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Keystone Kapers is a platform game developed by Garry Kitchen for the Atari 2600 and published by Activision in 1983. The game involves a Keystone Cops theme, with the player controlling police officer Kelly, who traverses four floors of a department store, dodging objects to catch the escaped thief Harry Hooligan.
Kitchen designed the game after working on Atari 2600 games Space Jockey and a port of Donkey Kong. He wanted to develop a game similar to the latter game, and he began developing what would become Keystone Kapers. On the game's release in 1982, it received positive critical attention for its graphics and gameplay. It was later ported to other consoles such as the ColecoVision and Atari 5200.
The game ends when the player runs out of lives: lives are lost when running out of time, colliding with a biplane, or allowing Harry escape to the roof of the building. Points are rewarded when apprehending Harry, for the amount of time left when apprehending Harry, and collecting items left around the mansion such as moneybags and suitcases. Extra lives can be earned for every 10,000 points.
Kitchen described that after working on Donkey Kong, he was in "little man mode", a term he used to describe games where the player controls a small person on the screen. Kitchen believed that due to the limitations of the Atari 2600 hardware, he wanted to create a theme could be effectively rendered on the machine while still being lighthearted and whimsical. He experimented with different characters before deciding on a Keystone Kapers before settling on a game around the imagery of the Keystone Cops, as he could properly render their bowler caps, blue uniforms, and billy clubs as well as creating an effective crook graphic. In a 1983 interview, he stated that idea of the Keystone Cop-theme came from his wife.
At the time of development, Activision made games via a PDP-11 minicomputer for editing and writing code and assembling it for 6502-based machines. The initial gameplay design to Keystone Kops was similar to Donkey Kong, with the cop going through the stage vertically to catch up with the crook who was going through the building floor by floor. About a month into development, the vertically scrolling version of the game was in a presentable state. When Kitchen showed the game to David Crane, Crane suggested to make the game extend horizontally like his game Pitfall! that he was working on. Kitchen kept some elements of Donkey Kong in the game, such as objects being thrown at the crook to delay him in this pursuit. Other influences came from Bob Whitehead's Chopper Command, which featured a small map at the bottom of the screen that displayed to players where both the cop and the thief were located.
Keystone Kapers had a four kilobyte limitation for its ROM size. Kitchen stated the limit was necessary from a financial decision. Kitchen noted some items he wish he could have included, such as making it more obvious for the player when was the right to time to use the elevator or escalator in the game. Some elements of the game were removed during the development, such as a scene outside the department store with a vehicle resembling a Ford Model T parked at the curb. Kitchen recalled that the "car was beautiful, but I eventually had to remove it because it cost too many bytes." Other items removed included a television, which Kitchen removed as it was an anachronism. Kitchen said he "had to really cram to finish the game."
Keystone Kapers was later adapted for the ColecoVision by Mike Livesay. A version for the Atari 5200 adds musical backing and the ability to choose what level of the game to start at.
Along with BurgerTime and Dracula for Intellivision, the Atari 2600 version of Keystone Capers received the Certificate of Merit in the category "1984 Videogame of the Year (Less than 16K ROM)" at the 5th annual Arkie Awards. In December 1984, Antic reviewer Ellen Keyt called out the quality of the animation in the Atari 8-bit version, writing "The Keystone Cop's legs stretch when he jumps over a shopping cart, his uniform creases when he squats to duck a toy airplane, and he even pumps his hands up and down, waving his stick when he runs." She called it the "perfect game for anyone". Reviewing the Atari 5200 version, Computer Entertainer gave negative reviews to both the ColecoVision and Atari 5200 versions of the game. The reviewer said that "what was a good game for the Atari 2600 just isn't varied or exciting enough when compared to other games for the more advanced 5200." Deseret News gave the ColecoVision port a three star rating, praising the graphical improvement over the original.
Kitchen followed up Keystone Kapers with Pressure Cooker for Activision for the Atari 2600, and would continue do develop programs for home computers such as Garry Kitchen's GameMaker and consoles such as (1989) for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Reflecting on the game, Garry Kitchen said that felt the game had aged well and "from a graphics standpoint, I certainly spent a lot of time on the look of the game, and I hope it paid off. Obviously, I also put in a great deal of effort tweaking the playability ... I'm sure that, without that time and effort, the game would not have the staying power that it does."
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