Alley Cat (1984) [MS-DOS]

Alley Cat is a video game created by Bill Williams and published by Synapse Software for the Atari 8-bit family in 1983, and later for MS-DOS in 1984 by IBM. The player controls “Freddy the Cat,“ whose objective is to perform certain tasks within the homes of people in order to reach his love, Felicia. Alley Cat was based on a one-screen prototype by John Harris. Harris had become unhappy with the direction that the game was headed in and handed it over to Williams who expanded the basic concept into a finished game. An unrelated Alley Cat game was released in 1984 by Solar Software for the Commodore 64. In the main screen, which is the alley, the player is presented with a tall fence in front of an apartment building with several windows. Each window periodically opens to throw out random objects (a phone, shoe, etc.). Every once in a while a dog may come running along the bottom edge of the screen. If the cat touches this dog, they get into a fight and one life is taken away.