Hunchback is an 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...

 developed by Century Electronics in 1983. The player controls Quasimodo

Quasimodo

Quasimodo is a fictional character in the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death. The role of Quasimodo has been played by...

 from the Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo

Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame is a novel by Victor Hugo published in 1831. The French title refers to the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, on which the story is centered.-Background:...

.

The game is set on a castle wall. The player must cross the screen from left to right avoiding obstacles in order to ring the bell

Church bell

A church bell is a bell which is rung in a church either to signify the hour or the time for worshippers to go to church, perhaps to attend a wedding, funeral, or other service...

 at the far right. Obstacles include pits which must be swung over on a long rope, ramparts

Defensive wall

A defensive wall is a fortification used to protect a city or settlement from potential aggressors. In ancient to modern times, they were used to enclose settlements...

 which must be jumped (some of which contain knights with spears) and flying fireballs and arrows (to be ducked or jumped). Eventually, after completing a number of screens, the player must rescue Esmeralda

Esmeralda (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)

Esmeralda, or La Esmeralda , born Agnes, is a fictional character in Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame . She is a French Gypsy girl...

. If this final screen is completed, the game begins again at a faster speed.

The hunchback character was originally to be Robin Hood

Robin Hood

Robin Hood was a heroic outlaw in English folklore. A highly skilled archer and swordsman, he is known for "robbing from the rich and giving to the poor", assisted by a group of fellow outlaws known as his "Merry Men". Traditionally, Robin Hood and his men are depicted wearing Lincoln green clothes....

. Hence the green costume and the game stages with arrows. The artist who drew the Robin Hood character left the company before the decision to change the theme to Hunchback. By the time a new artist was taken on, the green costume had become accepted and no-one questioned it (someone commented that the Robin Hood character, as drawn, looked like a hunchback).

Ports were made for most home computer

Home computer

Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...

 systems of the time by Ocean Software

Ocean Software

The British company Ocean Software was one of the biggest European video game developers/publishers of the 1980s and 90s...

 in 1984. It was their first arcade port. The exceptions to this are the BBC Micro

BBC Micro

The BBC Microcomputer System, or BBC Micro, was a series of microcomputers and associated peripherals designed and built by Acorn Computers for the BBC Computer Literacy Project, operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation...

 version (which had already been released by Superior Software

Superior Software

Superior Software is a video game publisher. It was established in 1982 by Richard Hanson and John Dyson, two graduates of the University of Leeds, England...

) and a later port for the MSX

MSX

MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation...

 (1985).

There is a 1989 fan remake for DOS

MS-DOS

MS-DOS is an operating system for x86-based personal computers. It was the most commonly used member of the DOS family of operating systems, and was the main operating system for IBM PC compatible personal computers during the 1980s to the mid 1990s, until it was gradually superseded by operating...

 by Robert Schmidt, based on the BBC version.

Hunchback continues to inspire developers and gamers. The game-play mechanics of Hunchback were the inspiration for iOS game The Rescue.