VIC-20 Cartridge Software Reviews

a.k.a. Cartzilla!

First release: July 1997

Copyright notice: © 1997 Ward Shrake. All rights reserved. However, the author and copyright holder grants his permission to any individual(s) for any non-profit use of this document. I just ask that any such people will be fair and honest in giving me my due credit for any and all work that I have done, just as I have gone to great pains to credit those before me. Thanks!

Proofread and converted to hypertext by Marko Mäkelä

Author's notes

This document was made to spread useful information to current users of the Commodore VIC-20 home computer system. It contains small text reviews of most of the ROM-cartridge software that was ever made for the Vic20 computing system. (There are 180 cartridges reviewed here!)

The purpose of this document is partly amusement and partly to help the system's modern users to identify software that has a good chance of appealing to them, so they can check it out more for themselves.

Note that this text covers only cartridge-based software. There were many, many more programs once released in tape format. However, the author chose not to review tape-based software, for various reasons.

I wrote this because I saw a need for it. If you're bothering to read this document, you probably see a need for it as well. I've long been involved in gaming, on many systems. I have Atari 2600, 5200, and 7800 systems, as well as the current Jaguar, the ColecoVision, Commodore's 64 computer, the Vectrex, the Sega Genesis, the Nintendo NES & SNES, and even a few of the real, stand-up, full-sized arcade machines. The list goes on, but you get the idea: I don't only like the Vic20.

I've seen, over and over among all the "classic gaming" groups, some form of the "its a title on a list somewhere, and even though I have no clue what it is or what it does, I have to own one" mentality. If you're rich and have ample space for all these toys, why not. But most of us don't fall into that category, hence the need for solid info. I gave up on the idea of having "everything" a long time ago; some games simply aren't worth having, from a "will I ever play it" standpoint. That goes for the Vic20, and every other gaming system ever made. But there are many games that you'd love, too, if only you knew about them.

Besides, the whole "looking through a catalog of stuff I can have" experience is one all of us like, to one degree or another. And with a catalog this size, you'll stay busy for quite some time, I'd say! Why bother looking at was once available but is no longer sold, you ask? There's simple nostalgia. Or carts to buy amongst other gamers.

But more newsworthy is that most of the Vic20's software library is now freely available to anyone with an Internet account. This is thanks to the hard work of a dedicated crew of Digital Archaeologists. (Paul LeBrasse and Ward Shrake did most of the finding and archiving, with occasional help from other retrogamers on the Internet.) We made sure the Vic20 library didn't become extinct. Then I documented it. (Fifty or a hundred years from now, I hope someone is grateful!) And so far, the copyright owners have thanked us for what we've done, too. Much thanks goes to the people who wrote the Vic20 emulators, as well.

Most of the information in this text file will probably remain "as is" for quite some time. This is because most carts we actually had in our hands, and we don't expect our opinions to change without outside input. However, a handful of carts we did not have at all; the rare few carts that are presently "vaporware". These may change, as we get more info.

Anyway, info about this text is included later on. But to appease those of you with large impatience streaks (most of you?), I put the "fun" stuff (reviews) next, and the explanatory stuff way in the back. The list below is alphabetical by software title, in case you're wondering.

I do hope you will find and keep an appreciation of where our gaming hobby has already been, and where it seems to be going. It's quite a rush, these days, what with all the different emulators and such; for this and all the other gaming systems. We gamers never had it better. Enjoy the ongoing history of the audio-visual amusement experience!

Ward F. Shrake

Software Titles Reviewed
How this List is Organized: A Tutorial
Other Sources of Information
What Can You Do to Help Make this Document Better?
Acknowledgements

Software Titles Reviewed

A World at War
A.E.
Adventure Land Adventure
Aggressor
Alien
Alien Blitz
Alien Sidestep
Alphabet Zoo
Amok!
Ape Escape
Apple Panic
Arachnoid
Arrow
Artillery Duel
Astroblitz
Atlantis
Attack of the Mutant Camels
Avenger
Baldor's Castle
Bandits
Battlezone
Black Hole
Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom
Cannonball Blitz
Capture the Flag
Cave-in
Centipede
Choplifter
Chuck Norris Superkicks
Cloudburst
Clowns
Commodore Artist
Computer War
Congo Bongo
Cosmic Cruncher
Cosmic Jailbreak
Creepy Corridors
Crossfire
Dancing Bear
Deadly Duck
Deadly Skies
Defender
Demon Attack
Dig Dug
Donkey Kong
Dot Gobbler
Dragonfire
Draw Poker (see Poker)
Face Maker
Fast Eddie
Final Orbit / Bumper Bash
Fourth Encounter
Frogger
Galaxian
Garden Wars
Ghost Manor
Gold Fever
Gorf
Gridrunner
HesMon
HesWriter
Home Babysitter
Household Finance
IFR (flight simulator)
In the Chips
Jawbreaker II
Jelly Monsters
Joust
Jungle Hunt
Jupiter Lander
K-Razy Antiks
K-Star Patrol
Kids on Keys
Kindercomp
Lazer Zone
Lode Runner
Lunar Leeper
Machine Language Monitor
Mastertype
Maze
Medieval Joust
Menagerie
Meteor Run
Midnight Drive (see Road Race)
Mine Madness
Miner 2049'er
Mission Impossible Adventure
Mobile Attack
Mole Attack
Money Wars
Monster Maze
Moon Patrol
Moses (with or without 8k RAM)
Mosquito Infestation
Mountain King
Ms. Pac-Man
Mutant Herd
Number Nabber, Shape Grabber
Omega Race
Outworld
Pac-Man
Panic Button
Personal Finance
Pharaoh's Curse
Pinball Spectacular
Pipes
Pirate's Cove Adventure
Poker
Polaris
Pole Position
Predator
Princess and Frog
Programmer's Aid Cartridge
Promenade
Protector
Q*bert
Quick Brown Fox
Radar Rat Race
Radiotap
Raid on Fort Knox
Rat Hotel
Renaissance
River Rescue
Road Race
Robin Hood
Robot Panic
Robotron: 2084
Sargon II Chess
Satellite Patrol
Satellites and Meteorites!
Scorpion
Sea Wolf
Seafox
Serpentine
Shamus
Sir Lancelot
Skibbereen
The Sky is Falling
Skyblazer
Slot
Snake Byte
Space Ric-O-Shay
Space Snake
Speed Math & Bingo Math
Spider City
Spiders of Mars
Spike's Peak
Spills & Fills
Springer
Star Battle
Star Post
Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
Story Machine
Sub Chase
Submarine Commander
Super Amok
Super Expander with 3k RAM
Super Slot (see Slot)
Super Smash
Synthesound
Tank Atak
Terraguard
The Count Adventure
Threshold
Tomarc the Barbarian
Tooth Invaders
Topper
Trashman
Turmoil
Turtle Graphics
Tutankham
Type Attack
Vic Avenger (see Avenger)
Vic FORTH
Vic Mon (see Machine Language Monitor)
Vic Music Composer
Vic Rabbit
Vic-20 Atari Cartridge Adapter
Video Vermin
Videomania
Visible Solar System
Voodoo Castle Adventure
Wizard of Wor
Wordcraft 20
Write Now!

