Lost games #3 coke wins

ost games #3 coke wins

Right after the feckin longwinded epic of yesterday, I'm going to try and
keep things short .

..the next in the list of games that never was is "coke wins".
Now back in the mid eighties a lot of US food companies used Atari 2600 games as promotional items.It never really caught on in Europe, (I think a Colgate "cavity defenders" game was the only one used here). But stateside you
couldnt move for promo carts for drinks , sweets , even dog food.
Now there was a legend that some bright spark in a marketing department of
Coca Cola had an idea for one of these, and commisioned a few software bods
to write up a space invaders clone ,except with the invaders removed , the
letters P,E,P,S and I attacking instead , and a spinning pepsi logo replacing
the mother ship.Named "Coke Wins" the story goes, it made it to the manafacturing stage before someone thought to talk to a lawyer.The guy from
marketing still spends his days cleaning the toilets in head office ,Atlanta, according to the legends.

Like all lost games a few copies got on the black market, and you'd see them
on ebay from time to time,suposedly the real thing.
This story gets a mention in the otherwise credible book "joystick nation"
and I've seen a few screenshots (like the one above).

So for the interests of Retro- metro I did a bit of searching (well OK five minutes in yahoo, but hey!)
The truth is the game >was< actually made, but not for general release...the game was really just for a hundred or so sales reps,
knocked together for a conference..just a little in-house humour , not intended for public consumption..and it was originally called "Pepsi invaders" (original title eh?I bet they were burning the midnight oil on that one..) Unfortunatly it >did< leak to the general public , so its quite possible mr marketing is probably polishing the porcelain for his crimes to this day...
..anyway its quite rare today,if you see it at a jumble sale or whatever you might want to snap it up as you can get a few hundred quid for it....
Now I'm off ..I need to work on my new FPS, "Apple invaders" :)

more info

http://www.digitpress.com/archives/arc00084.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/atari2600/games/cokewins.html
I think the rom is available on one of those sites...
you can play it via the "Stella" emu at zophar.net