Tugboat Details - LaunchBox Games Database

Overview

Tug Boat was developed by Moppet Video and published by Enter-Tech, Ltd. in 1982. A kids' game where the player controls a tugboat which the player must navigate up the river while avoiding logs and touching lighthouses for points. There is no penalty for hitting the riverbank. The Horn button just sounds. The first four levels just get faster, then the river channel narrows, and the boat's speed repeats. Each level contains exactly 28 buoys. Logs are placed at random and will be re-arranged upon losing a ship on the same level. Of the eight stages, the first four are with a nice, wide river channel. Each of these four stages increases in speed and the number of logs on it. Stages five to eight have a much narrower river and increase in speed on each stage. Level eight is believed to be unbeatable, given the complex arrangement of densely clustered logs on a narrow river. The best strategy is to pass each of the 7 stages first without losing any ships and collecting as many buoys as possible. Then, on stage 8, collect as many buoys as possible until you crash. Once you crash, the stage will re-start and rearrange the logs (giving the player a chance to re-negotiate the tight river). Bonus scoring is cumulative.