The Core (partially lost Atari 2600 game; 1999-2001)

The one known screenshot of the game.

Status: Partially lost

The Core is a homebrew game for the Atari 2600 by Paul Oswood. The game was almost completed but a flood caused the hard drive of the game to get lost. A year before the flood, development of the game was slowing down because a lot of inconveniences had happened to Oswood. He said in an e-mail,

"I have also had a lot of weird things happen over the last month. For example, our cat peed in our dryer earlier this week, and I've spent the first part of this week taking apart the dryer and washing it out with bleach. Also, in the last two weeks, both of my children fell down and cut their head open".

Oswood thought about making a remake of The Core, but that never happened.

Gameplay

Two players move around a circular track. There are two circles, one in the middle of the track and one in the exterior. The two players have to deflect a ball off their own circle. The players can use the fire button to change the axis of their own paddle. If a player has the ball hit their circle once, the circle turns gray. If it happens twice, the circle turns red, and if it happens three times, the player loses the round. The controller used in the game is the driving paddle controller. The difference in between the regular paddle controller and the driving paddle controller is that the driving paddle controller allows spinning the knob forever in either directions, which makes the game a lot less tedious.

Status

An Atariage forum user Propane13 found an image for the game in December 2022. Propane13 posted the image in the Atariage forums.

References

1. https://forums.atariage.com/topic/345645-screenshot-of-the-core-the-lost-homebrew-from-2001/
2. http://web.archive.org/web/20010419194407/http://www.plethora.net/~paulo/thecore.html
3. https://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/200106/msg00000.html

See Also

• Birthday Mania (found rare Atari 2600 game; 1984)
• "Block moving game" (partially found builds of cancelled Atari 2600 game from Activision; 1983)
• Circus Charlie (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 port of arcade action-platformer; 1984)
• Cosmic (partially found Atari 2600 game; existence unconfirmed; dates unknown)
• Crazy Cars (lost Atari 2600 port of Amiga game; existence unconfirmed; 1990)
• Edu Games (lost Atari 2600 games; mid 1980s-early 1990s)
• Home Vision (partially found Atari 2600 games from Taiwanese-Belgian game publisher; 1982-1983)
• The Incredible Hulk (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 game; 1983)
• JimsToy (partially found Atari 2600 games from obscure developer; 1980s)
• Mission Omega (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 game by CommaVid; early 1980s)
• Mr. Bill's Neighborhood (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 game; 1983)
• Shove It! (lost build of cancelled CBS Atari 2600 game; existence unconfirmed; 1983)
• Smokey Bear (lost build of cancelled Atari 2600 game; 1983)
• Untitled Motorcycle Games (lost Atari 2600 games by David Crane; existence unconfirmed; early 1980s)