Preserving Carol Shaw's Polo

[TrekMD]

In 1978 Ralph Lauren and Atari were both owned by Warner Communications and the latter came up with an idea to promote both together.  The intent was to introduce the cologne Polo for men alone with a Polo themed game for the Atari 2600.  Carol Shaw was asked to make the game but it was never released back then.  It was released as a reproduction cart in 2002.  The box image I've added is from that release.  You can read about the game and its development in this fascinating article:  Preserving Carol Shaw's Polo.  You can read and see more about the game itself (including a binary) here:  Atarimania.

[davyk]

I had heard of this game but  I didn't realise it was tied in with the Ralph Lauren brand.

Carol Shaw is a bit of a legend. She was particularly good at implementing AI in games. Her version of Checkers/Draughts was able to beat the Activision version if I remember right. She also did a version of Othello and 3D Tic Tac Toe for the 2600.

She is probably more famous for River Raid though.   That has a clever algorithm for generating the scrolling layout with the ever changing river. The level isn't stored as there was no way that would have been affordable back then - instead it is generated on the fly using random numbers in a repeatable way - in a similar way to the method used to generate screens in Pitfall.