Kool-Aid Man®
	INTELLIVISION CARTRIDGE [#4675] Characters used under license from General Foods Corporation Program: Mark Kennedy

PACKAGE DESCRIPTION
Two children are trapped in a haunted house. A pair of insatiable THIRSTIES roam around trying to catch them! Help the children avoid the dangerous THIRSTIES and collect all the makings for a batch of KOOL-AID soft drink mix. Hooray! KOOL-AID MAN comes to the rescue! From then on -- the THIRSTIES, plus PHANTOM FLAVORS get chased by KOOL-AID MAN!

• For one player against the computer.
• 13 skill levels, including a super-easy level for the very young!
• Two totally different game screens to figure out and master!

DEVELOPMENT HISTORY
On December 6, 1982, all of the programmers and graphic artists were herded into a conference room and shown a series of TV commercials -- the new Kool-Aid ad campaign. It was announced that Marketing had made a tie-in deal to release Intellivision and M Network Atari 2600 Kool-Aid Man cartridges. The games were scheduled to be ready in about 6 months, which meant that programming had to begin immediately. Worse, they wanted game-screen mockups to appear in the 1983 Mattel Electronics catalog at the Consumer Electronics Show -- one month away. A two-week contest to come up with the best game concept was announced. Separate ideas were developed for Intellivision and Atari 2600.

This led to a confrontation with Marketing. The programmers' viewpoint was that the features of a game should be tailored to the system it would be played on, to take full advantage of the system's strengths. Marketing, on the other hand, wanted games designed for multiple systems, with the features being the same on each system. If a game couldn't be ported to other systems, it shouldn't be done on any system.

The programmers argued that this meant all games would have to be designed for the lowest common denominator -- the Atari 2600. Marketing argued that keeping the features the same would make games easier to advertise and make word-of-mouth among customers more favorable.

This was the programmers' chance to make a stand, insisting that because of the tight schedule, the Intellivision and Atari versions of Kool-Aid Man would have to be developed independently and differently -- there was no time to create a design that could be implemented on both systems.

Reluctantly, Marketing agreed, and two entirely different versions of Kool-Aid Man were developed, designed to take best advantage of each system. The winning design for the Intellivision version came from programmer Vladimir Hrycenko ( Convoy ). Steve Tatsumi did the design and program for Atari Kool-Aid Man .

Programming won the battle, but Marketing won the war -- they never again allowed different versions of a game tailored for different systems.

And, well, it looks like they were right. To this day, people still seem upset that the two Kool-Aid Man games are different. Go figure.

Fun Fact: "And please, no 'Jonestown' references," admonished manager Russ Haft ( TRON Maze-A-Tron ) upon announcing the contest for game ideas. He was trying to stem the inevitable suggestions that would revolve around the 1979 mass suicide via cyanide-laced-grape-Kool-Aid of Jim Jones and his religious followers in Guyana. Some people at Mattel feared that sick, juvenile jokes made by the programmers might get back to the Kool-Aid folks and screw up the deal. Of course, the only people who feared that were the people who actually knew us.

Fun Fact: Reportedly, General Foods was delighted with the games and the response to the special promotion, and expressed an interest in a Kool-Aid Man II project. But at the time (July, August, 1983) Mattel Electronics was dealing with a massive layoff and management restructuring, and Kool-Aid Man II apparently got lost in the shuffle.

Fun Fact: One magazine dubbed Kool-Aid Man as the "stupidest video game of 1983," adding "What's next, the Michelin Man game?"As a result, to this day when someone refers to Kool-Aid Man , Mark Kennedy corrects them with, "that's the AWARD-WINNING Kool-Aid Man !"