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Atari Needs Help Finding The Publisher Of Aquaventure

Atari needs your help in finding the person responsible for making a very specific game that has gone down as a legend in Atari lore. Years ago, someone made the game Aquaventure, which was an Atari 2600 prototype that just showed up one day at a flea market back in the '90s, and ever since then, people have been trying to figure out who the hell made this thing! The original developer behind the game has never been found, however, the company would like to change that and is opening it up to Facebook to find the answer. If anyone out there has a lead on the game, they want to hear about it. You can read Atari's full blog about the search here as we have some additional info below.

Atari Needs Help Finding The Publisher Of Aquaventure
Credit: Atari

The details behind the creation of Aquaventure are hazy at best. A prototype of the unreleased game was discovered by a collector at a flea market in Florida in the mid-1990s. Eventually, the game made its way into the hands of more Atari 2600 collectors, but it retained a low profile until 2005 when it was included in Atari's Flashback 2 console. Once Aquaventure became part of Atari lore, questions arose. Where did the idea for the game come from? Who did the programming? How did the prototype cartridge end up at a flea market? Aquaventure is not mentioned in any of the surviving Atari company memos and reports from the 1980s. Assumptions emerged both within the company and among fans — was acclaimed developer Tod Frye behind the game? Gary Shannon? Some questions were left unanswered…until recently.

In an interview with a respected Atari historian, acclaimed developer Tod Frye suggested he may have played an inadvertent role in Aquaventure's creation, stating, "It looks a lot like a kernel tech of mine …I made my kernel tech freely available. Probably the most widely reused kernel tech ever."


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Gavin SheehanAbout Gavin Sheehan

Gavin is the current Games Editor for Bleeding Cool. He has been a lifelong geek who can chat with you about comics, television, video games, and even pro wrestling. He can also teach you how to play Star Trek chess, be your Mercy on Overwatch, recommend random cool music, and goes rogue in D&D. He also enjoys hundreds of other geeky things that can't be covered in a single paragraph. Follow @TheGavinSheehan on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Vero, for random pictures and musings.
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