Clowns and Balloons

Information

Genre

Arcade - Breakout / Pong / Circus

Language

Machine Language

Controls

Joystick, Paddles

Players

1, 2 (alt.), Demo

Programmer(s)

Cohen, Frank

Graphic Artist(s)

[n/a]

Sound

[n/a]

Cover Artist(s)

Ross, Scott

Year

1982

Publisher

Datasoft

Developer

[n/a]

Country

USA

License

Commercial

Medium

Tape, Disk

Rarity

5 (Tape), 5 (Disk)

Serial

1160

Votes / Statistics

Rating: 7.5/10 · Votes: 32 · Downloads: 3,827 · Hits: 33,858

Additional Comments

Screenshots (4)

Cover Art (6)

Instructions (1)

Ads (1)

Comments (5)

• vulcanphil — 26 Mar 2025

  A fun classic! Use a paddle controller if you can. Not to be taken too seriously (other than the mangled lost player LOL!)

• Punkydudester — 9 Dec 2014

  I love this game, definitely one of my favorites.

• Greg B. — 1 Nov 2007

  Wow, great to see you posting here, Frank. Nice to know that some of you guys are still around! You have no idea how many hundreds of hours my friends and I logged on this game back then. We were all addicted to "Clowns" and "Circus" in the arcades and your Atari 800 port totally nailed the essence of these games. It's also the best paddle-controlled game ever made for the system and still holds up today. I still talk to a lot of Atari 8-bit users and believe me, many people still play this game. So, after two decades I can finally tell you personally, this is an excellent game! Very well done. Best of luck to you, I'll check back in another 25 years...

• Sascha Buchner — 1 Mar 2007

  thank you Frank for your great work on the 8-Bit Ataris. Me and my brothers spend countless hours playing your games. I wish you the best for your future. Sascha

• Frank Cohen — 1 Mar 2007

  Wow! This was my first game. It brings back such great memories to see the screen shots, photos of the package, and even the cheesy ads from DataSoft. The game took me about 4 months to program. The last month was bug fixing and that was really painful. I had a hundred bugs to fix. One of the minor ones was I got the text wrong for the bonus round. When the game displays "Bonus Round" it would print "Butus Crewt" on the screen. I was working with Mark Rielly, Ron Rosen, William Robinson, and others at the time. They started asking me when Butus Crewt was going to be done! I was all of 21 at the time. Now I'm 45. -Frank Cohen