Chase The Chuck Wagon
- Brand
- Purina
- Year
- 1983
- Objective
- Sales
- Industry
- Other
- Mechanic
- Arcade & Action
- Platform
- In-Game
- Agency
- Spectravision
- Added
- October 2026
- 1
The game ships only by mail: buyers send Purina a proof-of-purchase cut from a Chuck Wagon dog food bag and receive an Atari 2600 cartridge in return, since it is never sold in stores.
- 2
The cartridge boots to an attract screen showing a chuck wagon above a maze; the player presses Select to start (Reset does nothing), then sets the console's difficulty switch, which sets the time limit (60 seconds normal, 30 seconds and a faster pace on Expert).
- 3
The player guides a dog, Chuck, through a maze toward an exit beneath the wagon at the top, racing a depleting timer across three lives.
- 4
A wandering dog catcher patrols its half of the maze and costs a life on contact, while a separate bouncing object (a bone, fire hydrant, cat head, or rival dog depending on the round) ricochets off walls and freezes Chuck on contact, draining time and leaving him exposed; repeated hits lengthen the freeze and speed up the object.
- 5
Tight passages require nudging the joystick to free Chuck when he snags on a corner, costing extra seconds.
- 6
Clearing a maze banks the remaining time as that round's score; running out of time or being caught costs a life instead.
- 7
A bonus round follows each maze: a food bowl drops from the wagon while the player turns Chuck left or right to face it, pressing fire the instant it lines up — the only use of the fire button in the game. A hit earns 100 points and lets Chuck eat; a miss scores nothing and moves on; not pressing at all stalls the bowl's drop and blocks progress. The bowl falls faster with each repetition, making this the main source of points.
- 8
Four maze layouts cycle in sequence, the last being nested boxes that the player escapes outward through a single opening in each layer, before the set repeats.
- 9
The game ends when all three lives are lost, tallying a final score from banked maze time plus 100 points per bowl caught; the only goal is a high score.
Objective
Ralston Purina needed to drive repeat purchases of Chuck Wagon dog food during the Atari 2600 boom, and it did so with a mail-in premium: send in proofs of purchase, get a free cartridge. The game also extended the brand's long-running TV device — a dog chasing a tiny chuck wagon — into the new medium of home video games.
Solution
The player loads the cartridge into their own Atari 2600 and steers a white dog, Chuck, through an overhead maze toward a chuck wagon waiting at the top of the screen. Along the way a dog-catcher and a flying object patrol the maze, and the player has to dodge both while racing the clock — 60 or 30 seconds, set by a difficulty switch — with three lives in reserve. Between mazes, a bowl of Chuck Wagon dog food drops from the wagon and the player catches it, turning the brand's own product into the level's reward. The game cycles through four maze layouts, and a run ends when the player runs out of lives or time.
Can you still play it?
Chase the Chuck Wagon can't be played officially: it was never sold in stores, only mailed to customers who sent Purina proofs of purchase for Chuck Wagon dog food, and the brand later destroyed its unshipped cartridges, leaving it with no surviving copies. The original ROM still runs in-browser through the Internet Archive's Console Living Room emulator collection. Original cartridges otherwise exist only on the collector's market.
