“A Dog Can Get Mighty Hungry.”
“Serve your dog Chuck Wagon!® Chances are, he’s already waiting for it.”
North American box art.
Chase the Chuck Wagon is perhaps the second-most misunderstood game in the Atari 2600 library (with the number one spot going to E.T. the Extraterrestrial, of course). That such an obscure game continues to find mention is a testament to the persuasive power of revisionist history, and to how much misinformation surrounds the American video game crash.
You see, Chase the Chuck Wagon didn’t have much of an impact on the games industry back in ‘83, let alone on the eventual crashing and burning. In fact, it was a game that even most die-hard Atari enthusiasts didn’t even know existed until decades after its release. So, to see it referenced so surprisingly often now – most often in the form of gameplay footage used as B-roll in videos as narrators talk about how “shovelware games” helped kill the 2600 – is a curious turn of events.
In this article, we’ll examine what exactly the game is, how it came to be, and uncover what brought about the games’ comeback story… Actually, I think you need to have actually been relevant at a point before you can stage a comeback, and Chuck Wagon doesn’t meet that criteria. So, scratch that: Let’s see if we can figure out how Chuck Wagon became relevant to begin with. We’ll also answer the all-important question of whether or not it’s truly as bad as folk seem to believe it is, or if it can earn the Purina® seal of quality.
This article is no way sponsored or affiliated with the Nestlé Purina® PetCare Company.
“What He Likes Best and Needs Most.”
Purina Mills, LLC got its start in 1894, producing feed for a variety of animals. Their products were marketed as “Chow,” with different recipes corresponding to different species, yielding such product names as “Purina Monkey Chow,” “Purina Pig Chow,” and most relevantly “Purina Dog Chow.” The company thrived and survived into the next century, becoming the Ralston Purina Company in 1902. The company would go on to change hands several times over over the course of the late 1980s, but for the sake of my own sanity I stopped my research around this point in company history.
So, here’s what’s actually important to note: In 1967, Purina rolled out “Chuck Wagon” as their latest dog food innovation. Packaged as a dry dog food, adding warm water would rehydrate the serving to some extent, as well as causing the meal to produce its own gravy in later recipes. While I can’t claim to have ever sampled this particular brand myself, I imagine it made for decent enough dog food while allowing owners to believe they were spoiling their beloved pups. In 1970, Purina began a television commercial campaign for the Chuck Wagon product line, which would soon find itself a part of pop culture. The advertising campaign featured superimposed footage of miniature horse-drawn wagons passing through home interiors, being chased by the family dogs once they catch sight or scent of it. Cut to footage of the dogs enjoying a hearty bowl of dog food as a narrator explains how Chuck Wagon is a dog’s favorite thing in the world — second only to their lovely owner, of course.
While these commercials continued to air on television over the course of the 70s, the video games industry was also beginning its ascension, bringing the Atari VCS (later to be renamed the Atari 2600) to the home electronics market in 1977. By the year 1983, the bubble was on the verge of bursting, but hadn’t quite yet (at least, not as far as those outside the industry were aware). Around this time, companies had begun to attempt a new marketing technique which involved the still-trendy games industry: Brand-centric mail-order games, which consumers could send for if they provided a sufficient number of proofs of purchases. Other products and novelties had been offered as ““free”” rewards for customer loyalty – referred to as “premiums” in marketing – and proven successful enough a tactic for incentivizing consumers to continue consuming. Making video games a potential prize was a logical progression.
One of the first companies to try this tactic was General Foods; the producers of Kool-Aid at the time. Reaching out to Mattel to produce a game centered around [and named after] the brand mascot Kool-Aid Man, the publisher put their “M Network” development division to work creating a pair of games for the Atari 2600 and Mattel Intellivision. With the cartridges completed and ready for distribution, General Foods valued the game at 125 Kool-Aid proof-of-purchase points — or alternatively, 30 proof-of-purchase points and $10. Soon, other Kool-Aid Man-branded content, including the Adventures of Kool-Aid Man comic book series by Marvel, began to promote the game to their audience. So successful was this premium product, the game eventually made its way to stores as a full-fledged retail game! And when I say “successful,” what I actually mean is that wayyy too many cartridges were produced in anticipation of the mail-order campaign, and thus lead to them dumping truckloads of cartridges off at grocery stores and whoever else would take the overstock off their hands. Anecdotal documentation from an Atari enthusiast forum seems to indicate that by 1984 (post-crash), grocery stores could be seen selling Kool-Aid Man cartridges for as little as $3.99.
