by Russell Cohrs

Created on: October 05, 2009

This game was an arcade classic that was ported to many systems of the day.

Story

You're a paperboy making the rounds on your local delivery route. You're also apparently one week away from retiring, as you do retire if you make it through one week of deliveries. The game takes place from Monday to Sunday, with a higher level of difficulty each day.

Gameplay

There's not all that much to the gameplay. The people in town seem to hate you, as many of them appear bent on making you crash. There's crazy grandmas, skateboard punks, break dancers, kids on tricycles, and all manner of other objects that you must dodge. You can stop most of them from moving with a well-placed newspaper toss. Your whole goal is to deliver a paper to either the porch or mailbox of your customers, whose houses are marked in yellow and white.

You can earn bonus points mainly by trashing the houses of your non-subscribers. It's possible to break their windows, knock over their trash cans, destroy their shrubs, smash their light posts, and even knock over mysterious tombstones in their front yards. You can also collect bundles to restock your newspapers along the way.

There's also a training round after each day. You can knock over various targets for bonus points, and you must navigate over a couple tricky ramps in order to avoid crashing into a wall. When you cross the finish line, you get more bonus points based on your time. You can crash in this part, but you won't lose a life, you'll simply end the training stage.

Graphics

The graphics are really simple, as this was a very early arcade game. One famous graphical failure was at the end of the training stage, where a cheering fan appears not to have a head, due to it being the same color as the background. It has a very peculiar slant on the screen, and while this works for the game, it also makes it difficult to judge obstacles. There's no real strong definition of the sprites, and everything is very blocky.

Sound

There's only one theme in the game, and it's not all that special, although it will stick in your head as it loops repeatedly. The sound effects are better than the background music. There are sounds like the screeching of your brakes, broken and shattering glass, the thwack of bushes being decapitated, and of course crashing your bike. Pretty basic stuff, but a necessary step in the evolution of video games.

Tips and Tricks

Don't break the windows of your subscribers or fail to deliver their paper, or they'll quit. Pretty obvious right?

You can deliver to both the porch and the mailbox of your subscribers at the same time for extra points.

Stay off the street as much as possible, as it's much safer on the sidewalk or even navigating through yards.

If you go full speed throughout the game, it's possible to find the sweet spot for houses, where your throw will hit a mailbox every time. An example of this is the house with the mailbox in the upper left corner. It has an angular driveway that slopes down toward you. If you toss the paper at full speed right as you reach the driveway and don't slow down, you can hit the mailbox every time.

Some bonus subscribers don't have mailboxes, so make sure to hit their porches.

Hitting the rings or jumping the ramps in the training stage refills your papers.

Overall

I would give Paperboy a 3/5. It's still fun to play, but it definitely shows its age. The whole game can be finished in ten to fifteen minutes as well. There's really not a whole lot to the game, but smashing houses with papers is still fun. I'd recommend this game to any classic arcade fans, who enjoy games like Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Space Invaders, and Gauntlet.

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