Omega Race

Did You Know?

• The Atari 2600 cartridge came bundled with a booster grip controller that converted the single-button CX40 joystick to separate thrust and shoot buttons.
• Omega Race is one of a few CBS games for the Atari 2600 with an additional 256 bytes of RAM in each cartridge, a feature promoted as RAM Plus.
• An update for the Atari Jaguar was pitched to Atari Corporation by Temporary Sanity Designs but never moved beyond the proposal phase.

Gameplay

In Omega Race, the year is 2003. You pilot an Omegan Fighter through a rectangular track, blasting enemy droid ships. A spinner turns your ship, a button provides thrust, and another fires lasers. You must dodge or destroy drone ships, commander ships, two types of space mines, and shooting star ships. Hitting the screen's edge sends you bouncing off a briefly visible invisible barrier. Extra ships appear at 40,000 and 100,000 points by default.

Reception

According to a 1982 guide, even a novice could drop a quarter into Omega Race and rack up 20,000 points. Over 35,000 cabinets were produced, each pulling in an average of $181 weekly at the time, often landing among the top ten highest-earning arcade games. Another 1982 book noted its "deceiving appearance," claiming the game looked easy but built a "healthy level of frustration" that players found stimulating. Compute! magazine called the VIC-20 version a "real winner." BYTE praised it as fast-paced with colorful graphics and good sound, saying it kept all the best arcade features and was fun. Ahoy! described it as fairly faithful to the original and very exciting. This home version earned a Certificate of Merit for Best Solitaire Computer Game at the fourth Arkie Awards.