If you Like This Game...	Then also Try these Similar Games...
Asteroids	Satellites and Meteorites
Astro-Blaster	Threshold
Battlezone	Tank Atak
Berzerk	Amok!, Super Amok
Breakout	Super Smash, Pinball Spectacular
Carnival	Quackers
Centipede	Video Vermin, Arachnoid
Frogger	Princess and Frog, Menagerie
Galaxian	Star Battle
Kaboom!	The Sky is Falling
Lunar Lander	Jupiter Lander
Night Driver	Midnight Drive (Road Race)
Missile Command	Mosquito Infestation
Othello	Renaissance
Pac-Man	Jelly Monsters, Trashman, Cosmic Cruncher
Q*bert	Topper
Rally-X	Radar Rat Race, Raid on Fort Knox
Rip-off	Bandits
Space Invaders	Avenger, Alien Blitz, Alien Sidestep, Type Attack
Tempest	Star Post
Time Pilot	Satellite Patrol

VIC-20 Cartridge Software Reviews

Game name: A World at War
Company: Handic Benelux B.V.
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Board-style war game simulation. (Hex-based maps, turns, etc.)
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard. Disable bank 1 if present.
Comments: Not given a thorough review, due to its complex nature. You will definitely need the original instructions to use any war game.

Game name: A.E.
Company: Broderbund
Author: Steven Ohmert (198_)
Game Type: Original shooter, flavored with "Galaxian" & "Missile Command".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Excellent. Technically impressive; uses bit-mapping on a computer that was not designed to do this. The smooth, gliding movement of the ships impresses, as does their recession-into-depth. Uses four background scenes; another classy touch. However, from a purely aesthetic point of view maybe the "hi-res" characters just seem small and hard to see by today's standards? For its day... wow!
Sound: Good. Nice attempt at an interesting background tune; notes try to rise and fall smoothly. Sound effects are average or better. Considering the limits of Vic20 sound, this is also impressive.
Gameplay: Good, but takes some getting used to. See comments below.
Overall: Mixed. Technically speaking, this was leading edge stuff for its day both in graphical ability and gameplay mechanic. But is it a fun game to play? You decide. Some may love it, others may not.
Ad Text: "A runaway best-seller for the Apple II and the Atari 400/800, is a winner for Vic-20. Giant robot stingrays designed to fight pollution have run amok and are attacking in waves from the sky. A.E.^tm ('Stingray' in Japanese) is a graphic masterpiece, with screen after screen of spectacular 3-D effects. The arcade-style action is masterful too, as you launch your remotely-triggered missiles and detonate them precisely to coincide with the swooping, diving, constantly changing flight patterns of the deadly A.E.'s!" (From inside cover, Compute's Gazette, July 1983)
Trivia: Original (non-Vic20) version designed by Makoto Horai & Jun Wada according to the screen credits. (Was Apple or Atari the first?)
Comments: The game uses the joystick in a novel way. Left and right do just that, but "fire" is non-standard. Missiles that you fire do not "go off" until you release the fire button. In other words, press and hold fire until the missiles are at the altitude you desire, then release the button, which detonates those missiles. Meaning if you rapidly press and release fire (as in modern games) the missiles simply explode a fraction of an inch over your ship! This takes some getting used to, but it results in an explosion which can destroy more than one ship at a time, too. The overall effect reminds me of the game mechanic used in "Missile Command".

Game name

Adventure Land Adventure

Company

Commodore [Vic-1914]

Author

See Trivia. (1981)

Game Type

"Scott Adams Adventure Games" series. (#1 of 5.)

Required

16k RAM (8k each in banks 2 and 3). Keyboard controlled. The game starts when you type "SYS 32592" and hit the RETURN key. (If you are using a software emulator to run any game in this series, try setting your memory expansion to 24k of RAM. These four programs start at $4000, if your emulator asks you that.)

Graphics

Not applicable. These were text games. You type, it types back.

Sound

See the trivia notes below, but not applicable for the most part.

Gameplay

Some will like it, some won't. A good change of pace, regardless.

Overall

It depends if you like text games or not. The whole Scott Adams series was famous in its time and still has a following online.

Ad Text

"You wander through an enchanted world trying to recover the 13 lost treasures. You'll encounter wild animals, magical beings, and many other perils and puzzles. Can you rescue the blue ox from the quicksand or find your way out of the maze? For beginning Adventurers and veterans alike." (Seen in "Commodore Power Play" Spring 1983 issue, page 105.)