Kool Aid Man for Atari 2600 (Mattel, 1983)
Of course, other companies looking to follow suit weren’t aware of the tactics inevitable failure or of the impending games industry crash for that matter, and so several more pressed forward with their own mail-order games. Another infamous example would be Johnson & Johnson’s collaboration with one-time games developer “DSD/Camelot” to create Tooth Protectors for the 2600, marking the first and last contribution to the games industry for either company. Evidently, the cartridge was not overproduced in a volume sufficient enough to warrant whatever remaining allotment of cartridges that existed to be sold on retail channels, resulting in Tooth Protectors becoming one of the rarer games for the console.
While we’re discussing these advergames, I’ll take this opportunity to clear up a common misconception: Coca-Cola’s Pepsi Invaders (alternatively known as Coke Wins) also introduced to the 2600 in 1983 was never intended for public consumption. Rather, it was intended as a novelty gift for 125 sales executives in attendance for a 1983 sales convention, who also received free Atari 2600 consoles with which to play the game on. The code on the cartridge was effectively a ROM hack of the already-existing 2600 port of Space Invaders, as officially endorsed by Atari and entrusted to programmer Christopher Omarzu. Naturally, the limited production of the game means surviving cartridges command a high price on the collector’s market in recent years, with a copy having sold for nearly $2,000 on eBay in 2005.
Naturally, this all brings us back to Purina, who would contact developer “Spectravision” to produce a game inspired by their Chuck Wagon commercials. Other games by Spectravision include the first-person single-screen shooter Gangster Alley (which is actually quite fun), an improvement on the classic “Snake” formula by the name Tape Worm (which is also a fun enough little game), and the undefinable family dinner simulator Mangia (which is… frankly, just bizarre). The Internet Archive entry for the game as part of their collection of playable Atari 2600 games contains a snippet from Spectravision programmer Mike Schwartz, who recounts his part in developing Chase the Chuck Wagon:
“I was approached by a good friend who ran TMQ/ICOM and he badly needed this game programmed over a weekend. Yes, it took me all of 3 days to cobble this game together. I had existing code from my first game, Artillery Duel, to look at. The sound effects were basically the same. I apologize for the weak game play, but I was rushed!” ~ Mike Schwartz
For the record, 1982’s Artillery Duel is a Scorched Earth-esque “turn-based artillery” game, which from a casual glance has seemingly no relation whatsoever to Chase the Chuck Wagon. In fact, while I will contend that Artillery Duel is actually a moderately complex and relatively fun little two-player versus game, I can’t claim that Chase the Chuck Wagon is anything more than the most bog standard of single-player maze games.
Artillery Duel for Atari 2600 (Xonox, 1982)
I’ve tried Milk-Bone dog biscuits before. They’re better than you might expect. I recommend the “Soft and Chewy” variety, but would advise you to avoid the “Brushing Chews.”
“Your Pet, Our Passion.”
By my estimation, there are three ways you can make a 2600 game based on the premise of a dog chasing after a covered wagon. The first would be as a platformer putting you in the role of the dog, jumping and ducking over various household obstacles as you pursue the miniature moving wagon from the commercial. The second would be as something like Stampede where you’re the one commanding the wagon, trying to keep away from a pack of dogs. The third idea would be as a maze game, where you control a dog as they navigate their way through abstract labyrinths in pursuit of wagon and food. This, of course, is the approach that Chase the Chuck Wagon takes. Unfortunately, it adds little flair or flourish to this base concept.
The included instruction manual for Chase the Chuck Wagon is brief, fitting onto a single sheet of paper. On this page, the dog is referred to as “Chuckie,” whos white-color sprite in the game is presumably meant to match the dog on the game’s box / the one primarily featured in the larger Chuck Wagon advertising campaign. While the name works perfectly well as a riff on the word “Chuck,” this does introduce a possible branding discrepancy: A 1975 print ad for Chuck Wagon written from the perspective of a young boy who follows the dog on his chase for the wagon actually designates the name “Ralph” for the dog. So, either these are meant to be two separate dogs coincidentally belonging to the same breed and sharing the same fur pattern, or someone involved in Purina’s marketing or development of the game slipped up and forgot the name of the dog. Or maybe they just decided “Chuckie” was a catchier name more in line with the Chuck Wagon branding? I feel like I may have put more thought into this than anyone involved in the creative process for this game at Purina or Spectravision.
What’s the goal of the game? To guide Chuckie to the Chuck Wagon, of course. You get four single-screen mazes to navigate, all symmetrical when split down the center, none of which are particularly difficult to solve. I fell for a trap once in the third maze that caused me to run out of time and cost me one of my three lives, but it’s safe to say that the complexity of the mazes themselves aren’t really a major obstacle to completion. The most pressing hazard is the dogcatcher who also roams the mazes, who will take away a life on making contact with Chuckie. Depending on the stage, he can range anywhere from “major annoyance” to “total non-factor,” as his path-finding routine isn’t what you’d call keen.
