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It's kind of surprising when you sit back and look at the sheer
volume of different games that were tried on the Atari VCS. I mean, look at the games that are
out now - most of them can very easily be grouped into one category or another, with very little
innovation or risk taking on the part of the publishing companies. It'd be wrong to say that
nothing different has come out on the more recent systems, but generally, it's all just more of the
same tripe just recycled to make a quick buck (or pound, yen, euro, whatever). These days,
you'd NEVER see anything like this game tried... video Polo of all things! This is one of those
games that definitely gets the A for effort, but unfortunately, looks to have gotten the axe
due to a small marketing audience.
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This is a game that was first uncovered by the
Cyberpunks
and was first released on Stella Gets a New Brain 1.0 - the non-profit release. The game,
according to some research, was created by Carol Shaw, probably best known for programming River Raid,
and was completed sometime in 1978. However, the information after that point gets a little
hazy. The game seems to have been intended as a promotional game at Macy's, but there is little
other information about this other than the promotion never took place. The game was consequently
shelved and waited for unearthing by the Cyberpunks.
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Polo's a fun little game - it reminds me more of a free-form
Pong than polo in any case. It's once again unclear why this one was shelved - possibly due to
the launch of the Intellivision and its superior graphics abilities, or possibly due to the
collapse of the deal with Macy's. Unfortunately, it seems that the true story about this
ROM will never be known...
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