The Paperboy game is probably the most popular game ever to deal with the subject of paper delivery. It was originally released by Atari Games in 1984 as an arcade game. The object of the video game was that you were a paperboy on a bicycle and you needed to deliver papers to houses while dodging/avoiding numerous obstacles.
The original arcade version of the game had a bicycle handle controller that would be used to brake, accelerate or turn. Then you would have a button to press as well that would cause the paperboy to throw his paper to the left either onto the doorstep or in the mailbox or to cause some destruction.
There were three courses to choose from, where each one was progressively more difficult; Easy Street, Middle Road, or Hard Way. Points are gained by successfully delivering papers to your subscribers and breaking windows and other things on the properties of non-subscribers. At the end of the day you could earn a bonus (more points) from the subcribers you successfully delivered papers to. Likewise any of your subscribers that you missed would unsubscribe the following day. The way to gain subscribers back would be to deliver perfectly to each subscribers house, in which case you would receive double the points for each subscriber delivered to, and you would gain one lost subscriber back, unless of course you were already at your maximum. Each course run represented a single day, with the whole game going Monday through Sunday.
The days get harder as the game progresses throughout the week. The overall difficulty of the game is increased by making it harder to get the paper on the doorsteps or in the mailboxes, adding more and more obstacles and by increasing the speed of the cars crossing the intersection. That being said though the course never actually changes from day to day, so eventually you can memorize it over time.
Some of the obstacles you may encounter are mail boxes, bushes, brick walls, push mowers, garbage cans, fences, swarm of bees if you slow down (arcade version only) and even the houses themselves. When you run into one of these obstacles you immediately fall off your bicycle and lose a life. What makes dodging the obstacles difficult is the Paper Boy character is forced to be moving forward at all times, and being that you can only move right or left so quickly, you can sometimes find yourself in a situation where you simply cannot move side to side quick enough to avoid an obstacle.
At the end of your street is a Paper Boy training course where you can practice and get more points. And then finally at the very end of the training course is a GRAND STAND filled with your fans.
Paper Boy has been remade many many times since it’s days as an arcade game on the original nintendo, TRS-80, Commodore 64, Wii, Xbox 360, and PS3.