FROSTBITE
1983
◼︎Frostbite
is arguably Steve Cartwright’s best 2600 title. While at Activision, he had an uncanny knack of identifying what made existing videogames so much fun to play. With
Frostbite, he combined aspects of bothQ*bertandFroggeralong with some fresh ideas of his own. The end result sees you changing the colour of floating ice blocks in order to build an igloo while avoiding the attentions of local wildlife. The frozen cubes move in opposite directions, like the detritus in the ponds inFrogger, and animals swim and fly alongside them. These push you into a watery grave if they make contact, so a fair amount of jumping around is required. To make matters worse,Frostbite’s later levels introduce hungry bears that run after the game’s Eskimo protagonist when he tries to enter a completed igloo, and finally, if the temperature reaches zero degrees before he does so you lose a life.