Dodge 'Em is a 1980 driving game for the Atari 2600, programmed by Carla Meninsky.
The gameplay is very straightforward and simplistic, but also deceptively challenging. You're a car racing through five mazes, trying to grab all the dots in each one while dodging an opponent car. Your car can only travel counterclockwise and can't brake, but can switch one or two lanes when it finds an opening, and your only advantage over the opponent is a turbo button. Even scraping against your enemy car will cause the screen to reset. A few more deaths, and the game is over. The game comes with three multiplayer modes—one where your opponent is controlled by a second player, another which just alternates between you and your friend controlling the points car, and another which reverses who controls which car after each crash.
Compare to the similar 1979 arcade game Head-On, and the 1990 game Dottori-Kun, which is similar in the sense that it's a complete and utter ripoff of this game.
Tropes:
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Your computer opponents do not have their own turbo and can only change one lane at a time to ensure that you at least have a fair challenge. That said, the higher difficulty settings do increase their default speed.
- You can hold in the desired direction to change lanes before you reach a gap, which makes the switching faster. Also, you can switch two lanes if you arent using the turbo.
- Artificial Stupidity: The opponent's A.I. is very predictable—it never changes speeds, If it's in the same lane as the player, it stays in that lane, and if in a different lane as the player, it switches one lane closer at the nearest gap, and never more than that. The cramped maze actually makes this a disadvantage at first, but it is possible to predict the way enemies move and plan your way around them.
- Attract Mode: The game probably has the shortest one ever for a game; it simply starts both the cars right off, which immediately meet at the top of the maze and crash head-on into each other.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Your turbo button may seem like a big help out of the starting gate, but it's also a double edged sword that should be used cautiously—due to the cramped nature of the maze making it very easy to get you bottlenecked into a head-on crash, it can just as easily cause you to crash into your opponent as it can help you evade him. Also, you can only move one lane instead of two if you're going fast.
- Car Fu: Your opponents can freely use this on you, but trying to do it yourself will cost you a life and reset the maze, forcing you to play defense instead.
- Collision Damage: How the enemy cars kill you.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Your racer is colored orange while your opponents are colored blue.
- Color-Coded Multiplayer: When playing a two player game, the only difference between your cars is the color.
- Continuing is Painful: Dying resets the entire maze, forcing you to collect all the pellets again, and it also makes it impossible to get the highest score.
- Cut and Paste Environments: There is no difference between the five mazes except for the color scheme.
- Deadly Dodging: Defied. Due to the identical speed and patterns the two opposing cars share and the way they're programmed to switch lanes, it's impossible to trick the two opposing cars into colliding into each other.
- Dodge by Braking: Also defied, as your vehicle can't brake or stop at all.
- Difficulty by Acceleration: The higher difficulty levels use this by speeding up your opponents.
- Endless Game: Surprisingly, the game is not one, unusual for an early video game. You lose a life every 5 mazes you complete, and you only have 3 total, so the maximum possible score is 1080 (it rolls over after 1000 and just leaves 80 points).
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: It's a game where you dodge enemies, what else were you expecting?
- Game Over: Lose all three lives and it's back to square one. Otherwise...
- Kill Screen: One occurs once you get 1080 points.
- Maze Game: It's like Pac-Man, but with cars and no way of fighting back against your opponent.
- Minimalism: The game's spritework is primitive even by the rigid standards of the Atari 2600. There's a maze, two or three cars, pellets and a high score. That's all you get to see in the game.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Your computer opponents are free to crash head-on into you without repercussions, but trying to do the same costs you a life and resets the maze. It's impossible to trick your opponents into crashing into each other, so you can't use their own tactics against them.
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Nintendo Hard: This is a game that requires you to be able to think on your feet and have fast reflexes, and understanding how to manipulate your opponent(s) and the maze to your advantage. Your opponent racer is as dumb as a brick, but the maze is very cramped and only gives small windows for you to dodge it by changing lanes, and it is very easy to crash into it. Clearing even one screen in this game is not a cakewalk. And to say nothing of later screens, where you go up against two opposing cars, or the higher difficulty settings that make your opponent go even faster. - No Death Run: Required to get the highest possible score, since the game automatically takes a life away from you every five mazes.
- No Plot? No Problem!: There is no story or characters at all, not even in the manual. You're just a car racing for its life to grab as many dots as possible while dodging enemy cars to get a high score.
- Older Than the NES: By a few years, give or take.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Your car dies instantly if it connects with the opposing cars.
- Red Herring: Despite what the holes on the edge of the screen might make you think, you can't use them to warp to the other side of the screen like Pac-Man. They're just there for decoration.
- Scoring Points: The entire goal of the game. There's no story, no power ups, and no real ending, It's impossible to kill your enemies, so all you can do is stay on the defensive and grab as many dots as possible to get a high score.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: It's certainly possible to beat the game without using the turbo, but it makes an already hard game even more difficult.
- Unbuilt Trope: The game is a rare early instance of a video game that is not an Endless Game, in that it is technically possible to complete it in a reasonably short time (assuming one has the skill to pull it off), though the game technically still lacks anything resembling an ending.
