Atari 8-bit - Atari - 1980

SCRAM

1 / 3

Genre: Simulation - Miscellaneous
Year: 1980
Language: BASIC
Publisher: Atari
Controls: Joystick
Developer: Atari
Players: 1
Country
Programmer(s): Crawford, Chris
License: Commercial
Graphic Artist(s): Crawford, Chris
Medium
Sound: [n/a]
Rarity: 5
Cover Artist(s): [unknown]
Serial: CX4123
Dump: Download

OTHER VERSIONS WITH THE SAME TITLE (2)

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

Although the program works on all systems, BASIC - Revision A is required to avoid having a broken Atari logo on the loading screen.

Released in France as Centrale Nucléaire.

Missing original tape image!

INSTRUCTIONS

Loading instructions:
- turn off disk drive and make sure you are in BASIC mode
- insert tape file in your emulator / APE
- type CLOAD
- type RUN

INSTRUCTIONS (1)

PDF

CATALOGS (2)

VOTES / STATISTICS

Rating7.3/10

Hits: 139,805
Downloads: 9,440
Votes: 62

⬇ DOWNLOAD PDF

COMMENTS (6)

dtm-artist16 Mar 2024
Wonderfully ambitious and original simulation from the master himself. At a time when an industry was content to shoot space aliens, Chris Crawford dared to imagine greater possibilities for video and computer games, and for that alone SCRAM is a classic.
rave.N30 Jul 2015
Looking at the (BASIC) source code, the program requiring only 16KB RAM is a newer version 1.4 than the program requiring 24KB version 1.3 . The one needing 16K memory is also larger and more advanced because it loads in two or 3 segments not one or 2. So the "24K" game counterintuitively offers nothing new and might be worse than the "16K" version. Hi, Chris!
Dylan19 Jun 2013
I'm working on porting this to Python. If anyone else could give me a hand in the next few weeks shoot me an email dthomas2622 [at] gmail [dot] com. Need a hand with some of the thermodynamic algorithms.
Lanrek15 May 2011
this game was prophetic. too bad its a planet killer. ive been thinking about rewriting this. soon.
Jonny EOL12 Nov 2006
Thankfully, the manual has been preserved here - and you really do need it to play (also used it for science homework once!). Released pre-Chernobyl, this relic of the nuclear age makes the heavy-going sciences of nuclear energy as enjoyable as possible, as you battle to keep your power plant operational in an earthquake zone.
Brentski18 Aug 2006
An interesting 'game'. Really a simulation, but still good fun. The instruction manual is intense; containing large excerpts from the investigation of the Three-Mile Island accident, and a lengthy discussion of how a Nuclear power plant works. Heady stuff for the time, even now... This was also my first video game hack. The program was coded in Atari BASIC. You would first load the code from cassette (yes, cassette tape), and then run it. Before you ran the code, you could alter it if you took the time to understand a bit of it. Anyway, I altered it so that the generator was not capped for maximum power output; also increased the number of workers by a factor of 10. (workers were vital to repair damage, and were a consumed resourse; you could only use a group once due to radiation exposure rules, damn you NRC!) Melting down the reactor was always good for a grin. And the alarm sound for 'Steam Voiding' still enters into select nightmares of mine. If you can get ahold of the manual (not my copy, sorry) this is certainly worth the time. Otherwise I doubt you will have a clue what is going on.