Written by Bill Williams (the writer and designer of Sinbad and the Throne of the Falcon, among other games), for the Atari Program Exchange, and first released in 1982, Salmon Run is a clever, and uniquely different, video game based upon the life cycle of a fish – a salmon, specifically – that is trying to swim upstream to its spawning ground.

You control the salmon and can move it left and right and can make it accelerate in the water, or slow down. You can also make it jump, which is necessary for traversing upstream over waterfalls. If you touch the sides of the river (the banks) the fish will come to a stop, so that should be avoided at all costs.

Occasionally the salmon will encounter serious threats to its life, usually in the form of bears that are waiting at the side of the water in order to catch the fish and eat it. This then becomes a tense game of cat-and-mouse (or: bear-and-fish) where the aim is to outwit the bear and move past it without being caught. To do that you can make the bear move left or right by positioning yourself in the water (remember: the bear can see you when you’re close to it), and when you have it where you want it you must then zoom past it and try to avoid its claws. It’s better to use the salmon’s speed in the water to beat the bear, rather than jumping, which will almost always result in death.

As you move further up the river your points will increase and the idea is to score as highly as possible and to reach the spawning grounds at the end. When you manage that you’ll meet a female fish and kiss to signify your success, and then you begin the cycle again but at a higher difficulty. What this means is that bears will now run at you out of nowhere, forcing you to go into turbo mode and to swim as fast as you can, without touching the banks. Because if you falter for just one second you’ll end up as lunch. You’ll also face fishermen dredging the river with their nets, and double waterfalls.

The graphics in Salmon Run are basic but well-done. Small touches, like the water ripples, help give the game some realism. The sound effects in particular I thought were very good. The water noises are excellent, and the kissing sound effect when you complete a level is also surprisingly good.

Salmon Run was converted to the Commodore VIC-20 and released in 1983, but it doesn’t seem to have been ported anywhere else, which is a pity because Salmon Run is a cool idea that could’ve evolved into something more feature rich and educational. As it stands, though, it is an excellent little game that is still fun to play now.

More: Salmon Run on Wikipedia