Ratcatcher

About the game

Biff, Buzz and Pork-Chop work in a sewer with five floors, and the rats have the run of it. Each stage gives you 60 seconds to catch rats, and the game wants at least five of them: catch fewer and the stage fails and costs a life. Catch more and the bonus at the end grows, with a separate tally for each player.

The floor is not empty, either. Alligators patrol the walkways, and the game's own enemy list also names sewer gas, electric rats, ball lightning and sewer gremlins. Pipe switches on the sides of each floor open and close gates, and flush switches release a blast of water along a floor, so getting around is half of the game: where you stand when you press the button decides what the sewer does next. Some stages are bonus rounds, with coins to collect or a challenge to reach the next stage.

It looks like an arcade game from the early eighties and plays like one: short rounds, a score and a hi-score on top of the screen, and a title screen that tells you right away who the stars are. The author has also released the full source, which is how this page can offer the game.

Playing it here

This is a homebrew game made for the Atari 5200: a new game by an independent developer, not a commercial release. It runs in our build of the a5200 emulator, with a free replacement for the console's system ROM (the AltirraOS), so nothing from Atari is needed. Click Play and press Enter (Start) on the title screen. The Atari 5200 controller has a twelve-key pad; the game only asks for the * key on the title screen, and on a phone the 123 button opens the pad.

Controls

A gamepad works too: its stick is the 5200's analogue joystick, A and B are the fire buttons and Start is Start. A second gamepad is player two. On a phone or tablet the controller appears on screen under the picture.

Tips

Learn the switches first. The pipe switches at the ends of each floor and the flush switches work differently, and the game gives no manual: spend the first stage seeing what each one does.

Do not wait for the clock. Five rats in sixty seconds is the minimum, so go for the closest ones and keep the water flush for a floor with several.

Watch the lives. A failed stage costs you a life (you start with three), so a careful run beats a hurried one.

Credits and licence

Ratcatcher was written by Ryan Witmer (Average Software), copyright 2016, with additional artwork by Lou Graziani, and is released under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later. The ROM served here is built from the author's own source download, which we host next to it together with the licence text and the build script.