1995 · Gorilla Systems · Puzzle · Strategy

FlipOut!

Atari console exclusive

Congratulations Earthling! The Citizens of Planet Phrohmaj have invited you to join their Great Tile Flipping Festival, an honor of the highest sort. Tile flipping influences their customs, their eating habits, and even their vacations. Solve maddening puzzles while watching for the mishievous aliens who think confusing you is part of the fun. If they weren't so cute you'd wring their necks...if they had them.

Released: 1995
Platforms: Atari Jaguar MS-DOS Windows
Genres: Puzzle Strategy
Developers: Gorilla Systems
Publishers: Atari
Modes: Single-player
Themes: Science fiction
Country: United States
Age ratings: ESRB E

About

FlipOut! is a tile-matching video game developed by Gorilla Systems Corporation and originally published by Atari Corporation for the Atari Jaguar in Europe on July 7, 1995, and later in North America on August 28 of the same year. It is one of the first titles developed by Gorilla Systems.

In FlipOut!, the players are invited by the inhabitants of Cheese Planet, also known as Planet Phrohmaj in their native language, to join the Great Tile Flipping Festival hosted by King Fluffy across multiple planets and locations on Earth, alongside their home planet. Initially an exclusive to the Jaguar, it was later ported by the same team to DOS in 1996 and was published by GameTek. FlipOut! received mixed reception since its release, with critics being divided in regards to the game's graphics, sound, gameplay and originality.

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

FlipOut! is a puzzle game where the main objective is to match the colored tiles into their respective colored spaces, with an extra tile that does not belong to the playfield being placed before starting a round and must be kept hanging in the air to match the other ones. Should the players take too long to match the tile into its respective space before landing on the ground, it will break and the round restarts as a result. There are nine stages to play through, each having their own number of rounds to play and ranging in thematic.

There are also four levels of difficulty to choose from at the options screen of the main menu before starting a game, which changes the main gameplay. High-scores and other settings made by the players are automatically kept by cartridge's internal EEPROM, but progress must be saved manually by accessing the options menu at the map screen from the main mode.

Development

FlipOut! was one of the first titles developed by Gorilla Systems. An early design document shows ideas that either would be implemented into the final release, were changed or scrapped altogether, such as power-ups.

Both Electronic Gaming Monthly writer Michael Price and Dan McNamee of Atari Corp. were testers for FlipOut!. Price was tasked on pre-evalutating prototype builds of the game in Gorilla Systems' offices, while also giving feedback and suggestions to improve the experience. He also stated that the project was done on a low budget.

Reception

FlipOut! received mixed reception when it was released.

Next Generation reviewed the Jaguar version of the game, and stated that "FlipOut! is an enjoyable and original puzzler on a system sadly devoid of them."

Legacy

After FlipOut! was released, Gorilla Systems started developing a horror-themed game for the Atari Jaguar CD titled Dante's Inferno, which was based on the first part of Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem Divine Comedy and was scheduled for a June 1996 release, but it was never released. In 2004, a demo of Dante's Inferno was released by the defunct Jaguar Sector II website under a CD-ROM compilation titled Jaguar Extremist Pack #1.