Nuclear power plant game tops Atarimania list
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It seems that the attention - or rather tension - generated by the alert at the Japanese nuclear power plant in Fukushima has motivated gamers around the world to look for programs that reproduce the emergency conditions on their computers.
This is the only way to explain that a game as complicated asSCRAM(Atari Program Exchange, 1980) has jumped to thefirst placeon the prestigious list of the "top 100" weekly portalAtarimania
And this relic of the pre-Chernobyl era poses the challenge to uskeep operationala plant ofnuclear power-coincidences of life- after it happenedan earthquake
The program is made inBASIC, with some routines inassembler; so if you are skilled you canmodify valuessuch as the number of personnel available - a resource that is quickly depleted in repair tasks due to the highradiation levels... does this sound familiar?
More data
- The extensive SCRAM manual contains several references to the research conducted after theincident at Three-Mile Island.
- As for the media, it was sold on a cassette with a 16KB version on the "A" side and a 24KB version on the "B" side. Curiously, the tape indicates that the first version takes longer to load than the second.
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