Puffer controller

 

The Puffer project was conceived in late 1982 with an original projected release date for Fall 1983.  It was a peripheral controller in the form of an exercise bike for any VCS, 5200, or Atari home computer.  It plugs into the joystick port and controls the action of the special video games by how fast the exercise bike is pedaled and by steering.  A set of hand controllers replaced the original hand grips.  A magnet attached to the wheel monitored the wheel speed and a Hall effect sensor detected the passing magnet which can be read by the computer to calculate the wheel speed.  The housing for the sensor was also the junction box for the hand controller cables and the computer cable.  The computer required only one cable to be connected to a joystick input.  The Home Model was planned for release when the concept was proven with the Pro Model.  A company memo dated 9-26-83 states a prototype was built in February 1983, 2 games were developed (River Boat and Pole Position), a preliminary business plan was completed in July 1983, and Market Research (focus groups) was currently being done.  The package included 1 game, 2 controls, and a folding exercise bike.  Estimated price was $68, with an optional upgrade kit for existing bike owners for $22.  Games were also being developed for both the Atari 8-bit home computer and 5200 - Jungle River Cruise (aka River Boat) and Tumbleweeds.  The project was cancelled in late 1983 due to the poor market conditions (i.e. the crash), but was resurrected in early 1984 when Atari became a sponsor of the 1984 Olympic Games.  The plan was to aggressively market it during the Games, but the product was cancelled for good with Tramiel's takeover of Atari.

From James Leiterman:

I wrote several demonstration programs such as Jungle River Cruise and TumbleWeeds as well as modified the existing version of Pole Position for "Project Puffer", an exercise cycle controller interfaced to an Atari Computer.

The first photo below is the first generation controller.  It had a rotary control and was bad for the wrist.  Here's a LINK of the D sized graph paper I had designed.  There is only one little problem with their remarks.  I don’t remember creating a 5200 version of either program.  It was on the to-do list but I don’t ever remember getting around to it!  The image is a setup as the Atari 800 barely visible inside the TV cart is actually the machine running the display.  I remember specifically making sure that it was just barely visible so as to not be totally deceptive.

Jungle River Cruise was essentially a riverboat where you picked up people along the rivers edge and dropped them off at a dock. The faster you peddled, the faster you moved. Buttons allowed steering. Tumble Weeds was an earlier (not so fun) project where you peddled along and avoided tumbleweeds. Great fun was playing Pole Position. You moved left and right and peddled faster and slower. I don’t remember if you could shift gears or not!  The river boat game was more colorful then just the browns used in desert terrain of Tumbleweeds!

There were two compiled versions of both games.  One with a normal standard input such as paddle or joystick and one with the pulsed input of the exercise cycle sensor.  Tumbleweeds pictured here was boring and dangerous.  If you really got into the game trying to duck and weave to the left or right to avoid a tumbleweed, you ran the risk of pitching the bike over, which I did upon occasion.  Besides, I wanted something cooler.

I liked Salmon Run from APX and that’s what gave me the idea for the paddle wheel river boat.  The guys at the top of the graph paper in their scans are imagery ripped from the Pitfall! cartridge for fun.  I learned a lot of stuff over the years by ripping apart others code and art imagery.  So you see, it didn’t look like him, it was him!  But he was way too big for the little itty bitty guys needed for the boat and so he was not used in the game.  The idea for those little guys actually came from the 800 game Choplifter.

The same Reverse Assembler I used on Kangaroo was used on the 800 Pole Position game and modified for this project as well.  This one was a big hit but I don’t remember if a gear shift was implemented or not!

Another application that was ripped and modified for this project was Ms. Pac-Man.  It had a very short lifespan because it was an example of what didn’t work well with this project.

 

 

 


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