1982 · Arcade

Wabbit

Atari exclusive

You are a farmer, named Billie Sue, trying to protect your crops. One patch in particular is giving you trouble. It's surrounded by ten holes from which wabbits dart into your field. Scare off the pesky creatures by throwing rotten eggs at them.

Released: 1 September 1982
Platforms: Atari 2600
Genres: Arcade
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Perspective: Third person
Themes: Action
Country: United States
Languages: English

About

Wabbit is a 1982 video game developed by Apollo for the Atari 2600. It is an action video game in which the player controls a girl, Billie Sue, who must shoot eggs at rabbits named 'wabbits' invading a carrot patch to earn points. Wabbit was developed by Vietnamese-American programmer Van Mai, who pitched the idea to the developer, and was given creative freedom to design, program and animate the game. Wabbit received a limited release and minimal marketing, as Apollo filed for bankruptcy shortly after publication.

At release, Wabbit received mixed reviews, with praise for its visuals and criticism directed at its slow pace and repetition. Following release, the game garnered retrospective recognition by the Video Game History Foundation as the earliest surviving video game to feature a named, playable female protagonist. In 2022, video game researchers and the Foundation were able to identify Mai as the developer of the game from Apollo's bankruptcy records.

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Players assume the role of Billie Sue, a girl who is tending carrots while warding off rabbits named 'wabbits'. The objective of the game is to throw rotten eggs at the wabbits as they appear onscreen, before they reach the carrots and steal them; when the wabbits steal 100 carrots, the game is over. Wabbits appear from ten burrows placed on either side of ten horizontal rows of carrots, and when hit with an egg, they return to their burrow. Players earn points every time a wabbit is hit by an egg.

Wabbit features eight game modes, with players able to select one or two players, and the number of wabbits. A simpler difficulty mode aimed at children is also available for one or two players.

Development

Wabbit was developed by Van Mai, a Vietnamese-American programmer, credited under her maiden name Van Tran, and published by Richardson, Texas-based developer Apollo.. Mai's family migrated to Dallas, Texas when she was a teenager, and undertook work in the city's school district teaching computer lessons in BASIC. She began work with Apollo responding to a newspaper advertisement seeking programmers. Apollo colleague Dan Oliver stated that Mai impressed the company at interview by pitching an "extremely intense concept" for a game that he considered "20 years ahead of its time".

Mai states that she separately proposed the idea for Wabbit once recruited as a game directed at girls as an audience during a team meeting, and had the independence to design, program and animate the game on her own. The game was developed under the working title of Squoosh prior to release.

Reception

Wabbit received mixed reviews upon release. C. Meade of Videogaming and Computer Gaming Illustrated critiqued the game for being boring and the egg-throwing to be slow. Jim Clark, also writing for the same magazine, framed the game more favorably, saying that shooting the wabbits involved aiming and timing, but considered these mechanics were too difficult for children.

The Logical Gamer felt the game had visual appeal, but stated "there really isn't enough meat to this game for adults to stay interested in it for long". Author Brett Weiss retrospectively stated that "The graphics are very nice, but a sense of inevitability and an uneven level of difficulty make the game less fun than it should be."