Freeway is a video game designed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 video game console. It was published by Activision in 1981. One or two players control chickens who can be made to run across a ten lane highway filled with traffic in an effort to "get to the other side." Every time a chicken gets across a point is earned for that player. If hit by a car, a chicken is forced back either slightly, or pushed back to the bottom of the screen, depending on what difficulty the switch is set to. The winner of a two player game is the player who has scored the most points in the two minutes, sixteen seconds allotted. The chickens are only allowed to move up or down. A cluck sound is heard when a chicken is struck by a car. Comparisons are often made to Frogger, which has also features crossing a street filled with moving vehicles. Similarities did help sales when Frogger was popular in the arcades and a home version was not yet available. Freeway was made available on Microsoft's Game Room service for its Xbox 360 console and for Windows-based PCs on August 18, 2010.
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Joguei com meu véio uns tempos atrás e foi divertido. No Atari 2600 era necessário um malabarismo pra fazer aqueles pixels trazerem algo interessante para os jogadores, e esse jogo conseguiu fazer isso.
I remember a period as a kid where I went to my grandmas house a lot and my mom wouldn't let me bring my Snes or PS1 over there, but she had a 2600 that I think was my uncles when he was a kid. It had some random games, even some iconic classics like Donkey Kong, Pole Position, and Dig Dug, but a lot of these games were quite difficult for me at the time compared to what I was used to at home, not the least of which is the nightmare which is Pitfall.
I enjoyed playing those sometimes, but I tended to get further and more enjoyment out of the random monotonous simple sports games and the game I probably played the most was this game, Freeway. As I mentioned above, this game is a worse Frogger. I've played Frogger a few times in my life but it wasn't any kind of staple for me, but Frogger has the added layer of the platform moving river segment to each level and encourages horizontal movement more because of it, Freeway is a simple two direction highway and because of it the programming is much more predictable and the game is a lot simpler.
It isn't free of difficulty at times, but it was simple enough for me to play it pretty repetitively compared to some other games I had at my fingertips. Sure Dig Dug was significantly more fun, but getting far in it was always a bit more stressful, so Freeway was probably the game I spent idle time wasting on that 2600 the most ultimately.
Is it a good game? Not really, doesn't stand out much even for its era. But it saved me from some childhood boredom more than a few times and that's worth something!