“Atari Goes Better with Coke.”
“You Can’t Beat the Real Thing.”
Poster image by yours truly.
Before we get started with today’s regularly scheduled article, I just wanted to make an important announcement: Henceforth, the “Bad Game Hall of Fame” is to be rebranded as the “Big Dumb Hall of Lame.” I thank you all for understanding during this transitionary period, and haha I’m just kidding; April Fool’s on you! Prank Master Cass is back in full effect, baby!
Now that we have the obligatory “more confusing than actually funny prank” section of the article out of the way, here’s the part where I reiterate a thing I said in last year’s April Fool’s Day post: Changing up the entire look and theming of your website for a one-day gag is honestly kind of obnoxious, and so I choose not to do it on the Bad Game Hall of Fame. Instead, I like to use this day to cover games that are sort of like “jokes” themselves: Deliberately bad, never actually intended for release, or designed as something along the lines of a novelty item. As it turns out, the subject of this article kind of covers both of those last two bullet points. For today, we’re covering 1983’s Pepsi Invaders — alternatively known as Coke Wins.
Yes, my friends; we are returning once again to the heady days of Atari’s heyday, to examine another cartridge of questionable design. We’ll be giving the landscape of ‘83 a quick survey, figuring out how exactly this brand deal came to be, playing the dang game for ourselves, and speculating as to why exactly copies of it go for so dang much at auction nowadays. And hey, we might even settle on what the game’s actual title was intended to be while we’re at it! But first, let me crack open a can of my own personal favorite soft drink: Hubba Bubba® Original Bubble Gum Soda! Now you can enjoy the sweet taste of chewing gum as a refreshing carbonated drink. And as an added perk, they’re the proud new sponsors of the Big Dumb Hall of Lame, so I’ll be getting paid in crates of pop for every article I mention them in. Cheers, friends!
… Hmm, that doesn’t taste great. It’s all gone completely flat. Actually, I feel like I’m getting a little sick to my stomach now oh no it’s coming back uuuppprrrrggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
“Have a Coke and Smile.”
Let’s quickly go over the state of brand deals and cross-promotion in the early days of gaming / prior to Pepsi Invaders. In short; there really ain’t all that much to talk about, here. Perhaps the earliest instance you might hear mentioned in historical context is Atari’s 1979 arcade version of Lunar Lander, where a McDonalds can be made to appear (while on the Moon, mind you) as part of a somewhat obscure easter egg. However, I’m hesitant to really call this a proper instance of “product placement,” since it seems more likely that a rogue programmer snuck in a joke rather than something authorized or sponsored by Mickey D’s. So, let’s scratch that, and fast forward just a few years to 1982: This time around, McDonald’s is officially interested in a bit of cross-promotion with Atari — who are at the top of their game and market relevancy at this particular moment in time. While it’s difficult to ascertain who approached who first in this collaboration (my mostly uninformed guess would be that Atari approached McDonald’s), the end result was a giveaway with over $4 million worth of Atari-related prizes being distributed.
Catch-a-Coke handheld (Coca-Cola Company / Bandai Electronics, 1983)
Footage borrowed from ‘showagamer.’
The purpose behind cross-promotions like this is about more than just mutually raising brand awareness: It’s also a means for companies to establish new “brand images” for themselves, by attaching to other brands whose perceptions by the public are more firmly established. In the case of this particular partnership, you can see McDonald’s as trying to appear sort of cutting-edge and hip — shaking hands with what the public sees as the forefront of technology and entertainment. On the other hand, there’s Atari, who were clearly attempting to establish themselves as “legitimate” — a company to be taken seriously, and poised to become the next big household name. Even as their fortunes as a company were [ostensibly] on the rise, there was still the struggle for Atari and video games as a whole to be seen as more than just a fad; and rubbing elbows with a bona fide American institution must’ve seemed like a surefire way of accomplishing as much. This would also explain Atari’s next pick for a promotional partner: The Bottlers of Coca-Cola.
Now, it’s worth noting that prior to this business arrangement in 1983, Coke had already dipped their toes into video gaming once before: They had commissioned Bandai to develop an LCD game titled Catch a Coke (or alternatively / unfortunately, “Sell Coke”); to be given to employees in their sales department on an incentive basis, with further plans to implement the game into vending machines as something of a crowd-drawing novelty. To this end, Bandai re-purposed one of their existing handhelds by the name Monkey Coconut, and changed up some of the graphics to incorporate a Coke vending machine and cans of soda. In any case, the plans to incorporate the game into vending machines on a nation-wide basis never quite took off, resulting in just a small handful of these larger LCD units surviving / being put on sale online for exorbitant prices. Consider this whole experience as setting something of a precedent for things to come.