Ad Text

Box ads for the entire series read: "Welcome to the mind-boggling adventures of Scott Adams! These true 'computer classics' are among the most entertaining games in personal computing! Each adventure is a completely different mind-fantasy, drawn from the creative imagination of pioneer adventure game-writer Scott Adams. There are 5 Scott Adams Adventure games on cartridge for your VIC-20... we know you'll enjoy them all! Just look at the adventures we have for you!" (Then it describes each as above.)

Trivia

While the folks at "Scott Adams / Adventure International" should get their fair due for writing the stories and such (on the Vic and other computers), Andy Finkel was responsible for doing the actual programming on the Vic20 versions of the Scott Adams games. Neil Harris was quoted in an online interview, saying that Mr. Finkel had to trim 1/3 the memory out (24k to 16k) of the Vic20 versions to fit them on a cartridge at all. Quite a feat, really.

Trivia

The games in this series "talked" if you had an add-on piece of hardware called the "Type N Talk". (Otherwise, with a standard Vic20, the text just shows up on the screen as you might expect.) The author hasn't personally heard the quality of this speech but has seen reviews of the Votrax hardware itself, which were good. (And I have to wonder... would emulating this device be possible or practical on today's IBM computers? That would be neat, yes? Even just recording the speech as .WAV files would be cool, IMO.)

Trivia

All the games in this series seem to have one advertisement for another game in the series within its available texts. At least two games list a phone number to call, if your local computer store doesn't carry the Adventure series. That's kinda cute, huh?

Trivia

The Scott Adams games were part of a larger collection. While the Vic20 only had five of the games, others did exist for other game machines of the time. The Vic order is as follows:

Adventure Land
Pirate's Cove
Mission Impossible
Voodoo Castle
The Count

For more info about the remaining games, go visit the Internet's online newsgroups that cater to the "text adventure" crowd.

Trivia

Just in case you've wondered, this Scott Adams is no relation to the Scott Adams that writes the popular "Dilbert" cartoon strip.

Comments

Merely to conserve some space here, this review is sort of my standard set of observations for the other four Scott Adams games.

Game name: Aggressor
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C305]
Author: Jeff Minter (1982)
Game Type: Clone of the arcade coin-op "Defender" by Williams.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. Could use the radar screen from the arcade game, but what is there looks good. Not a bad attempt at vector graphic lines!
Sound: Average. Sound effects are good, but get repetitive quickly.
Gameplay: Good or better. Fast paced in most places, reasonable balance. Your ship takes awhile to turn around, and without radar, well...
Overall: Good. Not a bad clone of Defender, given the Vic's limitations.
Trivia: Actually, I don't believe I've seen any truly good port of Mr. Jarvis' ballistic arcade game on any home machine, until Jeff Minter's "Defender 2000" showed up for my Atari Jaguar system. I guess this was his first official warm-up for the project? Go take a look at the official Atari release of Defender, too. You will see that it has an internal message that says it really was done by HES instead of Atari. Hmmm. Jeff's warm-up number two?
Trivia: Mr. Minter certainly has a sense of humor. Inside his code is the message "WELL ZAPHOD'S JUST THIS GUY, Y'KNOW". Once you've read Douglas Adam's 5-part "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" trilogy you'll understand that better. And thank Mr. Minter for making you go read an excellent book series when you're all done, OK?

Game name: Alien
Company: Commodore [Vic-1906]
Author: unknown (1981)
Game Type: Original game involving mazes and digging.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Average. Nothing fancy. Most likely based on character graphics.
Sound: Average. Some simple sound effects, somewhat like the gobbling sounds in Pac-Man, but that's about all. No theme music noted.
Gameplay: Good. Could probably be addicting to some. The idea of digging holes for the other creatures to fall into, and the heart-beating sound effects might build up some decent gaming tension.
Overall: Average to good. Not really flawed, but not wildly spectacular. Younger children may love the game. For them, it may be ideal.
Trivia: This game involves elements from games like Pac-Man (the maze and four characters chasing you) and Apple Panic (the digging). You decide if this makes for a good game or not, but it's interesting.

Game name: Alien Blitz
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1619]
Author: Peter Fokkos and Thomas A. Giguere (1981)
Game Type: "Space Invaders" clone. (Probably unauthorized.)
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick or keyboard play.
Graphics: Endearingly crude. In other words, much like the original.
Sound: Keeps your nerves on edge, like the original. Great laser blasts!
Gameplay: "Just one more..."
Overall: Fans of the original Space Invaders will not be disappointed!
Ad Text: "Your mind must be clear, your nerves steel, and your eyes sharp to prevent the intruders from demolishing the three missile bases under your command. To survive the bomb-dropping enemy, you must think as you dodge, duck, hide, and blast your way to victory... or oblivion! Only the fittest can survive the onslaught of ten skill levels and escape with missile bases intact." (UMI catalog)
Trivia: Internally, this is just a 4k game. Not at all bad, considering! UMI was one of the only companies that had any games ready for release in 1981. It is sort of comical that both Commodore and UMI released a Space Invaders clone as one of the first games. (Man, were people anxious to capitalize on SI's popularity!) The only other company to release in 1981 was Sierra Online, BTW.
Trivia: The original arcade game has 55 invaders; 5 rows of 11 each. This version only has 40 invaders. Maybe only an "expert" would notice? The Gameboy cartridge, in Gameboy mode, also has 40 invaders, but the Gameboy cart has sounds that are closer to the original game. The SuperGameboy version, however, comes as close to true arcade perfection as I've ever seen; it appears to download code to the SNES and hand over control to it, for some mind-blowing nostalgia! But aside from that one cart this may be the best clone I've seen. Commodore's Avenger comes close, but this has a closer feel, IMO.
Trivia: With only minor changes, this game would fool most people if you were to put it into an original-looking arcade cabinet. Since this version and the original are both monochromatic, you could even stick a colored overlay across the screen as later SI models did! But don't forget that the original arcade game had no joysticks; it was just a set of buttons; left, right and fire... remember? (Not that I'm seriously suggesting this... just a sick thought!)
Comments: Space to start game; it may pause for a moment first. Keyboard controls: fire = SPACE, left = LEFT SHIFT, right = RIGHT SHIFT.

