For the first edition of Retro Thursday, I will be talking about one of my personal favorites for the Atari 2600: Kaboom.

The game was released in 1981 by Activision and designed by Larry Kaplan.  It used the special paddle controllers to control the game, which consisted of catching falling bombs dropped by the “Mad Bomber”. Moving the paddle’s knob moved the buckets from side to side, and pressing the button after a round starts a new one. Each round the bombs drop faster and faster, and if you miss you lose a bucket (you have three).

This gem featured a sort of two player mode where the each player takes turns to play the game. If you had the system’s game selection to a, the buckets are smaller, and the game becomes harder. Because of its simplicity and addictive like gameplay, Kaboom was a huge success, and sold over one million cartridges by 1983. It spawned a remake for the Atari 5200, as well as one planned for the SNES, but was never released. Kaboom even had a small electronic handheld keychain around 1998.

If you ever come across this and have never played it, please do so. It has aged a bit, but will never lose its charm.

Kaboom is free to play here