I remember turning in one Christmas wish list circa 1987 which included a hardcover version of The Neverending Story emblazoned with the Auryn from the film, a switchblade comb utilized by an assertive paperboy in Better Off Dead, and the Atari 5200 cartridge version of Cloak & Dagger. The latter would have been rather difficult to procure, as it didn’t exist. Well, it sort of didn’t exist.
The 1984 Cloak & Dagger film (on heavy HBO rotation in the 80’s) was under development at the same time as an Atari coin-op game called Agent X. The two caught wind of each other’s projects and decided to partner up. The only thing changed in the final development of the game was the title screen, which was modified to match that of the film. The scenes of Morris playing the game were done by rigging up the coin-op’s video output to a television screen. The game was actually being controlled off-screen by the Atari software engineer who created it, Breighton (Rusty) Dawe. According to former Atari developer Dave Comstock, the cartridge shown in the film was actually Donkey Kong with a mockup label glued to the front.
The Cloak & Dagger coin-op was released after the film’s debut. I remember spying it in arcades, wondering whether the completion of the final level would unleash the Classified document C-3A (meant only for eyes with security level A-4) for the Invisible Bomber project. Thanks to the magic of Youtube, my dreams have been shattered.
Here are the secret plans hidden at the end of the game as they appear in the film:
And here is your reward for completing all 31 levels of this insanely challenging game:
As for Security Clearance A-4? Yeah, not a real thing.
