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Targ [Model 80110]

Unreleased Atari 2600 cart. published 41 years ago by CBS, Inc.

Listed in MAME

Targ [Model 80110] screenshot

Targ © 1983 CBS, Incorporated.

You must maneuver your ship (the Wummel) through the Crystal City and destroy all the enemy ships before they ram into you. Sound easy? Well there's a little catch, the Wummel is constantly moving forward through the maze at breakneck speeds! It takes several seconds to slow down and turn the Wummel around, making it a risk proposition. This makes a relatively simple game much more challenging (and exciting). The further you progress into the game, the faster the Wummel and the Ram ships will move.

Due to the limitations of the 2600, the 9x9 maze from the original coin-op has been reduced to 5x9. This actually makes the game much harder as there is less maze to hide in. Another change to this version is that the Spector Smuggler is absent. In the arcade version every now and then one of the squares in the maze will open up and a new ship called the Spector Smuggler will appear. The Spector acts just like the Ram ships, but shooting it is worth big bonus points which increase with each level. The Spector is present in the later Telegames version and in Universal Chaos, so one has to wonder if this omission is due to the CBS version being incomplete.

TECHNICAL

Model 80110

TRIVIA

Unreleased prototype.

Port of the obscure Exidy coin-op of the same name, Targ is a simple yet strangely addictive action game that never saw a home port. Originally planned as a CBS Eectronics release, Targ got fairly far along in the development process but was shelved due to the crumbling video game market. The game was eventually picked up, finished, and released by Telegames as Universal Chaos. However, due to licensing issues, the graphics and name had to be changed.

SOURCES

Game's ROM.