Caveman, anno 1982

Hi there,

25 years after this fine tabletop left the Tomy factory it's in my collection, thanks to eBay. I was able to buy it for just 5 euro. It's in excellent condition (except for the scratch on the screen) and still working great. Caveman (1982) is a VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) tabletop that boasts some very nice and colourful sprites (see second picture).

The Great Game Database has a good explanation of the gameplay.
You were a caveman and had to steal eggs from a dinosaur. If you waited too long, the egg would hatch into a bay dinosaur and you'd have to wait till the dinosaur lay another. Throwing your club at a specific point and timing to the dinosaur's actions would result in the dinosaur being knocked unconscious for a period of time. Once you got the egg, you had to get the egg back to your cave before the dinosaur decided to wake up and walk forward, even breathing fire to kill you. Collecting certain numbers of eggs led to harder levels. Ptrodactyls would fly in the sky and swoop down to take the eggs. A volcano would explode and drop bits of lava which killed you.

As you can read - and see - on Handheld Games Museum, Caveman can be found in two different colours (red and beige) and was also sold by Radio Shack under the Tandy brand name. In the U.K. the game was sold under the Grandstand name.

Unfortunately, I don't have the game boxed. That's a shame because the artwork on the box is pretty cool, as you see on the pictures shown at the Handheld Games Museum.

Game on

R.