The
objective in Human Cannonball is to shoot the man out of the cannon and
into a water tower. Before you can do that, you have to do some math. There are
three variables to consider: the angle of the cannon (trajectory), the rate of
speed of the man after being shot, and the distance between the cannon and
tower. Angle, speed, and distance must be correct or else our daredevil winds up
flat as a pancake. Not as gruesome as Circus Atari,
though! At first I thought the words "UH OH" were being
displayed when this happens, but actually it says "OU CH" (the game is
really very primitive - that was a tremendous special effect for its time).
If I had the time or really wanted to beat this game, I would develop a formula or construct a chart. But I don’t want to. Atari used a similar concept in Sky Diver (timing, wind direction, and drift) to land a parachutist onto his mark. I do like the game Artillery Duel quite a bit more - Human Cannonball tries hard to duplicate that game - mainly because you’re playing directly against a human opponent.
I’d just like to nitpick here, if I may. I don’t ever recall seeing anything other than a net used to catch a real life human cannonball. Maybe Atari figured his butt catches on fire and he has to duck out of there fast! You only get seven lives to get a high score. There are plenty of variations, most of which require you to change your mathematical formula. There is a real toughie that has a scrolling window which must be shot through to reach the water tower. The size of the tower can be adjusted with the difficulty switches. ancient gaming the way I guess it was meant to be.
