The Game That Came With Handlebars

Picture the scene; a thirteen year old enters a busy games arcade filled to the brim with popular cabinets with a fistful of 10p pieces given to him by a pestered mother. All the usual suspects are lined against the wall - Space Invaders, Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Frogger while a few pinball tables lay back like easy women trying to seduce you with lights and bells. But something isn't right. These machines which are normally surrounded by young scallywags, fighting for their turn are quiet. As ignored as water in a brewery.
Suddenly the teenager sees a crowd in the far corner and as soon as they thin out, spots the reason for the tumbleweeds in other parts of the arcade. There is a game with a bicycle's HANDLEBARS acting as its controls! No joystick or buttons, just regular handlebars reserved usually for bikes. Well that thirteen year old was me when I first clapped almost disbelieving eyes on Atari's superb Paperboy cabinet, pictured below.


It was quite a sight, especially when you consider that gimmicks like this didn't come around as often as they do now. The early eighties is when videogames started to get cool and it was a fantastic time to grow up in and be part of. Im truly grateful I was there.
The game itself (when I finally got to it after the mob died down) was a simple enough challenge. Choose a street - EASY, NORMAL or HARD - then steer the paperboy along the pavements while throwing newspapers into customers' mailboxes and throwing them THROUGH non customers' windows. Or you could hurl them at the numerous obstacles that stood in your way like drunks, kids on go karts, speeding cars and even the grim reaper! On Easy Street life was well ....EASY but getting from Monday to Friday on HARD took a lot more skill. (And a dash of luck.)
At the end of the street, providing you made it that far, was a training course where you had to jump over ramps and fling your papers at giant targets. Successfully complete this and paperboy was greeted with an applauding audience with one of them holding up a sign that bore the legend 'I Luv Paperboy.' Im not sure exactly why but that is one of my favourite gaming clips. Weird huh? But still, ignoring my strange taste, Paperboy remains one of my beloved arcade games and cabinet.