''Firefox'' is a 1984
shoot 'em up
Shoot 'em ups (also known as shmups or STGs) are a Video game genre, subgenre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain typ ...
arcade video game
An arcade video game is an arcade game that takes player input from its controls, processes it through electrical or computerized components, and displays output to an electronic monitor or similar display. All arcade video games are coin-oper ...
based on the 1982
Clint Eastwood
Clinton Eastwood Jr. (born May 31, 1930) is an American actor and film director. After achieving success in the Western (genre), Western TV series ''Rawhide (TV series), Rawhide'', Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the "Ma ...
film of the same name. It was produced in 1984
[Atari Vax emails](_blank)
"And to my knowledge, Coin-op has yet to sacrifice quality to get an on-time delivery. ''Firefox'' was supposed to start production 1/23/84; millions in parts are all staged ready for production, but it has not started (1/31/84) because the software is not ready". as
Atari, Inc.'s only
LaserDisc video game
An interactive film is a video game or other interactive media that has characteristics of a cinematic film. In the video game industry, the term refers to a movie game, a video game that presents its gameplay in a cinematic, scripted manner, o ...
. Like Atari's first-person ''
Star Wars
''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and Cultural impact of Star Wars, quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop cu ...
'' and ''
Empire Strikes Back'', ''Firefox'' came as both an upright and sit down cabinet with a
yoke
A yoke is a wooden beam used between a pair of oxen or other animals to enable them to pull together on a load when working in pairs, as oxen usually do; some yokes are fitted to individual animals. There are several types of yoke, used in dif ...
style controller.
Development
''Firefox'' was primarily designed by Mike Hally and Dave Ralston, and programmed by Greg Rivera and Norm Avellar.
The cabinet has stereo sound with an additional headphone port and volume control in the front. All ''Firefox'' cabinets shipped with a 19" Amplifone
raster
file:Rgb-raster-image.svg, upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through comb ...
monitor, and utilized an Atari quad-
POKEY
POKEY, an acronym for Pot Keyboard Integrated Circuit, is a digital I/O chip designed by Doug Neubauer at Atari, Inc. for the Atari 8-bit computers. It was first released with the Atari 400 and Atari 800 in 1979 and is included in all later ...
. ''Firefox''s power requirements necessitated the use of two Atari AR-II power supplies.
To collect the LaserDisc video, developers Mike Hally and Moe Shore sifted through 20 to 30 hours' worth of footage shot for the film. Most of the resulting footage was first-person shots filmed from helicopters flying over
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...
and
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...
.
''Firefox'' shares a cabinet with ''
I, Robot
''I, Robot'' is a fixup collection of science fiction short stories by American writer Isaac Asimov. The stories originally appeared in the American magazines '' Super Science Stories'' and ''Astounding Science Fiction'' between 1940 and 1950 ...
'', although significantly fewer ''I, Robot'' machines were produced.
Reception
In Japan, ''Game Machine'' listed ''Firefox'' on their April 1, 1984 issue as being the third most-successful upright/cockpit arcade unit of the month. In the United States, it was the top-grossing laserdisc game on the ''
Play Meter
''Play Meter'' (initially ''Coin Industry Play Meter'') was an American trade magazine focusing on the coin-op amusement arcade industry, including jukebox and arcade game machines. It was founded in December 1974 by publisher and editor Ralph C ...
'' arcade charts in July 1984.
See also
* ''
Astron Belt''
* ''
M.A.C.H. 3''
References
External links
*
''Firefox''from Arcade-History.com
from AtariHQ.com
{{action-videogame-stub
1984 video games
Arcade video games
Arcade-only video games
Atari arcade games
Combat flight simulators
LaserDisc video games
Video games based on films
Video games developed in the United States
Single-player video games