Space Invaders for Atari 2600 (Atari, 1980)
As the reporting goes, Coca-Cola were the ones to approach Atari about creating a cartridge game for them, for the purpose of distributing copies of it to the audience of their annual sales convention in Atlanta. There’s a rumor that Atari also saw fit to provide an equal count of Atari 2600 consoles for every person in attendance as well, but I’ve never actually seen verifiable confirmation as to this detail. The order in total would amount to 125 cartridges being produced, for a game to be titled Pepsi Invaders… or Coke Wins, according to its title screen. Or, further alternatively; “Pepsi – Coke,” “Pr Pepsi,” “COQ0160-05” (all labels from different surviving prototype cartridges), and / or “Atari goes better with Coke” (according to a sticker on the game’s box). The fact of the matter is, the game doesn’t really have a real title, and both of it’s most commonly-circulated names seem to be the product of speculation and attempts at universal designation.
“Red, White & You.”
Game’s original packaging.
The game itself was packed in the cheapest and quickest of manner: Shoved inside a blank, white paper box with a hanging tab on the back, and with a small circular sticker slapped on the front declaring that “Atari goes better with Coke.” And as for the cartridges, they featured no labeling at all, further obfuscating whatever formal title might have been intended / resulting in the whole package looking entirely rushed to pass. After all: This was never a product intended for commercial sale, or even to be discussed publicly outside of the convention crowd. It was a gag gift from the Coca-Cola company to its employees, as facilitated by Atari. Not only that, but it’s just one byproduct of a larger association between the two companies; a co-promotional effort effort that had begun in October of 1982, and which was scheduled to run through March of 1983. Again, if we look at the bigger picture here, Atari were using this bit of brand synergy in order to brag about their being “the biggest name in video games [teaming up] with two other biggest names” — those being McDonald’s and Coca-Cola. As for Coke, they were nearing their lowest recorded market shares in company history, and were looking to appear hip with the times by any means possible.
Regarding the game itself, its development too was likely something of a slap-dash, overnight effort. Well, to be technically accurate, the process did take one Atari programmer (Richard Maurer) probably close to a full year to near-single-handedly bring to fruition; from having been inspired to independently recreate a popular arcade game, to shelving the concept in order to work on more pressing assignments, and picking development back up when the company struck a license deal to produce a retail version of that aforementioned arcade game. Such is the story of Atari’s 1980 conversion of Space Invaders, which would go on to be a multi-million selling product and prove largely responsible for putting the company on the map. Now, as for the story of Pepsi Invaders’ development: Developer Christopher Omarzu was tasked with taking that existing Space Invaders program, crudely swapping out several of the graphics, and stripping the game code of any and all “superfluous” features so that it could fit onto the smallest cartridge capacity possible. Let’s go ahead and take a look at the results.
When considering the cost-cutting measures taken in developing and packaging the Pepsi Invaders cartridge itself, I find it hard to believe that Atari were so generous as to give away consoles as a part of this deal. Something tells me their frugality meant that Coke employees would be expected to purchase their own hardware in order to play their gifted games; but time and a well-documented source may prove this hypothesis wrong.
“The Great National Temperance Beverage.”
“The Best Friend Thirst Ever Had.”
Widely-circulated mock-up box art.
This is the spot where I’d usually give something like a plot synopsis for a game in question. But seeing as Pepsi Invaders doesn’t really have a story per se, I reckon we’ll just have to make up our own. So, as the evil Pepsi-Cola Company expands their reach into the stars above, they end up dominating market share across all of space and the universe at large — appealing to alien species with their sugary blends. At this point, the President of PepsiCo (John Pepsi) tells the aliens that if they want to continue receiving their daily dose of soda pop, they’ll have to swing by Earth and wipe out Coca-Cola’s bottling facilities! Thus begins one underpaid factory employee’s job to fend off the invasion, and ensure that Coke wins the day. Let the defense commence, so on and so forth.
