Video Games
January 1983

Blips

sale to minors."

No such warning is needed for Streaker, an arcade game conceived by Fred Alkire of American Video Games in Birmingham, Ala. The object is to maneuver a naked lady through a maze as she attempts to collect her fallen garments and avoid the police. Streaker is hardly hardcore.

"She looks like Miss Piggy," Alkire insists. "You don't even know she's naked until she starts putting her clothes on. We're located in one of the most Baptist sections of the country, and we haven't recieved any complaints yet."

-- Howard Mandel

---

Who'll Stop Rawson Stovall?

Every Wednesday, Rawson Stovall, pencil in hand, spends about two hours at the kitchen table putting together 500 words for his newspaper column on video games, "The Video Beat." When he's done, Stovall gives the copy to his mom who edits it for spelling errors, run-on sentences and faulty puncuation and then types the final draft. The column appears in five Texas newspapers including his hometown Abilene Reporter-News.

On business appointments, Stovall comes prepared: His briefcase is stuffed with resumes, school report cards, press clippings and, best of all, a design for a game called Jumping Jellybeans. When a secretary announces, "There's a young man to see you," few executives expect to be shaking hands with a 10-year old boy.

But that's Rawson Stovall, a four-foot, three-inch eself-proclaimed actor, artist, bookworm, cartoonist, poet and rockhound. Already, he's become the youngest person to ever reciev the Governor's Award (for outstanding volunteer service) and recently won the Benny the Bookworm contest when he read 55 books in one month, which translated into a $5,480 donation to the Abilene Mental Health Association.

Video, however, is Stovall's real game. He remembers the first time he played the Atari VCS at a local Sears in Abilene. He was six years old. "I came home and asked my dad if we could get it and he said, 'Awww, that's just a waste of money,'" Rawson recalls. "So years went by, and in 1980 I asked Santa Claus to bring it, and the kids next door got Atari and I didn't. So, in 1981, I said I couldn't depend on Santa Claus, so I raised the money by selling pecans out of my backyard. We shelled, halved, packaged and sold them and made about $175."

When his fourth grade reading teacher at Alta Vista elementary school began producing a weekly television show for her class last year, Rawson and his friends chose to do segments on video games. One thing led to another and soon Rawson found himself at the Abilene Reporter-News pitching a weekly column to executive editor Dick Tarpley.

Recalls Assistant Managing Editor John Rice, "Initially there was a slight resistance from the staff. Having a 10-year-old boy __.

---

Fire Officials Hose Down Game

Fire officials, worried that video gamers will trade in their joysticks for matchsticks, are doing a slow burn over a new computer game created by Muse Software. Firebug, they claim, is a definite invitation to arson. "It teaches kids fire-setting behavior," says John Lynch of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "It will make firebugs out of people," asserts Patrick Flynn, a spokesman for the Baltimore Fire Department.

To cool down the firefighters, Muse has repackaged the game slightly. Originally, Firebug, which can only be played on the Apple II, challenged the player with the question: "How good are you at setting fires?" Then the player had to guide a square-like object, with a fuse attached to it, through a building's corridors, reaching an exit and ladder before the fuse burned down and the square disintegrated. The player ran up points by setting fire to the building's walls. The more walls you destroyed, the more points you got.

Not all the steam has been taken out of Firebug, but the player is no longer enticed into "setting fires." Instead, he is asked: "Can you succeed at a test of fire?" Also, the player is told to destroy "the maze," not the walls of a building. Even without the changes, though, Rhonda Uretzky-Miller, Muse's marketing director, considers Firebug "a simple, non-violent game that provides colorful and exciting graphic effects."

The changes have so far drawn mixed reviews, John

(Continued on page 20)