.gif)
Alley Cat (game)
Encyclopedia
Alley Cat is a computer game created by Bill Williams
and published by Synapse Software
for the Atari 8-bit family
in 1983
, and later for the PC
in 1984
by IBM
. The player controls Freddy the Cat, an alley cat
whose object is to perform certain tasks within the homes of people in order to reach to his love Felicia. A similar game also called Alley Cat, from 1984 and distributed by Solar Software, was released for the Commodore 64
PC.
, the player is presented with a tall fence in front of an apartment building with several windows. Each window periodically opens to throw out random objects (a phone, shoe, etc.) Every once in a while a dog may come running along the bottom edge of the screen. If the cat touches this dog, they get into a fight and one life is taken away.
By jumping and climbing trash cans, the fence, and clotheslines, the cat can enter various rooms through the open windows. Each room contains one of several challenges:
Most rooms also contain a broomstick that constantly moves around the screen. The cat can keep the broom busy by making footprints on the ground (at the bottom edge of the screen.) When there are no footprints, the broom will constantly go after the cat.
The broom is harmless in the sense that it never kills the cat, but it pushes the cat around, enough to make it more difficult if it is not kept busy. In particular, the broom might often throw the cat right at the above-mentioned dog or spider, or throw it right back out of the window.
Successful completion of the challenge is awarded with a number of points proportional the time taken to complete it. The player then returns to the alley where open windows now show a female
cat calling him.
Upon entering such a window, the player encounters a room in which there are several rows (a bit like shelves) made out of valentine hearts on which other cats walk left and right. The object is to reach the cat at the top while maneuvering around the other cats, which cause the player to fall a level if touched.
Each "row" has areas the player can stand on as well as areas where they fall through (the other cats however never fall through.) These areas are hearts which switch between normal and broken as they are touched by heart-shaped arrows that are constantly shot diagonally across the screen by cherubs on either side of the screen. These arrows also cause the player to fall down a level.
There are also gifts on the bottom row that can be used to eliminate an unfriendly cat for a short period of time. If the player falls from the bottom row, they fail and must return to the alley and complete another task.
If the cat manages to kiss the female cat in the special room, the level advances by one and the player gains an extra life. The games difficulty level continues to increase until multiplier level 30 at which point it stays the same. Gameplay at this level can continue indefinitely. The goal is to see how far one can go before running out of lives.
, but still works on its successors, including Microsoft Windows
(although not the x86_64 variants, which lack MS-DOS support; however, using a DOS
emulator
addresses this issue). It runs at 320x200 resolution, features four-colour CGA
graphics (the most common colors to be onscreen at once are black
, white
, cyan
and magenta
or black, red
, yellow
and green
) and PC speaker
sound and music. The game is very compact, stored entirely within a single COM file
of 56,448 byte
s.
The Atari 800 version came in the form of either a floppy disk or cassette, and is even smaller in size, only 32,594 byte
s.
: Alley Cat 2.
The game features redesigned graphics, additions rooms, and a revised setting—changed from an apartment block, to an old mansion. The music remains unchanged.
Bill Williams (game designer)
Bill Williams was a game designer and programmer.-Summary:He was the author of the acclaimed Atari computer games Salmon Run, Necromancer, and Alley Cat, and the Amiga games Mind Walker, Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, Pioneer Plague, and Knights of the Crystallion...
and published by Synapse Software
Synapse Software
Synapse Software Corporation was an American computer game development and publishing company active during the early-1980s. They developed primarily for the Atari 400 and 800 computers, and the Commodore 64 and IBM PCjr...
for the Atari 8-bit family
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
in 1983
1983 in video gaming
-Events:* A major shakeout of the video game industry begins. By 1986, total video games sales will decrease from US$3.2 billion to US$0.1 billion.* MCA Universal files suit against Nintendo, claiming that the latter company's video arcade hit Donkey Kong violated Universal's copyright on King Kong...
