Freeway (Atari 2600)
Why did the chicken cross the road? Apparently, it was trying to set a new high score.
It was almost inevitable with a game like Frogger on the market where you had to safely cross a road as a little frog that someone would soon conceive of a title that played into the old joke about a chicken jaywalking. Years before it would become a huge hit on mobile phones in the form of Crossy Road though, there was a title that made a much smaller splash on a much simpler platform. Although originally pitched as the more grisly Bloody Human Freeway where a human character could meet a gruesome end if they failed to cross the road successfully, the more palatable and blood-free version of Freeway wisely swapped in a chicken who only teleports back to its starting position when it is hit by a car. However, if you have the difficulty switch set to the easier mode, you instead only get teleported back a lane, and while that makes Freeway a bit too easy, at least you aren’t left to feel guilty about your road crossing fowl no matter which option you pick.
Freeway was among Activision’s legendary Atari output, which is a way to usually prime players for one of the better looking and more involved titles on the Atari 2600, but right out of the gate you’ll feel any lingering memories of Frogger might poison how you try and play. In Freeway, the chicken you control can only be moved forward and back, meaning that, in order to cross ten lanes of deadly traffic, you can only move up or down the screen. As such all you need to worry about is moving up the lanes to cross this freeway, but each lane will have cars that are driving at different speeds or in different groupings. Essentially, all you need to do is watch for an opening to move forward, the player scoring a point every time the chicken completely crosses to the other side.
The lack of horizontal movement means the entire experience is about spotting your windows in traffic and moving forward, a waiting game that is usually somewhat fast-paced because it lacks any interesting complications. Once you start a round of Freeway, the traffic for a lane will be the same until your unseen timer runs out. The player has 2 minutes and 16 seconds to score as many points as they can, but only a few seconds in you’ll likely have figured out how all ten lanes are going to behave during that session. From there it is just pattern recognition and making sure to move when it’s safe to do so, high score chasing not particularly exciting because there are very few reasons to vary up how you play. If you decide to play two player though it at least can be made somewhat competitive, and while you are both crossing a road that doesn’t hold many surprises, the first player is locked to the left side of the freeway while the second player is stationed on the right. Successfully timing things will be different for both players but not to the degree it feels unfair, because while cars move at different speeds, there’s usually a few different openings that depend on how daring you are willing to be.
The cars come in many sizes, colors, and groupings in Freeway. Some lanes will have a single long truck driving slowly along while another might have three smaller cars racing its length. Once a car goes off-screen it will usually reappear on the other side fairly quickly after, meaning they just loop their patterns until everything is over, but the different game modes will shift up which cars are featured and how they move. The easier modes have cars with set speeds, the player needing to spot the gaps in how the patterns repeat and then move whenever the same opening makes itself known. Game Modes 5 through 8 though all have cars that shift in speed, meaning that if you aren’t careful you can get squashed by a sudden speedster or have your path forward thrown off by vehicles choosing to slow down. This does mean no consistent opening is present here, but the cars do still leave enough road open that you can make your forward push with consistent success provided you react to the small shifts in how things are moving.
The different game modes all have a different layout for how their cars are placed and are meant to move, but while these are just varied enough that you are at least squeezing a bit of freshness from frequent mode changes, the manual takes an unusual approach in labeling them. Supposedly, each of these ten lane freeways is somehow indicative of the real traffic situation experience on certain U.S. roads at certain times of day. It certainly makes no claim to authenticity for these labels but they also feel entirely arbitrary because the cars move in such predefined patterns with the same types of cars repeating over and over. There is no way a person could accurately identify which Game Mode is meant to be a street from Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Washington D.C., Dallas, or New York City naturally, but I did put them in a convenient order from Game Mode 1 to Game Mode 8 here. The time certainly feels more arbitrary since you have streets at 3 A.M., Midnight, and rush hour times like 5 and 6 P.M. that all feel rather similar save for maybe a mild speed difference.
The road naming was likely to add a bit more to Freeway than the obvious style of joke this game review lead with, but unfortunately, there really isn’t much longevity to be found in Freeway. The scoring system is fairly straightforward as are the car patterns, so while you can put in the effort to devote them to memory or get better at dodging the accelerating and decelerating automobiles, your score climbs in small increments while your participation remains rather repetitive and unremarkable. Each Game Mode only really has a few minutes of play in them without really inviting a return visit to try again some day. The concept of Freeway is far too basic to snag the attention of someone looking for either quick fix gaming or something to sink their teeth into for long term score chases.
THE VERDICT: Besides the obvious joke about crossing the road, Freeway doesn’t have anything really going for it. The player’s involvement feels far too minimal and the cars are far too basic in their driving patterns. Coupled with the rather dry scoring system, and Freeway doesn’t invite repeat plays save for switching between the game’s eight different freeway layouts to squeeze out what little variety there is to be found. Learning the way the automobiles move in a mode or reacting to speed changes in the harder modes is at least something that requires a little attention and skill, but successfully crossing the road barely feels like a win and there’s little room to improve or reward for doing so.
And so, I give Freeway for Atari 2600…
A BAD rating. Playing against another chicken can at least give Freeway a bit of energy, but for the most part, this simplistic Atari game shrivels up all too quickly. Shifting car speed is a step in the right direction that helps the later game modes shake off some of the repetition, but Freeway really feels like the kind of game that would be a shame to buy but a rather painless visit if you got in a game collection or played it through some free means. Even though a session doesn’t hit three minutes though it can feel like the novelty of seeing a game mode’s car layout fades fairly fast, but Freeway only really gets awful to play if you try to squeeze blood out of this stone. Memorizing the pattern focused stages isn’t very hard or rewarding and the speed-changing levels feel more like it boils down to how the randomly speeding up cars impact your options rather than being a pure skill challenge. The high score barely climbing between runs of differing quality is what really seals Freeway as a game that can’t sustain more than a casual visit to see what the game is all about, the experience dimming the more you devote time to it.
Freer movement for the chicken and more variation in how the automobiles move would definitely spice up how a session of Freeway could be played, but even just more complexity to how the score is tallied would do wonders for motivating a player to revisit the title. Crossing the street and getting one point for it feels so hollow, a finite amount of successes baked into this design and the change between sessions being obvious but not drastic enough to feel satisfying. Maybe moving backwards could be penalized, or the time it takes to cross the road determines your score instead. That could rub against the somewhat random speed changes cars undergo, but at least you’d be able to hope for a lucky run or be motivated to take big risks. As it is, Freeway comes up short, but it’s not really poorly programmed or aggravating in any way. However, just like the joke it takes inspiration from, it gets old very quickly and doesn’t have the structure to support any reinvigorating ideas after it’s lost its brief initial charm.