Game name: Alien Sidestep
Company: OEM
Author: Kerry Erendson (1983)
Game Type: Variant of "Space Invaders".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. The movement and/or scrolling effects are well done.
Sound: Plain. Just the average shooting sounds you'd expect.
Gameplay: A bit flawed. Fun at first, but after the novelty wears off... The concept was kinda cute, but the experience isn't very deep.
Overall: An interesting change, but not likely to become widely popular.
Trivia: This is a 4k game internally, although it requires 8k to run. This would seem to explain the lack of depth in the gameplay.
Comments: There seems to be only one good way to play the game. You have to move left while shooting quickly, to make a slanting barrage of bullets. This seems to be the only way to actually hit the oncoming aliens. Otherwise, as the name states, they sidestep. Once four aliens have landed past your defenses, it's game over.

Game name: Alphabet Zoo
Company: Spinnaker
Author: Sheldon White (1982)
Game Type: Educational.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Amok!
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1611]
Author: Roger L. Merritt (1981)
Game Type: Clone of the arcade coin-op "Berzerk" by Stern.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick or keyboard. Disable bank 1 if present.
Graphics: Good. The original "Berzerk" was not a graphic wonder to begin with. This is arguably better than the arcade game it is based on.
Sound: Poor. The original arcade Berzerk game had some speech, which made up for its poor graphics. This just bleeps when you shoot. (No more "Intruder Alert" or "Coin detected in pocket"... sigh!)
Gameplay: Good, but a bit frustrating once you've seen "Super Amok". Slow-paced? Only one of your bullets is allowed onscreen at a time. (However, if Super Amok seems too hard, maybe this is just right?)
Overall: Good. Could be lots of fun, even if "Super Amok" is better.
Trivia: As much as it sounds like I'm complaining about this game, it does show how far the industry had progressed in a short time. Berzerk was not out long in the arcades when this home version had arrived. It was only 1982 when Stern put out "Frenzy", the sequel to their earlier "Berzerk" game. Impressive to consider. It wasn't that many years before, when almost all the games in any arcade where black-and-white with huge blocky graphics; remember Midways first game "Gun Fight"? This is Hi-Res compared!
Trivia: I figured out the patterns in most of the software companies part numbering schemes. Most are easy enough. But what was UMI thinking? Aside from the first two digits indicating whether a particular game was made on cassette or cartridge, can anyone else see any kind of pattern emerging? Did they use a dart board to choose their other digits? Did they just make up numbers at random, to make it look like they had more games? Wish I knew.
Trivia: Hey now! Don't be stepping all over my memories! (Hee, hee!) I'm impolitely referring to a new 1996 Sega Saturn game called Amok. I know zip about that game; just thought the name was interesting in this context. Has gaming lost that much creativity? That even names are now being recycled, along with gameplay concepts, etc? Again, I'm not dogging the modern game, just wondering what's up.
Comments: See also Super Amok. It's much more polished than this game is. The basic difference is that this game used 4k of EPROM and its sequel used 8k. Twice the memory space makes a big difference!

Game name: Ape Escape
Company: Spectravideo
Author: Mike Riedel and Greg Carbonaro (1982)
Game Type: Variants of two arcade coin-ops; "Space Invaders" and "Rip Off".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. Lots of little helicopters and such onscreen, all moving fairly smoothly as they steal portions of the "Spectra Tower".
Sound: Good to very good. The sound effects are generally good, but the little guy that vacuums up your dead players is way too cool!
Gameplay: Very good. Everything moves and/or responds quickly.
Overall: Very good. Perhaps simple in some ways (graphics?) but well done.
Trivia: The company name was taken directly off the title screen. They seemed to have been a bit inconsistent about their own name.
Comments: See also "Cosmic Jailbreak". It looks nearly identical. This game might have been sold to Commodore, along with what later was to become "Star Post", which may have been intended to be a clone of the arcade game "Tempest" when it was first programmed. May. That is a whole other story, however, that's still being investigated.

