Keystone Kapers was the third
Atari 2600 game developed by
Garry Kitchen following his games
Space Jockey and a port of
Donkey Kong. Following completing work on
Donkey Kong in May 1982, Kitchen joined
Activision in June. Kitchen flew out to meet with the Activision team. Activision founder
David Crane said that he knew the company had to grow but that having more people together would have made things worse so having the other office far away was ideal. Kitchen worked at Activision from a satellite design office in
Glen Rock, New Jersey. Kitchen spoke of the situation later, saying the he found the other Crane's group "preferred the idea of spawning another creative office to minimise the chance of screwing up the group synergy of Activision’s original creative team." He immediately began designing a game which would become
Keystone Kapers. The game was developed under the code name of
Cop. 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. ==Release==