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Frostbite (video game)

1983 video game

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ5506197 ↗
Source-derived summary

Frostbite is a 1983 action game designed by Steve Cartwright for the Atari 2600 and published by Activision in 1983. In the game a player controls Frostbite Bailey, who must hop across several ice floes to collect ice while avoiding falling in the water and avoiding the hazardous natural elements such polar bears and snow geese.

Cartwright developed the game for Activision after making several other games for the company since 1982. It was the last game he made for the Atari 2600. While critics often compared the game to Frogger and Q*bert, Cartwright said he based it only on Frogger and had not played Q*bert before completing the game.

Upon its release, some critics complimented the game's arcade-like action as being a novel twist on Frogger and Q*bert, while others lamented that the game seemed out-of-date with its simple gameplay and was not as visually appealing as other Activision titles. Retro Gamer included the game in their list of the top 25 games for the Atari 2600 in 2008.

Gameplay

The goal of Frosbite is to help Frostbite Bailey build igloos by controlling him while jumping across ice floes to collect ice and avoiding falling into the sea. The player must also keep Frostbite clear of hazardous killer clams, snow geese, king crabs, and polar bears. Ice is collected by leaping onto an ice floe that is white, causing it to turn blue, no longer bare ice for Frostbite Bailey to collect.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Frostbite (video game)” as 1983 video game. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Frostbite, video and game.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1983, 1982, 2008—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1983-08-14. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Frostbite, video and game providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Frostbite (video game)”, the useful work is to connect “1983 video game” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5506197. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1983, 1982 and 2008.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Frostbite (video game)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Frostbite (video game) primary sources, Frostbite (video game) archive and Frostbite research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Frostbite (video game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.