Paperboy

RETRO NEWS

Greetings! Good week behind you, hopefully. Better weekend ahead, ideally with some gaming in it. :)

This week’s retro news is bringing some familiar names back into the spotlight. Crazy Climber has returned through Hamster’s Console Archives, bringing the 1986 Famicom version to Switch 2 and PlayStation 5.

Hyperkin is also giving its portable SupaBoy SNES hardware another run with two new designs, while still letting players use their original cartridges.

And Battle Arena Toshinden is stepping back into the ring, with the first three PlayStation games being collected for modern platforms.

PRESS START

An Introduction To Today’s Game

Somewhere in 1985, an arcade cabinet asked a strange question. What if the most ordinary job in America was actually a war zone?

Paperboy handed you a bike, a bag of newspapers, and a street that wanted you on your back. Tires rolled out of nowhere. Dogs took it personally. A guy with a lawnmower had no idea you existed.

Five years later, Atari squeezed the whole route onto the Lynx, a handheld with a color screen and a serious battery habit. Same block, same seven mornings, now riding along on the school bus with you.

The neighborhood got smaller. It did not get any friendlier.

BEHIND THE PIXELS

Let’s Dive Into The Game

Here is the pitch for anyone who missed it. You ride a bicycle down one suburban street, throwing newspapers at the houses that subscribe, while the street throws everything it has back at you.

The route runs seven levels, one for each day from Monday through Sunday. Twenty houses line the left side, and ten of them begin as subscribers, marked out by bright paint while everyone else sits in dull gray.

Miss a subscriber and that house cancels, which shrinks your route and your scoring potential at the same time.

Papers land two ways. A toss onto the porch counts, and a paper threaded into the mailbox counts for more. You carry ten at a time and grab bundles off the ground to restock, which turns into its own quiet planning problem.

Then there is the other half of the job. Breaking windows at the houses that never signed up feeds a separate breakage total, so the game rewards you for being a menace to half the block. Ride into anything solid yourself and you lose a life.

Every day closes on a training course, a short stretch of ramps and targets with unlimited papers and no penalty for wiping out. It is the one place the game lets you breathe.

Sunday papers are heavier and travel slower when thrown, a small detail that has ruined a lot of otherwise clean runs.

The Lynx version keeps the angled arcade view and the bright color, and reviewers in 1990 gave the visuals credit.

Controls translate better than you might expect for a game originally built around a set of bicycle handlebars, though aiming at that angle still takes a few days of practice before it clicks.

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Learn more.

GAME INFORMATION

WHERE TO PLAY

• The original copy or emulation will be your best bet in playing this version.

• Original Copies of the Game (All prices in USD)

  • Loose: $20

  • Complete: $25

  • New/Sealed: $30

COVER ART

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GAME OVER

Why You Should Play This

So why bother now? Because a run takes minutes rather than hours, and very few games ask you to do something this mundane while the world actively conspires against you. And there is something lasting about a game where the antagonist is an entire neighborhood.

Critics at the time landed all over the map on this port, so go in curious rather than expecting to be floored. I went with this version since it was the one I spent the most time with as a kid.

If you own a Lynx, the cart is one of the easier ones to track down. Either way, aim for the mailbox. The porch is for people who have given up.

SUPPORT

This is a passion project made with love, and every open or read means the world.
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RETRO HARDWARE

The Miyoo Flip V2 is a tiny clamshell retro handheld that lets you carry a whole library of classic games in your pocket. With a bright screen, solid controls, and the nostalgic flip design we all remember, it’s perfect for quick gaming sessions anywhere. Click the picture to check it out. My readers can use the following code for a 12% discount: NY12