Carnival is a fixed shooter arcade game

Arcade game

An arcade game is a coin-operated entertainment machine, usually installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars, and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, and merchandisers...

 created by Sega

Sega

, usually styled as SEGA, is a multinational video game software developer and an arcade software and hardware development company headquartered in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan, with various offices around the world...

 in , and has the distinction of being the first video game with a bonus round

Bonus round

A bonus round or bonus game, known in the industry as an end game, is a special round in a game show or similar contest. The bonus round usually follows a main game as a bonus to the winner of that game...

.

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to shoot at targets, while carefully avoiding running out of bullets. Three rows of targets scroll across the screen in alternating directions; these include rabbits, ducks, owls, and bonus items. If a duck target crosses the bottom row without being shot, it will come to life and begin flying down toward the player. Any ducks that reach the bottom of the screen in this manner will eat some of the player's bullets. Objects also periodically appear among the targets that will give the player extra bullets or points when hit. A spinning wheel with eight pipes sits above the rows of moving targets; these pipes and all targets must be shot in order to complete the round.

At the end of each round, the player receives bonus points for all bullets remaining in his supply. He then plays a bonus round, where a large white bear with a target walks across the screen. Each time the bear is shot, it rears up for a second, then begins walking more quickly in the other direction. The object is to shoot the bear as many times as possible until it escapes off the screen. Following the bonus round, the next wave begins. Later bonus rounds add more bears to the screen.

In higher levels, there are more duck targets and fewer extra bullet targets, putting a premium on accurate shooting. The game ends when the player runs out of bullets.

The tune that plays throughout the game is Sobre las Olas

Sobre las Olas

The waltz "Sobre las Olas" is the best known work of Mexican composer Juventino Rosas . It "remains one of the most famous Latin American pieces worldwide," according to the "Latin America" article in The Oxford Companion to Music.It was first published by Rosas in 1888...

 (Over the Waves) by Juventino Rosas

Juventino Rosas

José Juventino Policarpo Rosas Cadenas was a Mexican composer and violinist.-Life and career:Rosas was born in Santa Cruz de Galeana, Guanajuato, now renamed Santa Cruz de Juventino Rosas. Rosas began his musical career as a street musician and playing with dance music bands in Mexico City...

, a tune commonly associated with carnival

Carnival

Carnaval is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnaval typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party...

s and funfair

Funfair

A funfair or simply "fair" is a small to medium sized travelling show primarily composed of stalls and other amusements. Larger fairs such as the permanent fairs of cities and seaside resorts might be called a fairground, although technically this should refer to the land where a fair is...

s.

Technical details

The controls for the standard upright version of Carnival are left and right directional buttons, and a fire button. The cocktail version replaces the directional buttons with a two-way joystick. Carnival is also one of the few games that has two different PCB

Printed circuit board

A printed circuit board, or PCB, is used to mechanically support and electrically connect electronic components using conductive pathways, tracks or signal traces etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-conductive substrate. It is also referred to as printed wiring board or etched wiring...

s, one for each version; normally a game only has one PCB with a dip switch

DIP switch

DIP switches are manual electric switches that are packaged in a group in a standard dual in-line package...

 that sets it to either upright or cocktail mode. The upright and cocktail cabinets each come in two varieties, one woodgrain and the other painted orange and white.

Legacy

Carnival achieved enough popularity in the arcade that it was eventually ported to all three of the major home video game console

Video game console

A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer or customized computer system that produces a video display signal which can be used with a display device to display a video game...

 systems of its time. There were also unofficial clones

Clone (computer and video games)

A video game clone is a video game or game series which is very similar to or heavily inspired by a previous popular game or game series. Some video game genres are founded by such archetypal games that all subsequent similar games are thought of as derivatives.The term is sometimes derogatory,...

 for home Microcomputer

Microcomputer

A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...

s such as Acornsoft

Acornsoft

Acornsoft was the software arm of Acorn Computers Ltd, and a major publisher of software for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. As well as games, they also produced a large number of educational titles, extra computer languages and business and utility packages - these included ROM-based word...

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