Comotion

Comotion is an arcade game that was released by Gremlin Industries (in 1976); it runs upon an Intel 8080 microprocessor (running at 2.079 MHz), and is a four-player version of Gremlin's own Blockade (which was released earlier in that year), housed in one of two different cocktail cabinets (as you can see in the flyer to the right). The basic rules from the older game remain unchanged - all four players must make lines around the screen to trap their opponents and leave them unable to move (in a two-player game, the third and fourth players will get filled in for by the CPU), and each time you trap one of your opponents and leave them unable to move you will receive a point. The amount of points that a player needs to win this game again depends on what the arcade operator has set it to (this time, it will only be either 3 or 4); it will also not get displayed at the top of the monitor this time. Once one of the players has the required amount of points, the screen will flash to announce them as the winner - and Gremlin later went on to release another two-player version of this game named Hustle, in which players had ninety seconds to run into boxes in order to gain their point values. In a one-player game you would receive a penalty if you ran into the CPU opponent, the walls, or your own tail; however, in a two-player game, you would receive extra points if you forced your opponent to do these. Midway's Checkmate, which was released in that following year, also features similar gameplay to this title; but it allowed one player to play alone and three players to play simultaneously with the CPU filling in for the other three players and Player 4 respectively. It also featured phrases like: "PLAYER X CHECKS OUT", "PLAYER X MEETS HIS MAKER", and "PLAYER X PRONOUNCED DEAD", which appeared at the bottom of the screen when one of the players was left unable to move - and X was 1, 2, 3 or 4.