Game name: Apple Panic
Company: Creative Software (Licensed from Broderbund)
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Conversion of the arcade coin-op "Space Panic".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Plain looking backgrounds, with very detailed (hi-res) characters.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Control is too fussy. You have to be pixel-perfect on ladders or it won't allow you to move on them. And so on. Game runs slowly too. Or rather, your character seems to move through molasses.
Overall: Flawed, but I can sure see where Broderbund got Lode Runner from! They just rebalanced this game and had a classic on their hands. The improved version sold well into the 1990's. This game is more of a history lesson, however, than competition for Loderunner.
Review: "Space Panic was the first of the climbing coin-ops, but it wasn't a hit until it reached the home market as Apple Panic!" (Seen in EG Trivia, page 111, Apr 83 Electronic Games)
Review: "Apple Panic... is the computer version of Universal's 'ground-breaking' coin-op, Space Panic. As it happens, the aliens who pursue -- and are, in turn, hunted by -- the game's shovel-wielding hero, bear a singular resemblance to -- you guessed it -- apples! It was therefore a relatively simple matter to redraw the aliens as ripe, red pieces of computer fruit. Other than this minor change in graphics, the computer software version is faithful to its source of inspiration. The action is quick and exciting and this title, which has been around for over a year, continues to do a good business. Like its role model, Apple Panic has become a genuine cult favorite among computer gamers. The ladders, the aliens, the holes -- all the familiar elements are here." (Seen in Jan 83 Electronic Games, on page 52.)
Review: Another article in Electronic Games, entitled "Closet Classics", (June 1983, pg 84) said this and more... "The object of the game was to catch the aliens by baiting them into pits you'd dug, and then covering them before they escaped. This was accomplished with the 'digging' button. As you got to the higher levels you had to dig two holes, perfectly placed, one above the other, to keep the alien in. The average playing time for Space Panic was 30 seconds. You felt like you'd been hit going up the ladder by a brick falling through the arcade. Or maybe you'd dug a hole too deep to escape from. Whatever it was, Space Panic played too hard and had to be buried. Someone must have seen it though, and liked it, because the game was released as a computer game by Broderbund under the name Apple Panic. This software version is deliciously true to the original. So perhaps there is life after the arcade!"
Review: A fairly lengthy article on the climbing games genre included a few paragraphs on Space Panic. One quote: "Not only did Space Panic prophesy the advent of climbing games, but of 'digging' games as well!" (See Electronic Games, Jan 83, page 55.)
Trivia: As you can probably tell, the reason I spent so much time and space on covering this title, is that it is the ancestor to many other games. Games like Loderunner and Donkey Kong apparently were direct descendants of "Space Panic" and/or "Apple Panic". If you can get over the lack of finesse, maybe you'll like this one.

Game name: Arachnoid
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [16__]
Author: Allen Pulsifer (1982)
Game Type: Clone of the Atari's arcade coin-op "Centipede".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Nicely animated, but simply colored. Smooth motion overall.
Sound: Average. Some sounds may have been reused in UMI's Video Vermin.
Gameplay: Good, but I still like the ultra-fast game Video Vermin better.
Overall: Centipede fans should definitely give it a try. This one may be more polished and balanced, but the pace puts me off a bit.
Trivia: An internal copyright indicates that Mr. Pulsifer first wrote his code in 1980 although this wasn't put out by UMI till later. So I guess that means Video Vermin was derived from this code?

Game name: Arrow
Company: Skyles Electric Works
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Utility program. An accelerator package for your datasette.
Required: Unknown, as no one we know actually has one.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To use this cart, you'll need the original instructions. May require the original cart, too, if it includes special hardware inside? This must have been popular, judging by repetition of ads run.

Game name: Artillery Duel
Company: Xonox
Author: See Trivia. (1983)
Game Type: Semi-educational two-player game, seen on many other platforms.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Average to good. They do attempt to draw some bit-mapped scenery. They even throw in some moving clouds, across the hilly terrain.
Sound: Not bad. Decent explosion effects. Nice "your turn" sounds. Some sounds are better than others, but most are competent or better.
Gameplay: Fun, assuming you like this sort of thing. Boring, if you don't. But the slowed-down pace may be a nice change from time to time.
Overall: See gameplay. This is a cute, almost "deluxe" version of the game that almost every other platform eventually had. Xonox lacked in imagination in picking this, perhaps, but did make a nice version.
Trivia: Hidden inside the internals of the game is a message that says "programmed by jerry brinson dedicated to shana, jacob, audrey and frankie". (It's at $7c61, for you hacker types.)
Trivia: It is interesting that this is one of Xonox's better videogames, and is also their only 16k version for the Vic20 computer. I bet they coded this from scratch and simply ported the others? For this game, I may take back some of my usual nasty Xonox remarks.
Trivia: Xonox videogames sometimes came in special plastic cases, with two games per cartridge. They felt this helped to make up for the lack of greatness in each individual game. Basically, they had their costs of manufacturing way down, so they could afford to. If you open one of their carts, you'll see some of the best work around; quality boards, epoxied-over onboard chip blobs, etc. But the average gaming consumer of the time disagreed with their idea of quantity-vs-quality. Xonox still has a lousy reputation with classic gamers. I don't blame the programmers; I'm sure they were forced to just do a quick, half-adequate job most of the time. Anyway, the flip side of this particular "Double-ender" was "Chuck Norris Superkicks". Personally, I like the AD game better than CNS.

Game name: Astroblitz
Company: Creative Software
Author: Tom E. Griner (1982)
Game Type: Variant of the arcade coin-op "Defender" by Williams.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Excellent. The graphic effects Tom Griner indulged himself in is technically impressive... even to peers like Jeff Minter! (Mr. Minter implied just that, in an online interview with R. Melick.) Full screen use (including borders), scrollies, neat fold-in effect...
Sound: Good. I like all the effects, except perhaps your own explosion?
Gameplay: Very good or excellent. Very fast! Balanced well. Nice controls, too. A very smoothly done game, showing off Mr. Griner's ability.
Overall: Arguably one of the best ever clones of Defender, on any machine.
Trivia: This is a 4k game internally, which just makes it all the more impressive! (You'll still need 8k of memory to play it, though.)
Comments: Use UP and FIRE (together) on the joystick to start your game.

