I, Robot (thing)

I, Robot was an old arcade game released by Atari Games way back in 1983.

The team of Dave Theurer and Dave Sherman designed this title. There are a lot of myths and legends surrounding this game, from the actual production numbers, to the story of 500 of them being dumped into the ocean. It seems to be very difficult to sort the facts from the fiction when it comes to this title. I will get into that a bit later, for now lets talk about why this game was so remarkable.

I, Robot was the first true 3-D polygon arcade game ever made. When I say 3-D, I mean real 3-D, no wire frames done with vector graphics, no Zaxxon style isometric viewpoints, and no faking out 3-D with lots of sprites, ala Blaster. I, Robot actually was in 3-D just like Super Mario 64 or Quake, and it even had a moveable camera. But there was one big problem with the game, people had never seen a real 3-D game before, and they couldn't handle it. I, Robot probably would have done just fine if it had been a racing game, and indeed that was what it was supposed to be at first. But it ended up being a very complicated 3-D pseudo platformer, and most people just couldn't figure the game out.

The production numbers for this game were fairly low for Atari. A lot of websites like to toss around the number 1000, but they just say that because it is a nice round number. The real production numbers seem to be somewhere around 1300 or so. These games had sequential serial numbers, starting with 001 and going on up from there. There exists an I, Robot registry website that lists around 30 machines that are located in the United States. The serial numbers on those games progress fairly smoothly from 029 up to 0762. So that gives us at least 762 machines produced. But, 500 machines were shipped to Japan. The ones that went to Japan were probably the last ones produced, because serial numbers are used in order, and then the games go into the warehouse pretty much in order. Eventually Atari couldn't sell anymore machines due to bad word of mouth (probably somewhere around machine #770), so they made a deal to send the rest of them to Japan (accounting for numbers 0770 to around 1270. The 500 machines that went to Japan simply couldn't have come out of the 762 verified serial numbers, as that is two thirds of them, and there are still too many machines around today for there to have only been 262 of them in America, and the missing numbers 0763 through 1000 kill the idea that the ones that went to Japan were selected randomly.

Or to make a long story a bit shorter, there were probably around 1300 of these bad boys made.

Now where was I? Oh yes, Japan. There is a common story that says that all the machines that were sent to Japan were tossed in the ocean on orders from Atari headquarters. I take some issue with that story for a few reasons. First off, there are I, Robot machines in Japan, and no one imports entire game cabinets one at a time, so they more than likely came from that shipment. Now, I could possible see Atari ordering the games destroyed to save face with Namco, as Atari never was really known for their smart business decisions. But what I could not see is any ship Captain with half a brain actually following through on those orders.

The retail value on those games in 1983 was around 2 million dollars USD, and even at auction they could have probably brought in close to a million. I just don't see any ship captain with any sort of intelligence dumping that kind of cargo. Plus, like I said before, there are some I, Robot machines in Japan.

Another misconception related to the number of these machines is the idea that "I, Robot had the smallest production run ever", and "I, Robot is the rarest game around today". Both of those are dead wrong. The production numbers were small for Atari in 1983, but plenty of smaller game companies like Moppet Video were putting out titles with production runs under 1000, and pretty much every game before Space Invaders had miniscule production runs. So, no, I, Robot's small production run was only strange for Atari, not for the industry in general. Now moving on to the idea that I, Robot is the rarest game around today, and the survey says, not even close. The I, Robot registry page lists 25 verified machines in the United States, now add to those all the ones that are not registered, the ones sitting in warehouses, the ones that are owned by people who don't use the internet, and the ones owned by people who don't even know what they have. Those unregistered ones probably account for at least 100 more of them. There are plenty of games that have no verified examples known to exist anymore, and many more that there are only one or two of them known to be around. For that matter there were a few games with production runs under 100.

I, Robot is the story of Interface Robot #1984. You see robot #1984 loved jumping, but Big Brother forbids jumping, so #1984 has to do all his jumping when the watchful eye of Big Brother isn't looking, or else face annihilation.

You control the robot as he hops around a geometric in an attempt to turn all red squares into blue squares, so you can have a chance at taking down Big Brother himself. But you have to be really careful, as the eye of Big Brother floats over the screen, and jumping when the eye is red will cause your robot to get blasted with a laser beam. Big Brother also would send out a variety of smaller foes against you, such as birds and sharks. The eye can be destroyed after turning all of the bricks to blue, after that you move onto the next level.

All the even numbered levels are space levels, where you guide robot #1984 through space. Blast or dodge everything in sight until the level ends, and you are presented with another landscape, along with another eye to deal with. Every third level you would get to go inside a little pyramid and attempt to grab as many jewels as you could before being blasted.

The game had 99 normal levels and 99 space levels to conquer, after which the game starts over at the beginning. Remember that you can change the camera angle at anytime. Usually you don't have to worry about it, but some of the levels are much easier if you adjust the camera for a better viewpoint.

People who didn't quite feel up to facing Big Brother could instead spend their quarter playing "Doodle City", which was a little 3-D paint program that used the I, Robot engine and graphics to let the player draw things on screen. You could select Doodle City at the beginning of the game, and you could switch to the real game if you grew tired of doodling, but it would cost a life or two.

There was only one kind of I, Robot machine made, the upright dedicated cabinet. The only other game that used this exact cabinet was Firefox, although the Major Havoc cabinet was similar. The best way to describe this cabinet is to say that it looked really top heavy. This cabinet wasn't just a straight up and down affair; the monitor area, control panel, and bottom section were all different sizes and the whole machine flared out at the bottom.

The game featured partial sideart in the form of a field of red, blue, and yellow blocks floating in a field of stars. The marquee showed an "I, Robot" logo composed of 3-D multicolored blocks. Their were nor important decorations on the control panel or monitor bezel, although the monitor did have a pair of grill like plastic plates on either side of it.

The action was controlled with a single "Hall Effect" joystick mounted centrally and a camera button on the side of the control panel. This joystick was a fairly new kind of gaming control, but it never did catch on, a few other titles such as Road Runner used this stick, but they are almost impossible to find today. A joystick that worked off of magnetic fields probably wasn't the best idea anyway (see Hall Effect and Hall Effect sensor for more details). Some people have managed to replace these joysticks with other kinds of analog sticks, but it requires custom work, and doesn't have the same feel as the Hall Effect stick.

The easiest place to play this game is in the privacy of your own home, using the MAME emulator. You will need a good analog joystick to get the proper I, Robot experience, a normal gamepad just won't cut it for this title. There weren't any console versions of this game, and the last arcade that actually had an I, Robot is closed down (The old Arcade Museum in St. Louis had one, but they closed a few years ago).

You may want to add this to your arcade game collection. But let me remind you of the movie Ferris Beuller's Day Off. Remember the 1961 Ferrari 250GT California that Cameron's dad owned, and how he never drove it, he just rubbed it with a diaper? That is exactly how this game is. It is too valuable to actually play. If it breaks you are looking at really expensive repairs using impossible to find parts. I suggest spending the money on six nice games that you can actually play.