Save the Whales

Prototype ROM
Unreleased
(Rumored to be on Gameline)
Reproduced and Sold at CGE 2002

This is one of those games that has been rumored to exist for so long, it's basically become an urban legend. For years now, there was a report that this game had popped up on the Gameline service, which was a modem-based game downloading service for the Atari 2600. Unfortunately, no proof was ever found other than a few people's memories, so Save the Whales lingered in rumorland for years, until copies of the game were put up for sale at the Classic Gaming Expo 2002.
No offense to the the programmer of this one, but this game is so fucking hard that it's damn near unplayable. The goal of the game, and thus the clever title, is to protect the whales at the bottom of the screen from flying harpoons and dropped nets. Shoot them and you've "saved the whales"... for about a fraction of a second. The biggest problem with this game is that it runs so fast that it's impossible to play for more than a minute or two per game! You can take five hits in your sub, from either the harpoons or nets, but its more than likely that it'll take less time to read this short review than to take those five hits.
I'm sorry, this game blows. Go ahead and download it though, you may have a different opinion than me. Supposedly, Greenpeace was to recieve the profits from this game, as well as two other games which apparently development was never started on. You know, come to think of it, Greenpeace got as much money with the game being unreleased as if it was released - NONE!!! I wonder if CGE Services donated all of their profits to Greenpeace like the original game was supposed to...

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