Game name: Atlantis
Company: Imagic
Author: See Trivia. (1983)
Game Type: A port of the Atari 2600 title.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick or keyboard.
Graphics: Excellent. Very clean and detailed. Beautiful colors. Smooth, fast movement. The graphics are so well done, in fact, that the Imagic games don't run well on my VIC emulator! (Glad I have real VIC's.)
Sound: Excellent. The shooting effects sound good, and the background noises smoothly build tension, as the game gets faster and...
Gameplay: Wonderful. Fast, tense, but well balanced. All this, in just 4k?
Overall: Impressive; give it a try. Imagic sure made some great videogames!
Ad Text: "... Next, Bill gave Atlantis a shot. The Gorgon attack vessels filled the skies above the underground city of Atlantis. Bill fought back from his two missile posts. As night fell, and the Gorgon death rays took their toll, Bill launched his star fighter and attacked the enemy head-on in the air. But little Billy was no match for the fierce Gorgon warriors. No match for IMAGIC... Let this be a warning to all you cocky, know-it-all, self- proclaimed video game wizards out there: Laboratory tests have proven that IMAGIC games, when played in large doses, may be hazardous to your self-esteem and cause chronic Hugedigitosis (sore thumb). In other words, our games are created by experts for experts." (Partial ad, seen in Jan 83 Electronic Games.)
Trivia: Box art says "Game program designed by Bruce Pedersen."
Comments: Keyboard controls are: F1 to start, X and right SHIFT to fire. The Atari version definitely has one extra gun, in the center of the screen, that this lacks. But it doesn't really detract here.

Game name: Attack of the Mutant Camels
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C318]
Author: Jeff Minter (1983)
Game Type: Variant of Atari's arcade coin-op "Centipede", but taken farther.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. It may look plain at first but all that scrolling does not come easy to the little Vic! Tight ML code, you betcha! Mr. Minter either had a good assembler or lots of practice by now.
Sound: Really nice. Some of the best sound effects on the Vic20, period.
Gameplay: Fast and furious, with lots to keep track of. Very well balanced.
Overall: Great! Mr. Minter was destined for videogaming greatness, says I. It was pretty obvious by this point, if one paid any attention.
Trivia: This game was intended to be the sequel to Gridrunner.
Comments: I bought my Atari Jaguar (admittedly on close-out) just to play "Tempest 2000" by you-know-who. So am I a bit biased? Sure. But a good game is still a good game, hero worship or no. And I just got in my copy of "Defender 2000"; worth a Jaguar, for those two.

Game name: Avenger
Company: Commodore [Vic-1901]
Author: unknown (1981?)
Game Type: Clone of "Space Invaders". Most likely unauthorized.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. No complaints. The original game had five rows of eleven invaders each; this game has ten. (Better than most ports had!) Nice coloring, too, although purists like me may object a bit. The rest of the world will think it's a much needed improvement.
Sound: Good. Nothing to complain about. It's what you would expect. I've only heard one version that comes closer to the original, myself.
Gameplay: Good. Smoother response than some other ports on other systems.
Overall: Darn good. I don't think any SI fan will feel any disappointment. It's a simple, fun and addicting game. What more could you want?
Ad Text: "It's an invasion of space intruders and you're the VIC 'Avenger'. Space action for arcade enthusiasts." (Seen in "Commodore Power Play" magazine, page 102, Spring 1983 issue)
Trivia: It is interesting to note that Commodore's first ever game cart was a version of Space Invaders. (See how popular SI once was?) It is also interesting to note that this is one of the rare times Commodore made no mention onscreen of this being copyrighted by them. In other words, there is no date or copyright displayed. (Commodore later made a version for the C64 computer as well.)

Game name: Baldor's Castle
Company: Daedalus Digital
Author: Martin Kennedy (1983)
Game Type: Dungeon style adventure game.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 1 & 2). Type SYS 20182 to start.
Graphics: Good. A bit plain in places, but good enough to do the job.
Sound: Average to good. Just the usual sound effects, but done OK.
Gameplay: Depends on whether you (A) can figure it out without the original instructions, and (B) whether you even like dungeon-type games.
Overall: See gameplay, and decide for yourself.
Trivia: Largely written in BASIC, with some machine language routines. The location of the game was also unusual for a cartridge, though not unusual for a game written in Basic. The author apparently just copied the image from his 16k RAM expander's memory area to that same memory area on an (EP)ROM cartridge format. Only this game and the Scott Adams games require a SYS number to start and both because they sit in the area normally used by Basic programs.
Comments: If you're running this program via a Vic20 software emulator, try setting your RAM expansion memory to 16k. This program starts at memory address $2000 if your emulator asks for that information. After it is loaded into memory, type the SYS 20182 code to start.

Game name: Bandits
Company: Sirius
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Variant of the arcade coin-op "Rip Off" by Cinematronics.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Excellent. In fact, so well done that the Vic20 emulator for the IBM PC has a hard time handling this. (Apparently raster effects were used, as well as character set swapping.) Nice moving star field effect. Even colored stars; very nice. Smooth ship movement, lots of colors onscreen, lots of objects... very impressive! (Expect it to look awful on an emulated system, however.)
Sound: Very good. No music, but the sound effects are well done. Sounds a bit like the best stuff from the better Atari 2600 games.
Gameplay: Very good. Requires some strategy and thinking ahead as you can't outrun the bad guys once they've gotten ahead of you. Nice job of balancing things, I thought. The arcade coin-op "Rip Off" was an addictive game and I think you'll find this one can be as well.
Overall: Very nice. Games like this let you know just how little effort, time and skill went into some other Vic20 games. This game hardly looks like it was done on a home console at all, in comparison!
Trivia: The arcade coin-op "Rip Off" was a black & white, vector graphics game. Even their space ships looked like they came out of earlier coin-ops, such as Space Wars. (The triangular "asteroids" ship.) The game tension and balance made this lots of fun to play. This is another pre-joystick era game; left and right were buttons!

Game name: Battlezone
Company: Atarisoft
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Authorized translation of the arcade coin-op "Battlezone".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. Nicely done vector graphics, fairly quick movements...
Sound: Good. They did as much as could be done, within the Vic's limits.
Gameplay: Good or better. They did a pretty good job of capturing the (onscreen) look and feel of the original arcade game, I think.
Overall: Very good. I'm not a wonderful B'zone player, so true experts may disagree gameplay is perfect. But this is still a very nice port.
Trivia: Internal messages show a date of "12-31-83" and "(c) 1983 atari".
Trivia: The original arcade game's cabinet stood eight feet tall. You had to look through a simulated tank periscope to view the screen. The special joysticks, one per tread, made gameplay special, too. The cabinetry alone added something to the gaming experience, but this type of thing later died off. Why? Arcade operators wanted new games to come in a generic box, so they could easily swap out the old guts for a newer game, when the quarters came in slower. Now, they complain that arcade game companies only crank out more and more of the same old generic stuff. No kidding, guys.

