Gotcha or Atari's bad idea.

Well in 1973 Atari Inc. were flush with their success in the arcades with games like Pong, Pong Doubles, and Space Race. So for their fourth outing they decided to make a game that would appeal to the female crowd. Gotcha is a maze game as you can plainly see from the second picture, the first player is the pursuer which makes the second player the pursued, the pursuer is a square while the pursued is signified as a plus sign.

Now how does one make a 'female game'? Atari decided that instead of joysticks which some groups considered to be phallic in nature...ahem...they removed them and put two pink colored rubber bulges on the console. Take a peek at the top picture, click to make 'em 1973 size. So to go up through the maze the player would squeeze the bulge upwards, etc.

Memos from the Atari Inc. at the time referred to Gotcha as the 'Boob' game. This was an arcade game that was not very well received by the public...at frat houses maybe but not your mother at the bowling alley. After a bit of outcry the bulges were removed and replaced with joysticks...the game still wasn't well received.

This outrage from parents and church groups preceded the anger over Death Race but since no one seemed to like the game it has been all but forgotten.

A big thanks to K.L.O.V. for the pics.