Sorcerer's Apprentice

Name:	Sorcerer's Apprentice
Company:	Atari
Model #:	CX-26109
Programmers:	Peter C. Niday (Programmer), Dave Joly (Graphics), & Robert Vieira (Sound)
Year:	1983
Released?	Yes
Notes:	Peter Niday's initials may be hidden in the game.

Sorcerer's Apprentice was one of the games created out of Atari's licensing deal with Disney (along with Snow White, Donald Duck's Speedboat Race, and Dumbo's Flying Circus), and the only one to actually be released. Atari made Sorcerer's Apprentice part of its children's line-up along with games based on characters from Sesame Street, Peanuts, Muppets, and Garfield. These games were designed to teach children hand-eye coordination while entertaining them with semi-educational gameplay.

As you may have guessed, Sorcerer's Apprentice is based off the Fantasia segment of the same name. You play the part of Mickey where you must catch or shoot falling stars, which are apparently turning into brooms and flooding the cavern below. Shooting meteors will bail some of the water out of the cavern if the level is getting too high. If you miss too many stars you must run down to the basement and stop the brooms from filling the cavern up with water. You can stop the brooms simply running into them, this clears the way for the empty buckets to start bailing water out of the cavern.

While the game concept isn't bad, the gameplay is way too easy (even for a children's game). Younger children may find it amusing for a short period of time, but older kids will quickly grow bored running Mickey up and down the ladder all day. The Sorcerer's Apprentice theme is very nicely done, and makes the game almost worth playing just to hear it (almost). Recently a version of this game has turned up with a slightly different music at the beginning. Since this version was in a production cart we can only assume that a change was made in mid-production for reasons unknown.

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