Let’s get this out of the way up front: Lilly Adventure is an Atari 2600 game, and as such, it seems kind of unfair to include it in this column at all. After all, given the extreme limitations of the hardware, it’s a wonder that 2600 programmers could even produce something this good. Still, the fact is, some 2600 games (mostly those made by Activision, Imagic, Parker Brothers, and Atari themselves) have stood the test of time. That being the case, I think there’s something interesting to be discovered by looking back at those that didn’t. That’s where Lilly Adventure comes in.
Normally at this point I’d give a bit of the history behind Lilly Adventure, but as nearly as I can tell, there’s almost nothing to be learned about it on the English-speaking internet. It appears to be either a remake or a hack of a German game that was known as both Bobby Geht Heim and Bobby Geht Nach Hause, which was also remade or hacked as Jumping Jack. My only reason for thinking Lilly Adventure is a later version is that it is, for the most part, better looking.
Atari Age, who are usually the authority on such things, list Lilly Adventure as being released by both Quelle and Home Vision, exclusively in Europe. However, a couple of things lead me to doubt that those are the only releases. First, according to Home Vision’s Wikipedia entry, at least some of the games it distributed in Europe were developed in Taiwan by Gem International Corporation. Second, the anime-style label art on the Quelle version suggests that it was released in Asian markets at some point.
Whatever the history of Lilly Adventure, it can hardly be as convoluted as the game itself. The gameplay conceit–walk from left to right and jump over both static and moving objects, was not new, but Lilly Adventure puts a crazy twist on it. The enemies you encounter look like the savages from Jungle Hunt and the amorphous blobs from Activision’s unreleased puzzle game Kabobber–not what you'd expect to find on a journey through what looks like the European countryside. What’s particularly odd is that while the game’s background art, and Lilly herself, both look good for their time, everything else looks rather crude.
The controls are where Lilly Adventure really falls apart, though. The worst part of Bobby Geht Heim was the extremely floaty and imprecise jumping, which Lilly Adventure has not fixed. That’s too bad, since that particular mechanic is completely unsuited for the challenges the game throws at you. The pits and ground-based enemies are easy enough to avoid, but complicating things is the black bird that hovers just above Lilly’s head at all times. Avoiding it without falling into a pit or bumping into one of the walking enemies seems, in some cases, to be literally impossible thanks to Lilly’s moon jumps.
Taken on its own, the gameplay is frustrating, but when combined with the schizophrenic soundtrack, it becomes almost unbearable. Music was not the 2600’s forte, and smart programmers used it only in small doses to add a bit of color. Not so with Lilly Adventure. A medley of public domain tunes plays on a constant loop in the background, with each one cycling through about three different octaves before moving on to the next. It’s funny at first, but within five minutes, it becomes maddening. Technically, it’s interesting that a developer was able to pack this much music into a 2600 game, but it would be better if they hadn’t.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about gaming in the 2600 era was the wild west nature of development. Nearly any game idea that it was technically possible to realize could actually get made, no matter how crazy; and since copyright law as it applied to video games was still being ironed out, unlicensed hacks abounded. Whether or not Lilly Adventure was unlicensed is less important than the fact that it’s an incredibly weird experience–if one that you probably won’t want to have for more than a few minutes.