Barnstorming is a 1982 Atari 2600 game designed by Steve Cartwright and published by Activision. You fly a biplane through a course of barn doors, trying to complete every opening as fast as possible. The entire game is a race against your own best time — one clear idea, executed cleanly.
How to Play
Your plane moves automatically to the right; you steer its altitude and left-right position. Each barn has a doorway in its centre — fly through it cleanly or bounce off the wall and lose seconds. Two other hazards break your rhythm: weather vanes on top of barns (drop lower to slip underneath) and haystacks on the ground (climb to clear them). Geese drift across the screen periodically; hitting one slows you for a moment, so routing around them is usually faster than absorbing the delay.
The game tracks your elapsed time on screen. F11 (SELECT) cycles through variations that adjust how many barns appear, where haystacks sit, and whether geese show up. Start on an easier variation to learn the course before moving to harder, more crowded layouts.
Controls: Arrow keys — steer | Spacebar — trigger | F12 — Reset/start | F11 — SELECT (cycle variation) | Alt+P — Pause
Tips
- Set your altitude well before each barn — last-moment corrections overshoot and send you into the wall.
- Geese travel a predictable arc across the screen. Time your approach so they have already passed rather than reacting when they are right in front of you.
- The obstacle layout repeats every lap. After a few passes you will know exactly which barns carry weather vanes and can pre-position before you reach them.
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