, and later for the PC
IBM PC compatible
IBM PC compatible computers are those generally similar to the original IBM PC, XT, and AT. Such computers used to be referred to as PC clones, or IBM clones since they almost exactly duplicated all the significant features of the PC architecture, facilitated by various manufacturers' ability to...
in 1984
1984 in video gaming
-Notable releases:* May 10, King's Quest , the first animated adventure game, the first in the King's Quest series, and the first to use the AGI engine.* June 4, Nintendo releases Donkey Kong 3...
by IBM
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation or IBM is an American multinational technology and consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, New York, United States. IBM manufactures and sells computer hardware and software, and it offers infrastructure, hosting and consulting services in areas...
. The player controls Freddy the Cat, an alley cat
Feral cat
A feral cat is a descendant of a domesticated cat that has returned to the wild. It is distinguished from a stray cat, which is a pet cat that has been lost or abandoned, while feral cats are born in the wild; the offspring of a stray cat can be considered feral if born in the wild.In many parts of...
whose object is to perform certain tasks within the homes of people in order to reach to his love Felicia. A similar game also called Alley Cat, from 1984 and distributed by Solar Software, was released for the Commodore 64
Commodore 64
The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit home computer introduced by Commodore International in January 1982.Volume production started in the spring of 1982, with machines being released on to the market in August at a price of US$595...
PC.
Gameplay
In the main screen, which is the alleyAlley
An alley or alleyway is a narrow lane found in urban areas, often for pedestrians only, which usually runs between or behind buildings. In older cities and towns in Europe, alleys are often what is left of a medieval street network, or a right of way or ancient footpath in an urban setting...
, the player is presented with a tall fence in front of an apartment building with several windows. Each window periodically opens to throw out random objects (a phone, shoe, etc.) Every once in a while a dog may come running along the bottom edge of the screen. If the cat touches this dog, they get into a fight and one life is taken away.
By jumping and climbing trash cans, the fence, and clotheslines, the cat can enter various rooms through the open windows. Each room contains one of several challenges:
- In one room there's a table with a birdcage on it in the middle of the room. Here the objective is to push the birdcage off the table and then catch the birdBirdBirds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
which escapes from the broken cage. - In another room, there's a fishbowl which the cat can enter and must eat all the fish while dodging electric eelElectric eelThe electric eel , is an electric fish, and the only species of the genus Electrophorus. It is capable of generating powerful electric shocks, of up to six hundred volts, which it uses for both hunting and self-defense. It is an apex predator in its South American range...
s and repeatedly coming up for air to avoid drowning. - Yet another room contains a huge chunk of cheeseCheeseCheese is a generic term for a diverse group of milk-based food products. Cheese is produced throughout the world in wide-ranging flavors, textures, and forms....
with a number of holes. In each hole miceMouseA mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
appear randomly, which the cat must catch. - The cat may also find itself in a room with a number of sleeping dogDogThe domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...
s, some of which have feeding dishes in front of them. The cat must empty each dish without waking up any of the dogs. - In another challenge, the cat must collect three ferns from the top of a bookshelf while avoiding a disproportionately large spiderSpiderSpiders are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other groups of organisms...
that may lower itself upon the cat from above.
The broom is harmless in the sense that it never kills the cat, but it pushes the cat around, enough to make it more difficult if it is not kept busy. In particular, the broom might often throw the cat right at the above-mentioned dog or spider, or throw it right back out of the window.
Successful completion of the challenge is awarded with a number of points proportional the time taken to complete it. The player then returns to the alley where open windows now show a female
Female
Female is the sex of an organism, or a part of an organism, which produces non-mobile ova .- Defining characteristics :The ova are defined as the larger gametes in a heterogamous reproduction system, while the smaller, usually motile gamete, the spermatozoon, is produced by the male...
cat calling him.
Upon entering such a window, the player encounters a room in which there are several rows (a bit like shelves) made out of valentine hearts on which other cats walk left and right. The object is to reach the cat at the top while maneuvering around the other cats, which cause the player to fall a level if touched.
