Video Game Vintage Title: Paperboy

Paperboy

Paperboy is a 1984 arcade game by Atari Games. The players take the role of a paperboy who delivers newspapers along a suburban street on his bicycle. This game was innovative for its theme and novel controls.

Paperboy Plot

n/a

Paperboy Gameplay

The player controls a paperboy on a bicycle delivering newspapers along a suburban street which is displayed in a cabinet perspective view. The player attempts to deliver a week of daily newspapers to subscribing customers, attempts to vandalize non-subscribers' homes and must avoid hazards along the street. Subscribers are lost by missing a delivery or damaging a subscriber's house.

The game begins with a choice of difficulty levels: Easy Street, Middle Road and Hard Way. The object of the game is to perfectly deliver papers to subscribers for an entire week and avoid crashing (which counts as one of the player's lives) before the week ends. The game lasts for seven in-game days, Monday through Sunday.

Controlling the paperboy with the handlebar controls, the player attempts to deliver newspapers to subscribers. Each day begins by showing an overview of the street indicating subscribers and non-subscribers. Subscribers and non-subscribers' homes are also easy to discern in the level itself, with subscribers living in brightly colored houses, and non-subscribers living in dark houses.

In England, Richard Leadbetter of Computer and Video Games magazine reviewed the Atari Lynx version giving a score of 67% stating "Looks good, but simply isn't enough fun to play."