Topsy Turvee

Name:	Topsy Turvee
Company:	Datamost
Model #:	N/a
Programmer:	Frank Cohen
Year:	1982
Released?	No
Notes:	Also called Topsy-Turvy and Topsee Turvee

Topsy Turvee (also called Topsy-Turvy in some places), was an experimental platform game by Frank Cohen.  Better known for games like Cohen's Towers and Scrolls of Abaddon on the Atari 8-Bit computers, Topsy Turvee was to be Frank's first attempt at an Atari 5200 game.

Being a very early demo there isn't much gameplay implemented.  Topsy Turvee bypasses the standard Atari 5200 splash screen and drops the player directly into the game, no title screen or options have been implemented yet.  The game screen shows two 4x6 isometric grids, one on the top of the screen and one on the bottom.  There are two 'chutes' that allows the player to travel from one grid to the other although oddly the chutes are in different places on each grid and don't line up with each other.  The player can walk around each of the grids causing little beads to appear.  These beads don't appear to do anything and once the player has filled both grids with them, there isn't anything else to do.  Sometimes the beads will appear up in the score area due to the buggy nature of the demo.  The player can also fall off the sides of the grid, but since they appear to have infinite lives in this demo no life is subtracted.  The score counter is also non-functional and always shows 12300.

According to Frank the gameplay would have revolved around the player collecting beads for energy while avoiding enemies.  The 'gimmick' of the game was that it was in 'two dimensions' with the player having to navigate both the top and bottom of the screen.  Walking off the sides of the grid was then supposed to move the player to another grid with a different set of beads to collect with some sort of strategy required to get from one grid to the other.  Unfortunately none of these ideas have been programmed yet so the player is doomed to simply walk around a grid full of beads.  It's interesting to note that the final version would have had the player collecting beads while it appears that in this early demo the player is placing the beads as he goes.

Topsy Turvee was Frank's first attempt at a 5200 game and as such had a number of issues that had to fixed before it would compile.  One of the quirkier things is the joystick centering code which does not work in emulators using a keyboard.  The reason behind this is due to the fact the game attempts to calibrate the 5200's analog joystick by having the player move the joystick to various extremes and using those values for center.  While this works with an analog joystick it does not function correctly when using keys on a keyboard (digital input).  Frank later refined this centering code for his next 5200 game attempt Mail Boy.  Another quirk of the joystick code is that the left and right inputs appear to be reversed!  Whether this is the result of a simple programming bug or was intentionally done for some reason is unknown.

According to Frank work on Topsy Turvee was abandoned when he couldn't find a publisher that was interested in it.  However a Datamost press release from 1983 mention Topsy Turvee (listed as Topsee Turvee) as being an upcoming title for the Atari 8-Bit computers and Commodore 64.   A small blurb describing the C-64 version in the 1983 issue of Commander Magazine (most likely taken from another press release) states:

"Designed for younger audiences, this upside-down 3-D perspective computer game features two-grid action.  Your goal is to fill up the grids with what closely resembles loaves of bread.  As you work to fill up the grids, little creatures try to knock you off the grids into the holes so that when you re-appear you are playing upside down."

This very much matches the limited gameplay from the 5200 demo version (minus the creatures) and gives a glimpse into what the game might have looked like if it had been finished.  It's unknown if any work was done on the Atari 8-Bit or C-64 versions, but the 5200 version never progressed further than this early demo.

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