Skiing

 

Skiing was the first game to feature a vertically scrolling screen. All games before this took place on a single screen that did not move. In Skiing, the player appears to be travelling down the mountain. Actually, programmer Bob Whitehead accomplished this trick on the 2600 by making the trees and pairs of flags move in the opposite direction. It produced an effect that makes it seem as though your player is skiing down the mountain.

The game features two variations. Slalom Runs: where your skier must successfully steer through pairs of flag poles and make it down the mountain in the shortest amount of time possible. For each pair that you miss, five seconds is added to your final time. Downhill Runs: no flags to navigate through-just get down the mountain as quick as possible. There are trees to avoid and moguls to jump. Failure to jump a mogul results in your skier taking a fall, wasting valuable time.

Whitehead was an avid sports fan. He also programmed Home Run, Football, and Boxing. When asked about the creation of Skiing, he responded: "No, I was not an avid skier. It was a process of elimination where we sat down and decided what subject matter we hadn't taken advantage of. Saturday afternoon television was a great source of sports to choose from." Inspired by the "camera eye", Whitehead created a simple, yet addicting game. One of his goals was to make this game appeal to those with short attention spans. The game would be over quicker, but he hoped that player would keep playing it again and again, trying to ski down the mountain in a better time. There are two difficulty switch settings in Skiing. In position B, your skier will stop moving if he reaches the far right or left end of the screen. In position A, the skier can ski right off the screen. Position A is a suggested setting in the manual for the downhill runs.

Ski Club: 28.20 seconds or less in game 3.

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