Birthday Mania
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| Birthday Mania | |
|---|---|
 Screenshot of in-game birthday wish | |
| Publisher | Personal Games Company |
| Programmer | Robert Tokar |
| Platform | Atari 2600 |
| Release | 1984 |
| Genre | Shoot 'em up |
| Mode | Single-player |
Birthday Mania is a 1984 shoot 'em up video game for the Atari 2600. Each copy was made to order and displayed an in-game birthday message personalized with a name. Birthday Mania was developed independently and only advertised in local newspapers. With about ten sales, it is one of the rarest and poorest-selling commercial video games.[1][2]
In the Atari 2600 library, the personalization aspect is unique to Birthday Mania except for very few custom copies of Spacechase and Raiders of the Lost Ark.[1]
Birthday Mania starts with a birthday message including a name specified when the game was ordered, while the "Happy Birthday to You" melody plays.
A hatted man, named "Mr. N. Ervous" in the manual, can be moved left or right along the bottom of the screen (he "nervously travels"). Candles fall downward from above; Mr. Ervous must blow them out by shooting gusts of wind upwards.
There is a limited amount of air available; air is depleted when unextinguished candles reach the ground, and some is replenished for every 100 candles that are blown out. The game ends after all air is exhausted.[3]
Development and release
Robert Anthony Tokar (1941–2022) created Birthday Mania in 1984, after studying 6502 assembly. He spent several months working on the game and advertised it in The Star-Ledger, a Newark, New Jersey publication.[4] The advertisements contain an order form including fields for the first and last name, which Tokar programmed custom into each copy's EPROM for an on-screen birthday wish.[1]
The game was sold under the "Personal Games Company" label. It was advertised as a gift that "puts the birthday child's name right on the TV screen." Tokar sold only 10-15 copies, likely due to the limited advertising campaign and ongoing video game crash of 1983.[1][4]