Paperboy is a 1984 arcade game by Atari Games. The players take the role of a paperboy who delivers newspapers along a suburban street on his bicycle. The game was ported to numerous video game consoles and personal computers. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) version represented the first NES game developed in the United States and coincidentally, the Sega Master System version represented the first SMS game developed in the United Kingdom. Paperboy was innovative for its theme and novel controls.
The player controls a paperboy on a bicycle delivering newspapers along a suburban street which is displayed in a cabinet perspective (or oblique projection) view. The player attempts to deliver a week of daily newspapers to subscribing customers, attempts to vandalize non-subscribers' homes and must avoid hazards along the street. Subscribers are lost by missing a delivery or damaging a subscriber's house.
The game begins with a choice of difficulty levels: Easy Street, Middle Road and Hard Way. The object of the game is to perfectly deliver papers to subscribers for an entire week and avoid crashing (which counts as one of the player's lives) before the week ends. The game lasts for seven in-game days, Monday through Sunday.
Controlling the paperboy with the handlebar controls, the player attempts to deliver newspapers to subscribers. Each day begins by showing an overview of the street indicating subscribers and non-subscribers. Subscribers and non-subscribers' homes are also easy to discern in the level itself, with subscribers living in brightly colored houses, and non-subscribers living in dark houses.
Paperboy was ported to consoles and home computers, starting in 1986. In some of these versions, the player could assume the role of a papergirl instead of a paperboy. Paperboy was ported to the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron (by Andy Williams, 1986), Commodore 64 (by Chris Harvey and Neil A Bate, 1986), Commodore 16 (1986), Amstrad CPC (1986), ZX Spectrum (1986), Apple II (1986), TRS-80 Color Computer (1986), DOS (1988), Apple IIGS (1988), NES/Famicom (1988)(1991, Japan), Game Boy (1990), Game Boy Color (1999), Atari ST (1989), Amiga (1989), Atari Lynx (1990), Sega Master System (1990), Game Gear (1991), and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis (1991)(1992, Japan).
More details about this game can be found on
Wikipedia.org.
Find digital download of this game on
GOG
or
Steam.
Videogame Console:
This version of Paperboy was designed for the Sega Master System (SMS), which was an 8-bit video game console manufactured
by Sega in the years 1985 - 1992. It was a direct competitor to the much more successful NES console and the predecessor of the much beter console Sega Genesis.
The unit price of Master System was approximately $ 200 and worldwide only 13 million units of this console were sold. More information about Sega Master
System can be found here.
Recommended Game Controllers:
You can control this game easily by using the keyboard of your PC (see the table next to the game). However, for maximum gaming enjoyment, we strongly recommend using a USB gamepad that you simply plug into the USB port of your computer. If you do not have a gamepad, buy a suitable USB controller on Amazon or AliExpress or in some of your favorite online stores.
Available online emulators:
4 different online emulators are available for Paperboy. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in support of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For
maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic
features of each emulator available for this game Paperboy are summarized in the following table:
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