed, intensity and quick decision-making needed to succeed. After three “turns” the game ends, though if you clear five rounds without a collision the game will subtract one of your remaining turns, meaning Dodge ‘Em maxes out at 15 rounds, unlike the arcade game. Meninsky did add a couple twists on the formula to keep this home rendition interesting. The right difficulty switch can be flipped to determine if the computer cars always start in the same positions or if they’ll shift between starting points throughout the maze, which essentially forces players to not get used to specific patterns to win each round. And two distinct two-player modes are included on this cartridge – the first is your standard version where players alternate turns after each crash, much as you’d see in games like Space Invaders. The other two-player mode is like something out of Nintendo’s Pac-Man Vs. game from two decades later, where one player controls the standard, point-collecting vehicle as usual, but the second player starts out controlling the crash car. If the vehicles collide, the two players switch roles, giving the other player the opportunity to collect points themselves. While it’s not as intense as Pac-Man Vs. given that there’s only one opponent and you can both see the entire screen at once, this is a clever and innovative twist on Head-On and Hauck’s initial vision for the game. And as an amusing little footnote, Meninsky said that fellow VCS developer Jim Huether was the model for the man driving the car on the game’s box art.
The game’s review in the pages of Video are largely effusive. Noting that the arcade original Head-On continued to be popular at the time of their article, Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz write – accurately I should add – that the game cannot be solved with reflexes alone, but rather requires planning a route in advance and executing it properly. Once the second car shows up they indicate that planning pretty much has to go out the window, providing the game its true appeal. The two of them weren’t wrong; early on Dodge ‘Em is indeed fairly rote, but it becomes so much more intense an experience as you move up the stages. An overview in Video Action recommended it for its action, but found “much room for improvement” in its graphics.
Surprisingly for such a widely cloned game in the arcade and home computer space, the only other takes on Head-On besides Dodge ‘Em to appear on an American home console were on the Bally Professional Arcade as BASIC programs. The first was Collision Course, written by Mike Peace and sold under his Wavemakers label originally as a standard BASIC tape and later as a remastered version using Blue RAM extended BASIC and the Blue RAM memory expansion. While this is in many ways the same as Head-On, Peace did include a few of his own ideas, though they don’t necessarily make a better game. Most obvious is that you need to manage how long you’re pushing into a direction to move, as it’s very easy to overshoot into the lane beyond the one you’re trying to get to, and pushing these directions into a wall will cause you to crash. Additionally Peace brings back the timer mechanic Blewett abandoned after a fashion as a fuel gauge, displayed in the original release as a background color shift over time and in the Blue RAM take as a simple fuel bar; the more you drive at high speed, the faster you run out of gas, forcing you to manage your speed a little more closely than other takes. Finally, Peace adds in bonus flags that can be grabbed on the course for bonus points. The Blue RAM version has significantly nicer graphics and little animations, such as the tow truck that takes your car away after a crash, but these both play pretty well and feature fantastic usage of the system’s audio capabilities. The other Bally version is Smash Up, which appears on Mike White’s 1983 epic Quadra. Quadra is best described as four distinct games in one, along the lines of the arcade games TRON or GORF, with one of those being Smash Up. Alongside clones of Head-On, Space Invaders and Atari’s Avalanche, Quadra also includes the original game Safe Cracker where players must maneuver through multiple levels of a guarded maze to reach and defuse a bomb. Mike White said that Smash Up was done independently before the other Quadra games and brought into that program for its proper release. While it started out as a standard Astro BASIC release, due to Quadra’s size and complexity it is significantly better known for its Blue RAM rendition, which has fewer load screens to contend with. All that said, Smash Up is basically just Head-On, with the single opposing car getting faster as the game goes on. White did note that even Mike Peace was interested in how he managed the rather excellent tire squealing sound effect in Smash Up, even if Collision Course outshines it in most other respects.
Some time after finishing her second game, Warlords, and starting work on a home conversion of Battlezone, Meninsky briefly left Atari (citing her office being in a trailer and “weird things” going on at the company) before being roped back in with a request to modify Dodge ‘Em as a marketing tool for Mercedes garbage trucks. As she told it, they gave the task to another developer but they weren’t able to make sense of her code; she relayed that later on developer Mike Albaugh was also unable to figure out how she’d managed to cheat an extra computer cycle out of the machine to make Dodge ‘Em run while being tasked to convert all the existing VCS game to a new microprocessor. Graphics artist Mimi Doggett had done the truck graphics for the cars, and Meninsky did the hack in her spare time for free while working elsewhere, ultimately getting talked back into working at Atari again after only three months away. This particular rendition of Dodge ‘Em has not turned up as of this writing, so it’s unclear what Atari’s management ever did with the program; Meninsky guessed that the modification was created as part of an effort to get a Mercedes fleet discount for upper management with no real intention of selling it. This would put it in the same space as Atari’s Pepsi Invaders modification of Space Invaders, which was only made for executives at a sales convention. Nevertheless, Meninsky mentioned that the company appeared to have changed dramatically during her absence: new buildings, new management, cash bonuses for successful games, and the exits of Dennis Koble, Rob Fulop and fellow trailer-office associate Bob Smith (who had all left to form Imagic). She also found herself bumped up to a game group leader, putting her in charge of game design regarding licensed characters, such as the Muppets, Snoopy, and Mickey Mouse.