Game name: Black Hole
Company: Creative software
Author: Tom E. Griner (1982)
Game Type: Original game, flavored by various early arcade vector games.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Really well done. The opening screen alone (on a real Vic20) is just priceless. Mr. Griner is definitely showing off. The vector style graphics are a feat in themselves, considering the limits of the Vic20's screen resolution and so on. Bravo, Mr. Griner!
Sound: Average. Hey, if he had to go with minimal sounds to get his very impressive graphics, so be it. Not that the sounds are bad.
Gameplay: Good. Fans of early arcade games will probably appreciate it more than the average modern-era gamer, who may be a bit confused by it, and why this game would have been a big deal in its day.
Overall: Very good. Technically impressive but perhaps for limited tastes? At the very least, load it up to see the neat graphical tricks.
Trivia: This is only a 4k game internally although it requires 8k to run.

Game name: Buck Rogers: Planet of Zoom
Company: Sega Enterprises, Inc.
Author: See Trivia. (1983)
Game Type: Translation of arcade coin-op of same name.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. Graphically impressive from a technical standpoint, as they are using the entire screen (including its borders) as part of the playing field. Or at least it looks like it, at first. You can't actually go over there, but it is part of the scenery. Nice recession-into-depth perspective effect. The title has some nice raster effect routines on the letters, which hackers may enjoy.
Sound: Very good. A quality job on the sound effects but no music plays. There is plenty of sound to keep you busy as the game progresses.
Gameplay: Very good. I can't see much difference, gameplay-wise, between this Vic20 version and the C64 version. I've never actually seen the arcade game this is based on, so can't comment on that aspect. But the level progression seems steady enough, and pacing is good.
Overall: Very good. Impressive in a number of technical ways, but still simple enough to be a good, playable game. Well done!
Trivia: Yes, that Sega. The folks that made Sonic the Hedgehog and the Sega Genesis, years later. They must have really been trying to do well, way back when. It shows in their finished code, and it also shows in their full-color cartridge labels. Beautiful! A hearty cheer for someone who cared, while everyone else did awful looking text labels on their carts. I'm so sick of seeing labels that only printed the name in text. Blah! I am convinced that one of the reasons the Atari 2600 became so popular was their use of colorful graphics on their carts. (And why collectors still want them.) Most of the less popular systems had plain text labels.

Game name: Cannonball Blitz
Company: Sierra On-line [CBL-401]
Author: Screen says "by I.C.G. programer Blip" (1982)
Game Type: Variant of arcade coin-op "Donkey Kong" by Nintendo.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 1 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Plain looking, but very smoothly animated. They chose resolution over number of colors, essentially. (Compare to Donkey Kong.)
Sound: Average or better. Nice attempt at background music, good effects.
Gameplay: You decide. It has that Nintendo-like tourism/exploration feeling to it that I never quite fell in love with. But other gamers feel tourism results in a deeper gaming experience, in some ways.
Overall: This is a quality game but it is of a game type that I just don't care for much, myself. It was way ahead of the NES era, however, if you want to give it points for something like that.
Comments: This is actually only a 12k game internally. (8k + another 4k.)

Game name: Capture the Flag
Company: Sirius software
Author: Paul Edelstein (1983)
Game Type: Original game. Something like a non-violent version of "Doom".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick and/or keyboard.
Graphics: Awesome. Split-screen graphics with multiple windowing effects and first-person motion, all on a computer that does not even have built-in bit mapping capabilities? Wow. Simply marvelous!
Sound: Good. Reasonably good tries at tunes, with nice sound effects.
Gameplay: Where else have we recently seen multi-player, multi-room, first person exploration games? Just add some monsters, and you have a Vic20 version of Doom or Duke Nukem or whatever. How cool!
Overall: Wonderful. The concept is cool, the execution of it is cool, the fact that it came a decade before this type of thing exploded in popularity makes it way before its time, etc, etc. Check it out!
Comments: May be hard to figure out without the original instructions. The concept itself is simple enough: two players, each trying to find the flag first. This was a non-computer game a long time before this game came out, but being able to play without a second human being (against the computer) was still a novel idea, back then.

Game name: Cave-in
Company: Spectravision
Author: Greg Carbonaro (1982)
Game Type: Original game, flavored by Pac-Man and snake/surround games.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. A bit plain or average looking, but they work.
Sound: Good. Nice opening tune, but it gets a bit repetitive.
Gameplay: Average to good, but a bit unusual. Has a wide range of levels (6) to choose from; from crawling along to over-in-two-seconds.
Overall: You decide. It seems like one of those love-it-or-hate-it games.
Trivia: The company name was taken directly off the title screen. The company seems to have been inconsistent about their own name.

Game name: Centipede
Company: Atarisoft
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Translation of Atari's coin-op arcade "Centipede".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 1 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. Looks just like the real thing, except a bit blocky?
Sound: Very good. Sounds just like the real thing, for the most part.
Gameplay: Very good. Only arcade fans could tell the difference, perhaps?
Overall: Very good. A fine translation, as far as I can tell. It works. I prefer fast, tense games. Try Video Vermin, if you do also.
Trivia: I don't own a trackball but I presume Atari's 2600 one works.

