Chase the Chuck Wagon is a maze game. The object of each maze screen is to move Chuckie, the dog, through mazes of four different designs and escape through the opening directly below the chuckwagon. The player has limited time per maze to accomplish this. There are two obstacles in each maze: the dog catcher moves through the maze, and if he touches Chuckie, the player loses one life; the bouncing object travels back and forth across the maze unhindered by the maze walls, and if it touches Chuckie, he will be frozen momentarily, making it more difficult to reach the end of maze within the time limit or avoid the dog catcher. After successfully completing a maze screen, the maze clears and the reward screen appears. A dog dish drops from the chuckwagon, and the player must use the joystick to orient Chuckie left or right to face the dish, and press the fire button at the right moment to stop it horizontal to Chuckie, allowing him to move to the dish and eat. This scores an additional 100 points. If the player misses, no points are awarded and the game advances to the next maze screen. If the player does not press the fire button, the dish falls repeatedly and the game does not advance. The player starts the game with three Chuckies. Chuckies are lost when time runs out on a maze or upon contact with the dog catcher. The gameends when all the Chuckies are exhausted.
Scoring
The amount of time left on the clock at the end of each maze is the player's score for that stage. Each successfully completed reward screen adds 100 points. When the game is over, the total score is displayed.
Controls
The player uses the joystick to move Chuckie through mazes and to change his facing on the reward screen. The fire button is only used to stop the dropping food dish on the rewards screens. The console controls are unusual as the Atari's Reset switch does not start the game. Instead, the Select switch is used to start a game.
History
As part of a promotion involving the Chuck Wagon line of dog food, Purina contracted video game distributor Spectravision to create a game themed around dogs and dog food. Customers could redeem proofs of purchase from bags of dog food in exchange for the game, an example of a new marketing technique that emerged during the popularity of video games in the early 1980s. In practice, the promotion was relatively unsuccessful. The unshipped cartridges were destroyed.
Legacy
Chase the Chuck Wagon is far from the rarest of games for the Atari 2600, but it is often referred to as the Holy Grail of Atari 2600 video game collecting.