Despite being a great game, Dodge ‘Em didn’t appear to crack Atari’s upper echelon of sales, not appearing at all on what limited sales charts we have from the early 80s. In the latter half of the 80s, the game sold only 2,572 copies – pretty paltry numbers, even in the VCS’s twilight years. Yet given how common the game is on the aftermarket, it’s possible that sales of Dodge ‘Em were front-loaded, and it lost steam once Pac-Man hit the platform. Sadly, without more information, we can’t say for certain.
Head-On’s story isn’t quite over yet either, though. Sega continued the series without the namesake for some time, publishing Car Hunt for arcades and Pacar for the SG-1000 some years later; these added elevated roadways, enemy car behaviors and more complex mazes, but had the same basic concept as the original. Pacar even includes the ability to reverse your vehicle, though you lose the ability to accelerate forward; it also includes a power up every 30 dots collected that increases your speed and makes your car invincible. And while we may not be able to prove a linkage any more than we can to Pac-Man, Namco’s car-in-a-maze game Rally-X also feels much like an evolution of the concepts in Head-On, with players being pursued by enemy cars while they collect flags on the playfield.
Additionally, Around 1990, new regulations from the Japanese Ministry of Industry required all new arcade cabinets being produced and sold in Japan to include a game of some sort. At this point, arcade machines largely included a baseline JAMMA board – JAMMA being the de facto standard connection that other arcade boards would plug into, allowing operators to easily swap machines on the floor without buying a whole new cabinet or dealing with more work-intensive conversion kits. To meet this requirement, game companies that sold arcade cabinets – including Sega and their ubiquitous Astro City and Blast City machines – started bundling in very basic, simple games to meet the law’s technical requirements, but were still not really suitable for commercial play. In Sega’s case, it was a stripped down version of Head-On called Dottori-kun. It lacks scoring and is visually a big step down from the real game, but it allowed Sega to keep on selling cabinets. Programmer Chris Covell even revisited this little game board to create Dottori-Man Junior, which is essentially Pac-Man using the same basic ruleset as the original Head-On – In a way, bringing the saga of these two games full circle.
Back on the VCS, Dodge ‘Em may sit in the shadow of better known maze games, like the Pac-Man trilogy or Mouse Trap, but this remains a pioneer of a genre that would come to play a big role in arcades, and this version for the home is no worse for conversion trip. While the early going may become rote without flipping the difficulty switch to allow for random spawn points, Dodge ‘Em remains one of the true classics on the console.
Sources:
A Conversation with Carla Meninsky, Will Nicholes, willnicholes.com, Nov. 12 2011
Mike Peace, correspondence with the author, July 2020
Mike White, correspondence with the author, November-December 2019
Bill Blewett, interview with Ethan Johnson, July 2017-August 2018
Coke Wins: The True Story!, Digital Press, July 2001
There’s a Gremlin in the House, The Sega Arcade Revolution, Ken Horowitz, 2018
A Lot of Effort to be Thrown Away: Sega’s Dottori-Kun, Nicole Branagan, nicole.express, May 31 2021
Dottori-Kun Hacking, Chris Covell, chrismcovell.com
The Ultimate History (So Far) of Gremlin Industries Part 1, Keith Smith, allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com, Sept. 20 2015
The Ultimate History (So Far) of Gremlin Industries Part 2, Keith Smith, allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com, Sept. 25 2015
The Ultimate History (So Far) of Gremlin Industries Part 3, Keith Smith, allincolorforaquarter.blogspot.com, Oct. 10 2015
Exactly Zaxxon: Gremlin Industries and the – Boing, Swoosh, Zap! – World of Video Games, Jeannette DeWyne, San Diego Union Tribune, July 15 1982
I Want to Be Alone: Solo Video Games, Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz, Video, May 1981
Prima Facie, Howard Kaye, Video Action, March 1981
Collision Course ad, Arcadian, Sept. 6 1982
Who’s Who??? – Wavemakers, Bob Fabris, Arcadian, Nov. 5 1982
The Game Player, Michael Prosise, Arcadian, July 22 1983
Extended Memory Products Review, Dave Carson, Arcadian, Nov. 29 1983
Extended Memory Products Review, Dave Carson, Arcadian, Jan. 27 1984
Japanese Invaders; Pac-Man Fever, They Create Worlds, Alex Smith, 2020
Pacar, Jeremy Parish, SG-1000 Works, 2023
Gremlin Bows New Games, Board Policy, at Distrib Meet; ‘Head On’ Video Strategy Game Applauded by Dealers, RePlay, May 1979
The RePlay Operator Survey, RePlay, November 1979
Atari Adds Four Games, Announces Major Promotion, Leisure Time Electronics, Fall 1980
Release date sources:
Dodge ‘Em (September 1980): Lansing State Journal, September 24 1980; Daily Herald Suburban Chicago, October 22 1980; Shreveport Journal, November 19 1980
Collision Course (September 1982): Arcadian, Sept. 6 1982
Quadra (June 1983): Arcadian, June 17 1983; Arcadian, Nov. 29 1983
Pacar (November 1983): Game Machine, July 15, 1985; Game Machine, May 1, 1986