The Making Of: Sea Quest
We go behind the scenes of Steve Cartwright’s slick Atari shoot-’em-up
Always a company that added its own ideas to popular games back in the early Eighties, Activision’s aquatic take on Defender, Seaquest, is one such title. Kieren Hawken asks Steve Cartwright about his fishy tales
It’s well documented how brilliant Activision’s games for the Atari 2600 are. But for every Pitfall! and Enduro there are also far more underrated games, such as Steve Cartwright’s Seaquest, that deserve your attention, too. While the inspirations for the game aren’t immediately clear, Steve himself is very honest and forthright about this. “Seaquest was possibly the first game in history that was a reskin of an existing title, as I designed it as an evolution of the arcade game Defender,” he reveals. Using other peoples’ games as an inspiration for something new was a tactic that Activision used a lot in its early years. You have titles such as Beamrider (Juno First ), Megamania (Astro Blaster), Robot Tank (Battlezone) and Starmaster (Star Raiders) that had very clear origins, but with just enough original elements of their own to create a new game. Arcade games were, more often than not, the inspiration, so does Steve feel that this was something that the 2600 did particularly well? “Most definitely,” he says. “In fact, most games of that era were fast-paced arcade games because of this.” Maybe it was the 2600’s particular suitability at doing games of this type, but Seaquest was only ever released for Atari’s debut console in a time when Activision usually converted their games to several other formats after. That said, fond memories of the game from others did see it released for the Atari 8-bit, Android and even the Atari Jaguar in more recent years, albeit in an unofficial capacity.
Although Steve was very clear about the origins of his game and, indeed, the inspirations are clear to see, when playing Seaquest it very much feels like its own game, rather than another generic arcade clone. In the game you control a small submarine which is trying to rescue stranded divers from shark infested waters. The idea is to simply rescue six of these stranded souls, the maximum your sub can hold, and then return to the surface. As if dealing with bloodthirsty sharks wasn’t enough there are also enemy submarines that are offended by your presence and schools of fish that will do their best to get in your way. Thankfully, you can fire an endless stream of torpedoes in their direction to despatch them, but if you make contact with any of these oversized aquatic dwellers or get caught in enemy fire then you lose one of your three lives. Your other big concern is the limited amount of air in your submarine, you can make regular trips back to the surface to replenish this but this isn’t always as easy as it sounds. On later levels enemy subs will also patrol the waves above, making these journeys more perilous. Once you return a full complement of divers to the surface, your mission starts all over again, only with more enemies that move even faster than before. If you managed to score 50,000 points or more and supply proof, then Activision would reward you with a prestigious Sub Club patch.
Seaquest isn’t just great from a gameplay perspective, though, it’s also impressive on a technical level, especially the number of onscreen objects its pushing around. Steve reveals his wizardry to us: “Seaquest utilises all the tricks that the 2600 hardware was capable
of. Your sub is player ‘object 0’ and enemy ships and sharks are both using player ‘object 1’, which is why you never see sharks and enemy subs on the same row at the same time. Additionally, multiple sharks and enemy subs were generated from the 2600 ability to display one, two or three copies of an object.
Your torpedo uses the missile object and the divers are made from the ball object, exhausting all other possibilities.” We weren’t just content with knowing the technical details, though, we were also keen to find out any other interesting stories regarding the creation of the game and Steve didn’t disappoint “Well, as it turned out, there was an underwater salvage company called Seaquest Inc or something like that,” he cautiously explains before going further. “They promptly sued Activision for stealing their name and for the concept for the game. I flew to Chicago for a deposition and their lawyers thought they had a slam-dunk case. Well, this was until I informed them that the game was a re-skin of an arcade game called Defender, that the name Seaquest was something I just dreamt up and that there was, in fact, no sunken ship or buried treasure in the game. That was just a story marketing invented for the back of the box to fuel the fantasy of the player! It’s safe to say that it was quickly dismissed.”
Seaquest has all the ingredients needed for an arcade-style shooter, so with this in mind we are curious to discover if Steve left anything out that he wanted to feature. “No, not really, I think I put in everything I intended for that game. The only thing that would have been nice was if the enemy subs were able to capture your divers.” As well as Seaquest, Steve ended up creating a number of iconic games for Activision including Megamania, Frostbite, Aliens, Hacker, Barnstorming and Plaque Attack.
After this, he had more success with the Les Manley series of adventure games at Accolade before heading up the PGA Tour franchise at EA. Even with the rest of his storied career on offer, Seaquest remains one of our favourites from his vast library.
Special thanks to Steve Cartwright for his time.