Cloak & Dagger - The Movie and the Game

[Nz17]

Any fans of the arcade game, home console game, or movie?

A summary for those (like myself) who haven't seen the film:


11-year-old Davey, whose mother is dead and whose father is preoccupied with his own problems, has retreated into a world of video games and an imaginary hero-pal, the swashbuckling superspy Jack Flack. When an FBI agent about to be murdered slips him a video cartridge containing top-secret data, Davey is suddenly plunged into the intrigue and danger of real-life espionage. No adult believes his story, so he must run a gauntlet of violence and villainy aided only by a younger girl and the encouragement of "Jack Flack" at his side. How long can a comic-book role model guide him through this encounter with reality?
- Written by Paul Emmons

[bb_hood]

The movie is pretty good for a kids film. The best thing about the movie is all the Atari crap in the background.
However I dont think a playable game exists at all.

[Tanooki]

I don't remember there being a game either, but I remember seeing it as a kid and teen too and really liking it for the odd value of it. It really is kind of a decent spy movie for what they were trying to get at. I think I'd watch it again if it were on TV just to see how badly it has aged.

[Emperor Megas]

I loved this movie as a kid, but I haven't seen it in years and I'm a little scared of seeing how badly it's aged as well.

[wizardofwor1975]

Personally, I've never seen the arcade game in the wild. Supposedly, the Atari 5200 game screens used in the movie were actually from a Cloak & Dagger arcade machine. I know they were working on an A8 port of the game but it was never finished. I thought it was very savvy for Atari to design Cloak & Dagger so that it could be played on converted Defender, Stargate, Joust and Robotron 2084 cabinets.

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=7353

http://www.atarimania.com/game-atari-400-800-xl-xe-cloak-and-dagger_1090.html

It looks like the game was originally developed under the name Agent X but was changed to Cloak & Dagger for the movie.

http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=12914

[CRTGAMER]

The movie is pretty good for a kids film. The best thing about the movie is all the Atari crap in the background.
However I dont think a playable game exists at all.

Another game in the movie is what really had me intrigued. Dedicated a whole Thread to it back in 2010.


http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=293108#p293108

This game was truthfully a decades wait for me. I was first made aware of Atari 5200 Tempest when watching the movie Cloak & Dagger which I purchased on Laser Disc. I bought the movie just to see a possibility of an official Cloak game which turned out to be just special effects and movie props. What really caught my eye was all of the other game boxes shown in some of the movie scenes which included Atari 2600 and 5200 versions of Tempest. A pause and jog shuttle back to scrutinize the movie frames. I had already bought a 5200 console new which offered arcade perfect translations in its time. That movie really teased gamers, wondered when Tempest would ever come out on the 5200?

http://www.atariprotos.com/8bit/software/cloakdagger/gameboxes_large.jpg

Two years later gave that thread a very sweet update thanks to Atari Age.


Atari Age collaborated with the original programmer, Keithen Hayenga to complete the game thirty years later. I tried out 5200 Tempest with a Wico Joystick and the Atari 5200 Trakball. Setting the Wico stick to centering springs on helps to stop, but playing Tempest with an analog stick is really out of control. Any push of the stick just causes the Live Circuit shooter to just spin wildly around the tube. The Trakball is the best way to play. The ball offers instant quick movement to get to the other side of the tube or track by track precise movement with instant stop and move again. One thing I noticed is when expert level the Tempest Shooter really flies, the Trakball is so close to the Spinner response of the Arcade.

http://www.racketboy.com/forum/download/file.php?id=7955