Kaboom!

Kaboom! is also a breakfast cereal available in the early 80's. It came in a bright yellow box with a big creepy clown on the front, and it smelled (and sort of tasted) like Play-Doh. I remember begging my mother for it on numerous occasions only to vomit it back up later.

Atari 2600 Game
Produced by: Activision
Model Number: AX010
Rarity: 2 Common
Year of Release: 1981

Kaboom! was an Atari 2600 game that required a special sort of zen to play. It was deceptively easy at first. The Mad Bomber would move along the top of the screen slowly dropping bombs on you. You had to catch them in your bucket, (using your paddle controller). If you missed a bomb all of the other bombs on screen would explode and you would lose one of the 3 sections of your bucket.

It is only after you are playing a while that you realize how hard this game is. After a few stages the bombs begin dropping at a rate of about 30 per second. It is still possible to catch them all though. It requires very intense concentration. You must focus on the game. One wrong move with your paddle and you lose the bottom section of your barrel. When that happens you might as well hit the reset button. Because Kaboom! gets harder every time that you miss a bomb.

I remember playing Kaboom! for hours as a child. Staring intently at the screen and furiously twisting my Atari paddle from side to side. The best score I ever managed was a little over 2000. (A score of 3000 would get you a patch from Activision). That is no where near the world record of 999,999, (held by Todd Rogers).

This game was programmed by two of the best Atari 2600 game programmers ever, David Crane and Larry Kaplan.

Excuse my poor ascii rendering of this game.

________________________________
|                      114      |
|                               |
|     (##)                      |
|     (##)   --Mad Bomber       |
|     (##)                      |
|-------------------------------|
|     O                         |
|                               |
|                               |
|              O                |
|          O                    |
|       O                       |
|                --Bombs        |
|    O                          |
|                               |
|        ===                    |
|        ===     --Player       |
|        ===                    |
|_______________________________|

From the instruction manual:

Prepare yourself for a supreme test of reflexes, coordination, and agility. You're about to face the world's most unpredictable and relentless "Mad Bomber". He hates losing as much as you love winning. So, to keep him frowning, take a minute to read over these instructions. Then, grab your buckets and bomb away!

This game is valued at around $2 USD. Games with boxes and manuals are worth more.

Also referred to as Kb!, a semi-funny term which refers to a firearm catastrophe which usually involves a case failure that results in a cracked chamber, cracked slide, cracked barrel, destroyed frame, and/or wrecked magazine depending on severity of the said case failure. Barrel obstructions can also cause a gun to Kaboom! Revolvers can also Kaboom!, usually destroying the cylinder where the ammunition is held. The actual thing is not funny as it can seriously injure the operator or anybody nearby.

Used in that sense quite recently after a number of users destroyed their Glock pistols after firing a round which apparently produced pressures too high for the glock to withstand. The fact that Glocks have chambers which are not fully supported (to ensure feeding reliability in adverse conditions) is also another factor that can contribute to a Kaboom!

Glock pistols are the most commonly associated guns with this phenomenon but it is common knowledge that any and all guns will eventually Kaboom! if used to fire ammunition that generates pressure levels in excess of what the particular was designed for. The Glock's popularity means that there are much more of them out there and therefor there is a greater chance that one will Kaboom! Stastically, they do not Kaboom! more often than any other quality pistol.

Though supposedly more common in the .40 S&W versions there also have been reports of Glock Kaboom!s in the other calibers. Lead build up on the polygonal rifling has also been suspected as a possible culprit as this can also contribute to the generation of excessive chamber pressure.