| Target Fun (aka. Air-Sea Battle) 1977, ATARI/Sears Roebuck & Co |
 
The second of the initial 9 launch titles for the Atari 2600, Air-Sea Battle, aka. "Target Fun" here in it's Sears Roebuck and Co. clothing, was the pack-in with the Sears Telegames Video Arcade in 1977. It was developed by Larry Kaplan, who also did some code optimization on Combat as well. The game featured 27 variations of various games based on/inspired by the arcade game Anti-Aircraft.
Air-Sea Battle has you playing against a friend, or the computer (if you call just firing in rapid succession without moving a "computer" player - something developer Larry Kaplan had to deal with because of the limitation of the cartridge size, only a mere 2K) - in multiple types of fights involving ducks, birds, clowns, aircraft, seacraft, and so on. Sort of an odd-mix of various shooting games controlled by the joystick. The game has since become kind of a C-D tier title in the Atari 2600 universe, and does have it's fair share of admirers. It's one of those games I got as a "completist" thing even though I don't really play it that much. It's best with two players and not one, so it became one of those forgotten early text label releases.My Experiences I have only ever owned this game twice, the first time was an original 1977 release "02 Air-Sea Battle" with my Sunnyvale in 1998, and then this one I bought in 2025 to replace it because my wife saw me watching the Atari Archive and thought "that looks like fun". So I sought out a new copy, and wound up getting the Sears version - fitting as I have a Sears TeleGames Video Arcade light sixer that probably came with this new. Air-Sea Battle was always one of those early games that was sorta' fun in short spurts, but not totally. For starters, it's the first "1-player" Atari game, every 3rd variation is 1-player....but I'm using "1-player" LOOSELY here. See, when the game was made, the creator did not have the space, nor time to create a full fledged A.I., so the left turret just sorta fires continuously, and that's all it does. However, it's surprisingly challenging (at times) despite being basically the fire button taped down in rapid-fire mode. I still like to break it out, though the wife has discovered she finds these 2 player competitive shoot-fests a little, uh, boring.Videos Walkthroughs/Manuals/Reviews |
