Kaboom! is an Atari 2600 game designed by Larry Kaplan and David Crane that was released by Activision, which was also ported to the Atari 5200 and the Atari 8-bit computer family. In this game, the Mad Bomber is on the roof of a building dropping bombs on you, and you control a series of buckets that must catch the bombs and defuse them before they reach the bottom and explode, causing you to lose a bucket.
This game provides examples of
- Game Over: The game ends when you lose all your buckets or when your score reaches 999,999 points.
- Institutional Apparel: The Mad Bomber wears prison stripes.
- Perpetual Frowner: The Mad Bomber. He only smiles when you miss one of his bombs, and looks shocked if you manage to reach 10,000 points.
- Player Versus Player: In the Atari 5200 and 8-bit computer versions, one player controls the Mad Bomber and the other player controls the buckets, alternating roles between turns.
- Scoring Points: For every bomb you catch in your buckets.
- Spiritual Successor: Of the Atari arcade game Avalanche, which Larry Kaplan wanted to port to the Atari 2600.
- Video-Game Lives: Three buckets, with an extra one awarded every 1,000 points in case you lose one.