Spy vs Spy

Spy vs Spy arrived in 1984 courtesy of First Star Software, adapting Antonio Prohías's classic wordless comic strip for Mad Magazine, in which a white spy and a black spy sabotage each other without pause. The computer version split the screen into two synchronized halves: each player roams the same maze-like embassy hunting for the briefcase, the key, and the passport, while setting traps -bombs in drawers, tripwires on doors- to slow the other down. That shared-screen format, unusual for its time, became its trademark. In Atari's European catalog it circulated as one of the few titles with that kind of real-time tactical mischief between two players on the same screen. It holds up less for its schematic graphics, faithful to the comic's black and white, than for a design that demands memory and bluffing, something rare in the arcade offerings of its era.