Fat city

Name: Fat City
Programmer(s): Richard Hefter & Steve Worthington
Publisher: Optimium Resource
Year: 1983

Description: Fat City is a game for the Apple 2 computer where the player drives a crane with a wrecking ball and needs to knock down all the buildings in the city. The game is a kinda of first person shooter in that the game play is seen through the cab window of the crane/wrecker. Sounds simple enough. Wreck the city and move on. However... there are protesters in the buildings. As the player tries to knock down buildings garbage is being thrown from the windows and the crane is also using fuel. If the crane runs out of fuel the game ends. If the crane gets hit by garbage including tomatoes, cans, boots and other junk the player loses some fuel. Hidden behind some of the buildings are fuel depot. If the player hit the fuel depot with a wrecking ball the fuel is replenished.

Once the player destroys or knock down all of the buildings there then go to the next level. There's very little change in the game. The only thing that changes from level 1 to level 10 is the speed at which the fuel is depleted and the amount of garbage being thrown at you. Getting from level 1 to level 10 is extremely hard. The jump from level 3 to level 4 is near impossible without cheating. One quick/bug I found in the the game is that at the beginning you're able to type in what level you would like to start at. If you type in level 11 the disc starts were and crank and eventually crashes.

Fat City was published by the same company that brought us the Sticky Bear series of educational games. This however is not an educational game. It is aimed at younger children... very young children. Older kids would find this extremely boring very fast. My 5 year old and 3 year old love this game right now.