An additional annoyance in each stage is an object that flies across the screen, bouncing off the edges and momentarily stunning you if it collides with you. These objects include a floating fire hydrant, disembodied cat (?) head, another dog, and a seemingly possessed bone. If you can overcome these hazards and beat the stage, you’re rewarded with a brief minigame where a bowl of dog food – presumably Chuck Wagon – falls from the sky and waits for you to press the button on your joystick in order to freeze it in place. The idea is to stop it when it’s lined up horizontally with Chuckie, at which point he’ll walk over and eat 100 points worth of food. Proceed to next stage, repeat the loop until you lose all your lives or choose to stop playing.
To put it simply, Chase the Chuck Wagon is a very simple game in premise, even by console standards of the time. The inclusion of pick-ups and power-ups in the mazes – perhaps smaller bowls of Chuck Wagon – would have gone a long way in challenging players to find the most optimal routes through the stages. If I were tasked with designing the game, I’d at the very least have made the wagon a mobile entity that Chuckie could, y’know, give chase to. Instead, it sits at the top of the screen just waiting for you to escape through the hole that is positioned top-center in each of the four mazes. Adding a proper chase element à la hunting for vulnerable ghosts in Pac-Man might’ve made for a much more engaging, replayable game. Instead, we’re left with an incredibly short gameplay loop that should run you three minutes per run at most, with little to no incentive to continue the loop. The bowl-catching minigame is so simple that it immediately becomes a chore, and the 100 points you’re awarded for winning it render your paltry time-based score in the maze sections completely trivial.
But wasted potential isn’t the biggest issue with the game. No, the worst issue by far is broken collision detection, causing issues wherein you will frequently get caught on the edges of walls and struggle to reposition yourself in order to navigate turns. The holes in the walls of the maze are sized pixel-perfect relative to the size of Chuckie, and approaching them from anything other than an exact angle means you’ll get stuck inside the corner, forcing you step back and then forward again in order to attempt another tight squeeze. This can be particularly infuriating when getting stuck in a wall means getting hit by one of the flying hazards, stunning you for upwards of several seconds before putting you right back stuck where you were before you got hit. If you’re especially unfortunate like I was, you can get hit by a flying object multiple times in the span of a couple seconds (ie; if you’re close to the edge of the screen), prolonging your stun time to excruciating / unsurvivable lengths. If you’re playing on the “Expert” difficulty switch configuration, where you’re only given 30 seconds on the clock to complete each stage, getting stuck in place for as little as a second even one time can spell your inescapable doom.
I suppose there’s the matter of the game’s presentation to talk about. I’ll say that Chuckie himself is decent enough a depiction of a dog by 2600 standards, and that the static wagon at the top of the screen looks alright (even if the horse is a bit on the lanky side). My biggest criticism of the visuals are the mazes themselves, which aside from the issues of poor design / narrow paths are also kind of just ugly to look at. It’s hard not to notice the lump on the top-right corner of each of the mazes, likely the result of some misalignment or over-extension. A minor nitpick, sure, but one that stands out when all four of the mazes are supposed to be perfectly symmetrical. There’s also the matter of a small gap on either side of the second stage maze, near either of the top corners, which is too small for Chuckie to actually fit through and serves only as a distraction. Was it intentionally designed as a beginner’s trap? Was it simply a mistake on the part of Mike Schwartz? It’s hard to say… But I suppose it should also be easy to forgive, since by his own admission this whole game was rushed out over the course of a weekend. However, there is one mistake that cannot be forgiven, regardless of how much of a hurry the developer was in: The recycling of the worst sound effects in history of the 2600.
As mentioned by Mr. Schwartz, the game’s sound effects are carry-overs from Artillery Duel; a game wherein two cannons fire missiles at each other to try and blow each other up. Now, imagine how those sounds translate to a dog colliding with a flying bone or getting caught by a dogcatcher. Doesn’t exactly fit, does it? Well, maybe it might’ve, considering sounds on the 2600 are typically very abstract to begin with, rarely matching the action on-screen in any realistic way. The problem is, Artillery Duel’s sound effects were particularly shrill and obnoxious, and I swear they are somehow worse in Chase the Chuck Wagon. And so, a major incentive to avoid touching the flying hazards in the game is not just to avoid the time penalty, but also to save yourself from the explosive sound effect that occurs if it happens. Chase the Chuck Wagon is a game best played on mute, if it all.
That’s really all there is to say about the game. Knowing the circumstances of its development though, I suppose there’s not really that much more that could’ve been done to improve it? I suppose it’s at least functional, if not incredibly janky. The developer had his deadline, picked a game concept that would be safe and easy to execute, and likely set about completing his task as quickly and efficiently as possible. It’s hard to fault a guy for trying to make an unreasonable job as reasonable as possible. And honestly, is it really all that worse a game than many of the web-based Flash advergames of the early 2000s?