Now, I don’t think I need to waste any time here explaining the mechanics of Space Invaders in all too much depth. Surely, y’all already know the drill: A grid of aliens move down the screen, you fire at them while dodging their shots, take cover behind a barrier until it has holes in it, and occasionally aim for a bonus ship at the very top of the screen for extra points. So far, so standard. What’s worth taking note of though are the concessions made in bringing the original game to Atari’s hardware — and consequently, the changes that Pepsi Invaders continues to enact. The most obvious of these would be those spurred on by less screen real estate, owing to the arcade game’s vertically-oriented “portrait” screen configuration (versus standard “landscape”-oriented home television displays). Thus, the original 11×5 alien formation is consolidated into a 6×6 wave, with one of your four barriers getting the axe as well. For some Space Invaders purists out there, these changes alone may constitute sacrilege. But Richard Maurer took his blasphemy several steps further in developing his original cartridge.
Perhaps as something as a means of appeasement for having to compromise on the number of on-screen aliens and barriers, Space Invaders on the 2600 was packed full of alternate game configurations and play modes — 112 of them, to be exact, including modes for simultaneous two-player play. Different modes could see variations including moving barriers, zig-zagging enemy shots, invisible enemies, and a number of different configurations on how two players can control the game; whether alternating turns playing on their own, competing at the same time, and dividing / alternating control over the movement and firing of the laser cannon. You could even use the console’s difficulty switches to change how wide either of your player ships were, making them more or less susceptible to enemy fire. In these ways, a simple core gameplay loop could be made incredibly customizable, and offer challenging and novel ways to replay the cartridge again and again.
Naturally, Pepsi Invaders strips away all of this, leaving you with just one mode of play.
Gone are any of the multiplayer offerings, variations on enemy patterns, or even the difficulty switches affecting the size of your laser cannon. Instead, you’re given a three minute timer, within which you are meant to rack up as many points as possible. And at the end of those three minutes, the game will instantly end; with a row of text at the top declaring “COKE WINS” as various elements of the game screen begin to rapidly flash. That’s your whole lot right there, with the only incentive to replay possibly being the pursuit of a higher score. As for why Pepsi Invaders sheds itself of so much content and additional ways to play it: Well, there’s a good chance none of the intended players were likely to notice or be bothered by their omission, would they? And hey, if they really did find themselves newly hooked on video games thanks to this novelty cart, they could always pay for an upgrade to “the real thing.”
It should also be noted that within this three minute time limit, you can’t actually lose the game or otherwise end the countdown early. If your cannon gets hit by enemy fire, you simply wait a moment to respawn, before dropping you right back into the fray. If the invaders should manage to reach the bottom of the screen, it’s not an instant Game Over, as they’ll simply hover on the plane directly above you until they’re dealt with. If you should manage to be particularly efficient in clearing the screen, you’ll eventually reach waves where the baddies spawn immediately overhead — which proves something of a challenge to contend with in the original Space Invaders cartridge, but not really so much here. There are no lives to track or matters of coinage to concern yourself with: It’s all just about chasing that high score. In a sense, this might actually make for a more accessible / forgiving variation on the classic game, if not a less compelling one for players seeking more of a challenge.
You know, it occurs to me that I should mention what exactly makes Pepsi Invaders a more evidently branded game, shouldn’t I? Well, as mentioned earlier, you’ve got some crudely-replaced graphics swapping out most of the aliens, inserting the letters spelling “P-E-P-S-I” in their place. Lacking a 6th letter and any further inspiration, you’ve still got a column of aliens tacked onto the end, standing in something like an odd contrast. At least the bonus ship which scrolls across the top of the screen is replaced with something resembling the Pepsi logo, representing the most valuable object which can be destroyed. Beyond a bit of further palette modification to incorporate more of Coca-Cola’s trademark reds and whites into the color scheme – including adding red rings to your white laser cannon – that just about does as far as trying to convey the brand theming here.
All that being said, there are a few other aesthetic changes made here which I can actually contend are for the positive. For one, the original Space Invaders had to make use of some fairly egregious venetian blind trickery in order to display it’s score indicators, since it was designed to be able to track the scores of two individual players. With that consideration no longer necessary, we get a much simpler and more pleasing to look at score display in the top-right corner, with the typeface carrying over to the ticking timer in the bottom-center. I would also say that the choices in color scheming are generally better in Pepsi Invaders, owing to a more distinct “red white & blue” motif. If you take a look at the original Space Invaders 2600 game screen; it’s a muddied mess of browns, sickly greens, and off-yellows. By focusing on just three primary colors, the soda-sponsored take on the game actually ends up being more faithful to the classic arcade cabinet; which utilized screen overlays to transform an underlying black-and-white monochrome display into a field of red bonus ships, white aliens, and green Earth defense forces. It all just “pops” and parses a bit cleaner, if you ask me.
