Atari Asks Fans to Join the Search for the Developer of Aquaventure
Today, Atari’s Atari XP initiative kicked off a community-driven quest to identify the long-lost developer of Aquaventure, an Atari 2600 prototype that’s origins have been shrouded in mystery for over two decades.
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.”
The original developer behind Aquaventure remains a mystery. Now, Atari invites its community of fans and retro gaming enthusiasts to participate in the search for the developer-at-large. All leads should be directed to Atari via Facebook direct message.
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