“It Brings Puppies Running.”
Like Kool-Aid Man and Tooth Protectors before it, Chase the Chuck Wagon came and went without any real fanfare at the time of its release. It’s hard to guesstimate how many folk actually sent out mail-orders for the cartridge, but it’s at least been confirmed that Purina ordered all unsold copies to be destroyed. As a result, Chase the Chuck Wagon is one of the rarer Atari 2600 games, scoring an eight out of ten on the AtariAge “Rarity Key” scale. So, perhaps the game’s newfound notoriety is the result of interest by the game collector market? Partially, possibly. But that definitely wouldn’t explain why it’s so frequently lumped in with “shovelware games” of the era, if part of the fascination with it is the fact that it was distributed in such small quantities. I have my own theory as to how misconceptions about the game began.
In 2002, the G4 television channel began airing a documentary TV series by the name of Icons. Each 30 minute episode focused on a subject significant to the games industry, and did its best to summate the history of said subject matter with help from talking heads and industry insiders. The show ran five seasons until its cancellation in 2007 — by which point the show had changed focus from the games industry to “the people whom men 18-34 care about, admire and emulate.” But before the show had run off the rails and became frankly unwatchable, an episode had aired in season two by the production title of “The Crash.” As you can probably guess, the episode centered around the American video game crash of 1983. It’s a mostly informative bit of television, getting just a few details wrong with the limited information and understanding we had of the situation back in 2003. But hey, it gets its points across well enough, and the production is flashy enough to keep viewers visually engaged… which is perhaps where we run into the culprit of our Chuck Wagon caper.
Early into the episode, before the first commercial break, there’s a clip from an interview with Nolan Bushnell, where he describes the proliferation of third-party publishers and the rush to acquire licenses for games after Atari’s failed lawsuit to stop Activision. This is followed by the voice of the show narrator, who explains: “Toy companies like Parker Brothers and Hasbro form video game divisions. But when unrelated companies like Chuck Wagon dog food and Quaker Oats jump on-board, the market begins to turn.” Cue the B-roll of – you guessed it – Chase the Chuck Wagon gameplay footage. Overlay a sound byte of former game designer Garry Kitchen exclaiming “yeah, that was a problem,” and you’ve successfully planted a seed in the mind of thousands of unknowing viewers.
Piece o’ Cake for Atari 2600 (US Games, 1982)
One of Quaker Oats’ published games under their “US Gold” branding.
This seed would sprout with the advent of hobbyist-created video game videos on the Internet in years to follow, as they recalled “that game by the dog food company” while thinking of footage to add to their own little documentaries about the video game crash. Naturally, this would also surface in written pieces about the history of said crash as well, lumping Chase the Chuck Wagon in with the other shovelware that littered the system. Here’s where I feel the need to stress again that Chase the Chuck Wagon had little to no bearing whatsoever on the industry crash. It was such an obscurity — such a non-factor, it’s ridiculous to even mention it in the same breath as the subject matter.
As I’ve explained before in my article on E.T. the Extraterrestrial, the single biggest contributor to the crash were Atari themselves, specifically their self-destructive business decisions. Truth be told, I worry I may even overstate the role of shovelware games and competing consoles in my writing by suggesting their being even contributing factors to the crash. I’ve recently seen some arguments to suggest that oversaturation of the market was nearly a non-factor, and I wonder if I’ve bought into some of the misinformation and revisionist history I try to dispel. For a very interesting take on the realities of the video game crash, I’ll recommend this video by YouTube user ZadocPaet.
So, does Chase the Chuck Wagon deserve its reputation as an example of early awful shovelware? Let’s try approaching it from this train of thought: Was Purina’s intention to turn an additional profit off of a game that already effectively serves as advertising? No, of course not. The purpose of the game was to provide an ostensibly “entertaining” branded experience to customers who were already loyal to their company and product. They didn’t attempt to take up store shelf space with it, and they weren’t tacking further advertisements for the game onto the ends of their already successful television commercial campaign. If you’re going to fault Purina for something as part of this whole deal, fault them for the deadline they imposed that resulted in the game having to be completed over a weekend.
Yes, Chase the Chuck Wagon is a bad game, but it’s not aggressively bad: It’s not malicious in its intent or anything, and it certainly isn’t representative of the whole pile of half-assed Atari 2600 games that had amassed by 1983. It’s certainly an amusing little novelty though, with a history worth hearing out.
Has anybody figured out which month this game was made available to the public? Also, AtariAge lists John Perkins as the programmer of “Artillery Duel.”