River Raid

River Raid is a vertically scrolling shooter designed and programmed by Carol Shaw and published by Activision in 1982 for the Atari 2600. Its straightforward combination of flying, shooting and fuel management made it one of the best-known games for the console. Activision subsequently brought River Raid to the Atari 5200, ColecoVision and Intellivision, as well as the Atari 8-bit computers, Commodore 64, IBM PCjr, MSX and ZX Spectrum. The PC version presented here carries the same central idea of flying along a river, shooting obstacles and keeping the fuel tank filled.

Viewed from above, the player pilots a fighter jet along the River of No Return on a raid behind enemy lines. The landscape scrolls continuously, bringing enemy vessels, aircraft, islands and narrow channels into the flight path. The jet moves left and right, while pushing forward or pulling back changes its speed rather than allowing free movement up and down the screen. This makes positioning and timing equally important: accelerating carries the player through a dangerous stretch quickly, whereas slowing down provides more time to line up a shot or negotiate a narrow passage.

The objective is to score as many points as possible while surviving the journey. In the original Atari 2600 game, destroying a tanker earns 30 points, a helicopter 60, a fuel depot 80, a jet 100 and a bridge 500. Bridges divide the river into sections and must be shot to clear the route ahead. Some conversions expand the selection of hazards with hot-air balloons, worth 60 points, and tanks along the riverbanks. These additions vary between platforms; the original Atari 2600 game has neither balloons nor tanks and concentrates on avoiding collisions rather than dodging enemy gunfire.

Fuel management gives the shooting a practical dilemma. Flying over a fuel depot replenishes the tank, but shooting the same depot destroys it for points and removes that opportunity to refuel. Slowing down over a depot allows more fuel to be collected, so holding the fire button without thinking can be costly. The jet is lost if it runs out of fuel or collides with the riverbank or an enemy object. There is no conventional final destination: the aim is to keep going, reaching successive bridges and improving the score for as long as the player can avoid crashes and find enough fuel.

The Atari 2600 original is also notable for fitting its program and graphics into a 4 KB ROM. Instead of storing a lengthy map, it constructs the river and its objects procedurally, using a linear-feedback shift register with a fixed starting value. Although this is a form of pseudorandom generation, it produces a repeatable route rather than a completely new landscape for every game. A separate pseudorandom generator influences when enemies begin moving; its starting state is not reset for each new game. Learning the river therefore helps, but does not make every encounter identical. These technical details describe the Atari 2600 original rather than necessarily every later port.

Activision released River Raid II in 1988. Programmed by David Lubar, it retains the river-raid theme but introduces a different landscape and greater difficulty. The original Atari 2600 River Raid was reissued through Microsoft's Game Room service in May 2010, followed by River Raid II in June. River Raid also has an unusual place in gaming history as the first video game placed on West Germany's index of works considered harmful to young people. This restricted its sale to minors and its advertising rather than amounting to a blanket ban on possession. Its lasting appeal comes from the interaction of a few clear rules: shooting, steering and refuelling all compete for the player's attention.