Space Jockey (video game)

Space Jockey is a scrolling shooter designed by Garry Kitchen for the Atari VCS (renamed to the Atari 2600 later in the year). It was published under the Vidtec brand of U.S. Games in 1982 as the initial release from the company. The game shipped on a 2K cartridge at a time when most VCS games were 4K.

Space Jockey was the first video game designed by Garry Kitchen. He went on to program the 2600 port of Donkey Kong.

Gameplay
The player controls an "attack saucer" that flies to the right over scrolling, undulating terrain. The saucer only moves vertically and stops just before it hits the ground. The goal is to shoot ground-based tanks and flying enemies: jet planes, propeller planes, helicopters, and hot air balloons.Trees and houses appear on the ground as obstacles which can also be destroyed.

Development
Space Jockey was a was developed by Gary Kitchen and was his first game he made for the Atari 2600. The game was a result of a six-month effort to reverse engineer the Atari 2600 while working at James Wickstead Design Associates (WDA).

Kitchen later described Space Jockey as "just a modestly fun game" and was predominantly a test bed for him during the process of reverse engineering the Atari VCS.

Release and reception
Space Jockey was released in January 1982. According to a 2013 interview with Kitchen, Space Jockey sold over a million copies, but he believes most of those were at a discount. A February 1983 Billboard article on retailers lowering game prices mentioned, "US Games recently sold off one of its older hits, the 2K Space Jockey, at rock bottom prices through its distributors."

Dan Gutman reviewed Space Jockey in the December 1982 issue of Electronic Fun with Computers & Games. Gutman compared the game to Defender (1981) and Chopper Command (1982) saying that "there is nothing meaty here [...] but that doesn't mean it's bad" and that the game was "a pure test of your reaction time and doesn't pretend to be anything more." Space Jockey was one of three runners-up for the "Best Science Fiction/Fantasy Videogame" category in the 1983 Arcade Awards.

From retrospective reviews, Brett Alan Weiss of online game database AllGame declared the game to be "a simplistic but enjoyable shooter."