Of course, these small handful of positive changes don’t come close to outweighing the overwhelming negative of having seen so much content cut. I understand Atari wanting to consolidate as much space as possible in order to produce these cartridges as cheaply as possible, and that the incredibly specific audience meant to consume this were unlikely to really care one way or the other about “replay value” or whatever; but I still contend there were some missed opportunities here! While it’s obvious that Atari and Coke could never really get away with selling the game as something like a retail / mail-order product (due to an inevitable hell of trademark disputing), I reckon they should have at least seen the potential for the cartridges to be distributed to more employees as part of a similar incentive goal to the Catch-a-Coke handhelds. And in that scenario, at least re-incorporating a two-player mode / a game variation without the timer would go a long way in making the cart a more compelling prize. Also, for pete’s sake: Wasn’t there anything they could have replaced that holdover alien graphic with? Maybe a can of Pepsi, or a generic bottlecap, or a miniature graph chart representing a forecast of declining revenues? I’m just spitballing here.
Honestly, the worst offense Pepsi Invaders commits is simply not having enough fun with itself. If you were to tell me to develop a game for Coca-Cola where I had carte blanche to do whatever the heck I want – with the working assumption that it would never see the light of day (or copyright court) – I for one would go buck wild with it. Forget Space Invaders as a template: Give me the program for Adventure, and let me turn it into a quest to collect magical Coke paraphernalia while slaying gigantic bottles of the vile Pepsi drink. And instead of an Easter egg revealing the name of developer Warren Robinett, I’d have it spell out “PEPSI TASTES LIKE PISS.” Instead, when presumably given free reins, it seems Mr. Omarzu decided to simply phone the job in. Which, I can hardly blame him for, mind you! While the knowledge that your work is never meant for public consumption may be liberating to some, it can understandably be a big ol’ demotivator for others. And besides: I’m not really sure a roomful of Coked-up 80s sales executives really earn putting in that extra effort for.
I had to sneak this joke in somewhere.
“It Had to Be Good to Get Where It Is.”
1983 would not go on to be a great year for Atari, as some of you may already know. We’ve talked about E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial’s [over-estimated] role in this before, and how Atari’s business practices carrying over from 1982 were by and large unsustainable. But I don’t think I got around to mentioning back then an infamous 1982’s earning call to Warner Communications investors (bearing in mind that Warner were the owners of Atari, Inc. at the time); wherein the company shared a projected 10-15% increase in earnings for the quarter, and consequently infuriated all their shareholders and stock analysts. If increasing profits sounds more like a cause for celebration than for panic, consider the fact that Warner had initially promised and projected for a 50% increase in earnings, and directly blamed “disappointing sales of Atari’s video game cartridges” for their falling short of that goalpost. This was the culmination of years of short-sighted decision-making and overspending on Atari’s part, finally resulting in a failure to meet financial expectations, and resulting in much cost-cutting and desperate bids to regain ground.
When you look at Atari’s attempts to associate with other brands from this angle, you begin to understand it all as more of a panicked move — last-ditch efforts to prove the value of the “Atari” name to Warner executives and to investors. The following year, the company would only go and sink further tens of thousands into a commitment to sponsor the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, in the hopes that their exposure there might somehow translate into increased consumer sales. With that brand deal apparently failing to significantly improve the company’s value, Warner would rid themselves of their now-troublesome Atari division come July of that year, with Commodore International founder Jack Tramiel acquiring the company for $240 million [to be paid in long-term notes] and a one-third interest option in his new venture. The story obviously continues from there, but expands well beyond the scope of this article in doing so.
Needless to say, Coca-Cola’s brief partnership with Atari was not the panacea to their own share of market woes. The following years would see further attempts at re-establishing Coke’s image as now being modern and consumer-conscious — as well as attempting to combat Pepsi’s hugely successful “Pepsi Challenge” ad campaign, which painted Coca-Cola as a wholly inferior product. Desperation in this period would ultimately lead Coca-Cola down the path of introducing “New Coke” to the public, to an absolutely disastrous reaction that saw the company scramble to regain the public’s trust and patronage. If I were more economically-versed, I’d probably find a way to use the examples of Coke and Atari to illustrate some larger point about the necessity of understanding your market and avoiding making rash investment decisions, but that ain’t really me. After all: If I were more informed about financial stuff, I probably wouldn’t have agreed to promote a bubble gum-flavored soft drink that was apparently discontinued in the early 1990s. Whoops.