Each "row" has areas the player can stand on as well as areas where they fall through (the other cats however never fall through.) These areas are hearts which switch between normal and broken as they are touched by heart-shaped arrows that are constantly shot diagonally across the screen by cherubs on either side of the screen. These arrows also cause the player to fall down a level.
There are also gifts on the bottom row that can be used to eliminate an unfriendly cat for a short period of time. If the player falls from the bottom row, they fail and must return to the alley and complete another task.
If the cat manages to kiss the female cat in the special room, the level advances by one and the player gains an extra life. The games difficulty level continues to increase until multiplier level 30 at which point it stays the same. Gameplay at this level can continue indefinitely. The goal is to see how far one can go before running out of lives.
Technical details
The PC version was designed to be run from a boot disk. A modified version was created which was intended to run on MS-DOSMS-DOS
MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...
, but still works on its successors, including Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
(although not the x86_64 variants, which lack MS-DOS support; however, using a DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
addresses this issue). It runs at 320x200 resolution, features four-colour CGA
Color Graphics Adapter
The Color Graphics Adapter , originally also called the Color/Graphics Adapter or IBM Color/Graphics Monitor Adapter, introduced in 1981, was IBM's first color graphics card, and the first color computer display standard for the IBM PC....
graphics (the most common colors to be onscreen at once are black
Black
Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light...
, white
White
White is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light that stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the human eye in nearly equal amounts and with high brightness compared to the surroundings. A white visual stimulation will be void of hue and grayness.White light can be...
, cyan
Cyan
Cyan from , transliterated: kýanos, meaning "dark blue substance") may be used as the name of any of a number of colors in the blue/green range of the spectrum. In reference to the visible spectrum cyan is used to refer to the color obtained by mixing equal amounts of green and blue light or the...
and magenta
Magenta
Magenta is a color evoked by light stronger in blue and red wavelengths than in yellowish-green wavelengths . In light experiments, magenta can be produced by removing the lime-green wavelengths from white light...
or black, red
Red
Red is any of a number of similar colors evoked by light consisting predominantly of the longest wavelengths of light discernible by the human eye, in the wavelength range of roughly 630–740 nm. Longer wavelengths than this are called infrared , and cannot be seen by the naked eye...
, yellow
Yellow
Yellow is the color evoked by light that stimulates both the L and M cone cells of the retina about equally, with no significant stimulation of the S cone cells. Light with a wavelength of 570–590 nm is yellow, as is light with a suitable mixture of red and green...
and green
Green
Green is a color, the perception of which is evoked by light having a spectrum dominated by energy with a wavelength of roughly 520–570 nanometres. In the subtractive color system, it is not a primary color, but is created out of a mixture of yellow and blue, or yellow and cyan; it is considered...
) and PC speaker
PC speaker
A PC speaker is a loudspeaker, built into some IBM PC compatible computers. The first IBM Personal Computer, model 5150, employed a standard 2.25 inch magnetic driven speaker. More recent computers use a piezoelectric speaker instead. The speaker allows software and firmware to provide...
sound and music. The game is very compact, stored entirely within a single COM file
COM file
In many computer operating systems, a COM file is a type of executable file; the name is derived from the file name extension .COM. Originally, the term stood for "Command file", a text file containing commands to be issued to the operating system , on many of the Digital Equipment Corporation mini...
of 56,448 byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
s.
The Atari 800 version came in the form of either a floppy disk or cassette, and is even smaller in size, only 32,594 byte
Byte
The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...
s.
Alley Cat 2
In December 2006 Fabio Moro (AKA 'The Thinker'), of Asetgames, released an Alley Cat fangameFangame
Fangames are video games made by fans based on one or more established video games. Many fangames attempt to clone the original game's design, gameplay and characters, but it is equally common for fans to develop a unique game using another only as a template...
: Alley Cat 2.
The game features redesigned graphics, additions rooms, and a revised setting—changed from an apartment block, to an old mansion. The music remains unchanged.