Freddy's Rescue Roundup
| Freddy's Rescue Roundup | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | IBM |
| Publisher(s) | IBM |
| Designer(s) | D. P. Leabo and A. V. Strietzel |
| Platform(s) | PC |
| Release date(s) | 1984 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Freddy's Rescue Roundup is a 2D DOS based game released in 1984 by IBM. The goal of the game is to collect all of the roadrunners on a particular level in order to advance through the game. Doorways aid in quickly traveling across a level, while enemy robots work against the player's progress.
The development title was Roadrunner Rescue, and it was inspired by the better-known Lode Runner. Freddy — the player's character — was supposed to rescue the roadrunners in the park before the maintenance robots-run-amok disposed them. There was a crude program for editing mazes, but it wasn't in the shipped version, at least partly because IBM felt it made the game too much like Lode Runner.
Design
The game is written mostly in compiled BASIC v1.0, with a few assembly modules linked in for graphics, sound, and keyboard support. This can be confirmed by looking at the executable.
The assembly module(s) for graphics were included largely for performance, and included rudimentary sprite support. The keyboard support received careful attention, due to negative experiences with games that dropped keystrokes.
Most of the game-play timing was based on the PC's system clock (the 18.55 Hz ticker), making it relatively independent of CPU speed.