.gif)
3-D Tic-Tac-Toe (Atari 2600)
Encyclopedia
Atari, Inc
Atari, Inc. was an American video game and home computer company founded in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Primarily responsible for the formation of the video arcade and modern video game industries, the company was closed and its assets split in 1984 as a direct result of the North...
for the Atari 2600
Atari 2600
The Atari 2600 is a video game console released in October 1977 by Atari, Inc. It is credited with popularizing the use of microprocessor-based hardware and cartridges containing game code, instead of having non-microprocessor dedicated hardware with all games built in...
console and Atari 8-bit computers
Atari 8-bit family
The Atari 8-bit family is a series of 8-bit home computers manufactured from 1979 to 1992. All are based on the MOS Technology 6502 CPU and were the first home computers designed with custom coprocessor chips...
in 1980.
Description
The game is similar to the traditional game of tic-tac-toeTic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe, also called wick wack woe and noughts and crosses , is a pencil-and-paper game for two players, X and O, who take turns marking the spaces in a 3×3 grid. The X player usually goes first...
, but is played on four 4 × 4 grids stacked vertically on top of each other; it is basically a computerized version of the board game Qubic
Qubic
Qubic is the brand name of a four-in-a-row game played in a 4×4×4 matrix sold by Parker Brothers starting in 1953. The original box, and the 1972 reissue, described the game as "Parker Brothers 3D Tic Tac Toe Game." Players take turn placing pieces to get four in a row horizontally or...
using traditional tic-tac-toe notation and layout. To win, a player must place four of their symbols on four squares that line up vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, on a single grid, or spaced evenly over all four grids. This creates a total of 76 possible ways to win, in comparison to eight possible ways to win on a standard 3 × 3 board. The game has nine variations, it can be played by two players against each other, or one player can play against a built-in AI
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
on one of eight different difficulty settings. The game uses the standard joystick controller.
3-D Tic-Tac-Toe was written by Carol Shaw
Carol Shaw (video game designer)
Originally an Atari employee, Carol Shaw is said to be the first female video game designer . Later she joined Activision, where she programmed her best known game, River Raid...
, who went on to greater fame as the creator of Activision's
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
River Raid
River Raid
River Raid is a scrolling shooter videogame and was released in 1982 by Activision for the Atari 2600, and later the Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit, C64, ColecoVision, IBM PCjr, Intellivision, ZX Spectrum, and MSX...
.
The game was remade for the Microsoft Entertainment Pack
Microsoft Entertainment Pack
The original Microsoft Windows Entertainment Pack is a collection of simply-designed 16-bit computer games for Windows. These games were somewhat unusual for the time, in that they would not run under MS-DOS. Many of the games were later released in the Best of Windows Entertainment Pack...
as TicTactics; this version also allowed the game to be played inside a 3 × 3 × 3 grid.
Ports
3-D Tic-Tac-Toe was made available on Microsoft'sMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Game Room
Game Room
Game Room is a gaming service for the Xbox 360 video game system, Microsoft Windows PCs, and Windows Phone 7. Launched on March 24, 2010, Game Room lets players download classic video games and compete against each other for high scores...
service for its Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
console and for Windows-based
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
s in August 2010.