Mail Boy

Name:	Mail Boy
Company:	Datamost
Model #:	N/a
Programmers:	Frank Cohen
Year:	1983
Released?	No
Notes:	Eventually released as Cohen's Tower for the Atari 8-Bit Computers

What do you get when you put an Amazon delivery man into Elevator Action and strip out all that spy stuff?  You get Mail Boy of course!  Mail boy is an action platformer game by Frank Cohen who was a prolific programmer for the Atari 8-Bit computer line, but who was also apparently dabbling in Atari 5200 programming as well.

You play the role of Allen (known as Our Hero on the title screen) who must pick up and deliver packages that are scattered around the tower like office building and drop them off in one of three handy mail drop boxes located at the top, middle, and bottom of the tower.  Unfortunately for our hero the office has decided to install lifts instead of proper elevators (where's OSHA when you need them?) so you'll have to carefully (and I do mean CAREFULLY) jump from each floor onto the moving lifts in order to move between floors.  Jumping onto and off of a lift is the single most dangerous part of the game as the collision detection is very finicky.  If the player has not completed his jumping animation before the top of the lift touches his feet he'll fall right through to his death.  You're given a little more leeway when jumping onto a downward moving lift (you can fall a little distance before dying) but the timing is still tricky.  Who knew being a delivery boy could be so dangerous?

Once you've mastered the art of jumping onto the lifts you'll find there are a few other hazards to deal with.  First, if you stay too long on a lift a flower pot will fall from the top of the screen and kill you (do you work in the same building as Crazy Climber?).  If you need to go up several floors make sure you jump off to an intermediate floor so you don't stay on the lift longer than necessary.  The second hazard is your boss.  Every now and then the boss (who was apparently modeled after Dabney Coleman) will come out of a random door and pace around while looking at his watch, this is your cue to look busy!  To get rid of your boss simply jump onto a lift and he'll leave.  If you stay on a level too long while your boss is out he'll eventually go back inside his office and you'll be issued a demerit.  Demerits count as lives and once you accumulate four it's game over.  Falling off a lift will also give you a demerit instead of a nice payout from a lawsuit for some reason.  You can also collect keys from the sides of the tower that count as extra lives/demerits.

Unfortunately that's about all there is to this early version of the game.  There doesn't seem to be a way to actually complete a level so once you've delivered all the packages you're doomed to wander around the building forever.  When the game was finished and released as Cohen's Towers on the Atari 8-Bit computers the boss would come out of his office and take you to the next level.  Since the boss behaves as an enemy in this version that doesn't happen so it's unknown how the player would have moved to the next level.

There are many other missing/changed features that were added when the game was released as Cohen's Towers:

• There is only one tower (level) instead of three.

• The first tower is called Nim Nom's Tower instead of FANDA Tower.  Nim Nom was Frank's joke name for Datamost's headquarters.

• The building address on the door where you start is different

• The introduction with the letter from your boss is missing

• The dog, spy, and secretary are all missing.  The dog would have appeared from random doors and chased you as you tried to pick up the mail.  The Spy would walk around and attempt to steal packages and you would have to grab them back form him.  The secretary could be found randomly and kissed for extra points.

• The graphics are slightly different and less refined.  This is especially noticeable with the packages.

• The colors are also a little different.  According to Frank the interesting choice of colors in his games was due to his colorblindness.

• The mail drop boxes don't say Thank You when you deliver mail

• In the final version you start with 2 demerits (lives) which count down each time you die instead of starting with zero and having them count up.

• Instead of guiding you to the next level the boss acts like an enemy if you stay too long on a platform

• The screen is setup for a two player mode but it doesn't appear to have been implemented.  This planned feature was remove from the final.

• The music never changes.  In the final version the music changes when enemies chase you.

As it stands Mail Boy is an interesting platformer that needs some work to make it into a fun game.  Frank had originally planned to add a second stage where the player would go inside the offices to collect prizes.  However Frank had a major falling out with Datamost at the time and he delivered the game 'as is' without the planned second half.  This helps explains why the game feels a bit flat in the end.  It's unknown why work was stopped on the 5200 version, but Datamost probably saw that the 5200 market wasn't doing very well and decided to not enter it given the extra cost of cartridges versus the tapes and disks they released their Atari 8-Bit titles on.

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