But our story isn’t over just yet! Because as it turns out, Pepsi Invaders would find something of a life after death, and eventually make its way out to the world at large. Come 1996, there was something of a resurgence in interest in classic games of the previous decade; between the introductions of “Greatest Hits” arcade compilations from the likes of Williams and Activision, and a collector’s market for vintage cartridges beginning to take shape. In the March 30th, 1996 issue of Billboard magazine, a story was printed detailing some of the early efforts at reproducing and reselling retro games, including quotes from an interview with Telegames President Terry Grantham. Commenting on a swelling collector interest in rare and out-of-print game cartridges, he would liken the appeal to something “like baseball-card trading.” But perhaps more pertinent to our article is a paragraph that follows immediately after, which highlights specific interest in the Atari 2600 title “Coke Wins” — described as a “mail-order-only premium to promote Coca-Cola,” and which was reported as selling “for as much as $50 among collectors!”
Mr. Pibb: The 3D Interactive Game for Windows
(Coca-Cola Company / BrandGames, 1998)
Sure enough, this is where you begin to see some confusion as to the true nature of Pepsi Invaders and / or Coke Wins, as well as fueling further interest among game collectors [and hoarders] to profit from driving prices and selling off the small handful of surviving cartridges. In one of its most notable bats at auction, a cartridge for the game surfaced on eBay and ended up selling for $1,825, with more current listings sitting near the $3,000 mark. While we’re lucky in the fact that the Atari preservation community is one of the most dedicated to acquiring and documenting games of this nature, and that a wealth of information and provenance can exist for something as deliberately obscure as Pepsi Invaders, it’s still unfortunate that it doesn’t stop misinformation about these games from continuing to be spread. When sources like Billboard misreport the origins of the game as being one in a line of premium mail-order games that appeared in that era (à la Chase the Chuckwagon), it can color the larger perception and understanding of these obscurities for years to come. And that kind of stinks for weirdos like me who wanna learn all there is to know about these games nearly 40 years after the fact, y’know?
With that little diatribe of mine out of the way, I reckon what I’d like to do now is mention a few more attempts by Coca-Cola to rub elbows with video gaming in the years to follow. 1994’s Coca Cola Kid for the Sega Game Gear was exclusively released in Japan, capitalizing on the titular Coca Cola Kid’s status as a brand mascot in the region. Developed by Aspect Co. and published directly by Sega, it stars a rad skateboarder who speeds through the game’s platforming stages, drinking delicious Coke to restore his energy as needed. A few years later in 1998, Coca-Cola would collaborate with McDonald’s to distribute discs for a PC/DOS game centered around their Mr. Pibb line — with a title screen stating the full name of the game to be Mr. Pibb: The 3D Interactive Game. Developed by the company “BrandGames” on the infamous 3D GameStudio engine, the game is no less than a first-person shooter where you must power your belches with the power of Mr. Pibb in order to de-zombify the population of your school and thwart a mad scientist’s scheme. Y’all have no idea how big the smile on my face was getting to type that last sentence up.
I could go on about advergames for days on end here, and I probably will try and find more excuses to do so in the near future. But I’m gonna call it a wrap here, and close out the currently-known story behind Pepsi Invaders. While some details of its creation and distribution still remain to be solidified, we’re still fortunate enough to know what we currently do about it. The fact that a video game was to be developed in secret – by the largest name in the games industry at that time, no less – so that a roomful of Coca-Cola employees could destress by virtually / symbolically obliterating their competition, is all a beautiful bit of knowledge to have. And the fact that this private little gag gift has gone on to become the subject of historical research and a valuable auction commodity is honestly kind of wild to think about. All this fascination over something so half-assed and rushed to pass, with absolutely no consideration paid for it’s longevity or preservation… I guess the joke was on those involved in its creation, when all is said and done.
Have a safe and happy April Fool’s Day, if that’s your bag! Please e-mail me if you would be interested in driving to my home and picking up eleven crates of expired soft drinks. Help me.
Love the 2600 stuff! Would definitely love to see more of this.