Paperboy was a classic game for numerous platforms, although its most popular and well known incarnation was on the
NES.
You are an intrepid, 8-bit newspaper delivery boy, and you must face the perils of a street full of crazy residents to fulfill your mission. You start out with three lives, and ten newspapers. You ride your trusty bike down the street, pressing the A button to throw papers. Pressing up on d-pad made you go faster, down made you go slower. Left made you veer inwards at a 45 degree angle, while right made you veer outwards.
The game took place in a pseudo-3D environment, which textures and shading in their 8-bit glory. There were 20 houses on the street and at the beginning 10 were randomly selected to be the houses you must deliver to. When you pass those houses on your bicycle, you must throw a paper either into their mailbox (for more points) or onto their doorstep (for less points, but still more than 0). Where the papers landed depended on how fast you were going when you threw them, where you threw them from, and how far away you were when you threw them. You also received points for breaking windows, hitting gravestones, leveling trees, or otherwise desecrating the houses you were not supposed to deliver to.
If you crashed into anything, you died. That included houses, crazy skateboarders, insane women with knives, guys with nooses, gutters, cars, dogs, go-karts, and stock cars. (And much, much more). If you died three times, game over. There were no extra lives, either. The only powerup you could hope to find was the package of papers which would fully refill your supply. If you survived making your rounds, you were rewarded with an obstacle course. You had 45 seconds to complete it, at which time you would receive a big bonus. If you died during the obstacle course, no points, but you didn’t lose a life.
At the completion of a level, you received the daily report. Any houses you failed to deliver to would cancel their subscriptions. If you managed to deliver to every house, you gained one additional subscriber. There were seven levels, (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday). If you survived the whole week, your initials would be placed on the High Score List. Immortalized, until your cart’s battery pack died, anyway.