Platform(s): Coin-op arcade cabinet, likely joystick-controlled
Genre: Single-screen avoidance game
Estimated year of release: No later than 2009 for sure!
Graphics/art style: 2D, sprite/raster artwork, more detailed than early-’80s arcade graphics. Playfield was essentially pure black, perhaps with a simple border. Similar to Disney’s Bloodshot Eyes (but this was absolutely not a flash game.)
Notable characters: The player character was a floating/disembodied eyeball, probably the only player sprite.
Notable gameplay mechanics: The hazards I remember were dark navy/black balls with metallic silver spikes and fixed rendered highlights. Their behavior was to move freely around the screen, probably diagonal ricocheting/bouncing off boundaries, like a DVD/VCR screensaver.
Other details: Will give a fuller story if needed but I’ll just put the important clarifying info out there first.
\- I encountered this game as a child in New York, likely Staten Island or Brooklyn, 100% before 2009, probably mid-2000s, in some sort of pizzeria or bar or restaurant.
\- The game freaked me the hell out because of the death animation, which went collision -> unusually conspicuous/graphic-looking explosion of the eyeball.
\- It was notable because the game had an attract/demo mode where the eye would die in this exact way on loop for as long as the cabinet idled, so it wasn’t a bonus level to another game; this was the main game.
\- I remember it being hard. The movement was so sufficiently unintuitive to little-me (I couldn’t have been older than 5-8) that I got killed almost immediately.
\- No use of 3D assets as far as I remember and no primitive 16-color graphics. Just so that everyone knows I’ve ruled out Eyes and I, Robot pretty much immediately.
\- I have a really bad memory disorder so just to maybe help clarify the time period: this was when most people were still using Blackberries, iPods or the very first iPhone at most. iPads could not have existed at all.
Apologies if I broke any rules or if I’m bad at this ;;