Game name: Choplifter
Company: Creative Software
Author: Tom E. Griner (1982)
Game Type: Authorized translation of Choplifter.
Required: 8k or 16k RAM; two different versions found. Joystick.
Graphics: Excellent. Smooth movement of objects, objects all recognizable, etc. Some subtleties: parallax scrolling stars in background, the neat title screen rotation effect, the angles changing to match proper perspective as you cross the line going home, rotors that seem to be turning on the helicopter, the flag waving at home...
Sound: Excellent. Rotors sound like they are turning, pitch changes as engine speed changes, etc. Just nice sound effects all around.
Gameplay: Choplifter is justly famous for its gameplay. In fact, the game was converted from home systems to being an arcade game. Yes, the process worked backwards this time. What more needs be said?
Overall: An excellent rendition of a classic. Mr. Griner always manages to squeeze out the last ounce of performance; another fine TEG game.
Ad Text: "Those are your men they're holding hostage! We don't care how you do it, but you've got to shoot your way in there and bring 'em back alive. You've got three choppers, probably not enough but it's all we can spare. And the enemy camp is pretty heavily fortified. With tanks, jet fighters and truly nasty laser bombs. Okay, maybe it's a suicide mission, but somebody's got to do it. Dozens of innocent lives are at stake. We're counting on you... don't let them down!" (Seen in Electronic Games, Dec 1983)
Trivia: Ad also mentions this program was "selected as some of the 'most innovative computer programs' 1983 CES Software Showcase Awards".

Game name: Chuck Norris Superkicks
Company: Xonox
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original tourism & action game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Mixed. Some portions are hi-res, others are very low resolution.
Sound: Bleeps and such. No impressive effects, and no background music.
Gameplay: Boring. The idea probably sounded good at the time; a tie-in with a major action star, Pitfall's running character (except overhead) and so on. But the actual gameplay seems like an afterthought.
Overall: Bad. Looks and plays like the generic port that it is. But from a historical point of view maybe this game is interesting? It's one of the first of the under-imaginative movie tie-in games. I have to wonder if Chuck Norris actually ever saw the finished game?
Trivia: This game came as half of a "Double-Ender: a two videogame cartridge". Artillery Duel was its better half, in my opinion.

Game name: Cloudburst
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1636]
Author: Peter Fokos (1982)
Game Type: Original game, flavored perhaps by Activision's "Kaboom!" game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. Fast and smooth movement, even if the characters are simple.
Sound: Not bad. Catchy little tune, nice effects. The tune doesn't play incessantly, which makes good sense. More like an attract mode. I wish more games would shut up once in a while. Less is more here.
Gameplay: Fun. Fast-paced. Might take a while to get used to, but I like it.
Overall: Simple and fun. What more can you ask of any game?
Trivia: This is a 4k game internally, although it requires 8k to run.
Comments: Fire button to start. Your character fires in three different directions. Use joystick movement and fire, together, to switch.

Game name: Clowns
Company: Commodore [Vic-1931]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Translation of Bally/Midway coin-op arcade game "Clowns".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Paddle controllers, NOT a joystick.
Graphics: Good enough. Simple, but so was the arcade version of this game.
Sound: Same as with graphics. Nice funeral dirge, when you die!
Gameplay: Good. More fun than you'd think by looking at it. Give it a try. (If your characters control poorly, your paddles need cleaning.)
Overall: Good. An older game but a fun one. Gameplay is the key here.
Ad Text: "Come one, come all... see the amazing jumping clowns... direct from their show-stopping Bally/Midway arcade tour... A true arcade 'classic'! Colorful acrobats with scoring skill." (Seen in the Spring 1983 "Commodore Power Play" magazine, on page 104)
Trivia: One of the "arcade classic" series of remakes of older arcade games. The arcade version was made in the late 70's, according to the KLOV (Killer List Of Videogames). There are aspects of other arcade games incorporated into it; namely Carnival and Breakout.

Game name: Commodore Artist
Company: Commodore [Vic-1935]
Author: Richard Blum (Bubblesoft) (1982)
Game Type: Utility program. Draw pictures on your TV screen.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Optional are joysticks, lightpens and printer.
Ad Text: "A true lightpen drawing game... you are the artist... you create the picture... multi color!" (Seen in "Commodore Power Play" magazine, page 104, Spring 1983 issue.)
Trivia: This cart may be rarer than most. It definitely came when the Vic20's commercial lifespan was rapidly dwindling. The cart I have (A) is only 4k internally, (B) has the other 4k half filled with what looks like a C64 utility program, (C) came in a special case the author believes was used only for limited production runs, (D) is fairly hard to find. (Was it ever massed produced? In other words, does anyone have a tan "normal label" version?)
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To fully use this cart, you might need the original instructions.

Game name: Computer War
Company: Thorn EMI [THC 22006]
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: War simulation, apparently inspired by the movie "War Games".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Nicely done. Neat blinking light / "computer thinking" effects, good use of bit-mapped graphics, multiple screens, and so on.
Sound: Nice effects, overall, but no background music.
Gameplay: You will need the original instructions to really play this game.
Overall: Without the instructions, who knows. But it does look promising.
Review: This was reviewed in the Feb 1984 issue of Compute. See page 134.

Game name: Congo Bongo
Company: Sega [006-04]
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Authorized translation of the arcade game "Congo Bongo".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Reasonable, but not great. Has various small flaws. Definitely not a show-off piece compared to its peers. The Vic20 was getting pretty advanced in age, by now. Did Sega just crank this out?
Sound: I suppose it's intended to build tension, but it just annoys me.
Gameplay: I've never seen any version of this game that was actually fun, so is it fair to just call this average? The C64 version looked great but wasn't any more fun to play. I never saw an unemulated arcade original, so I have to wonder if even it was any fun?
Overall: I consider this game a dog, but maybe others will like it.
Trivia: See the other Sega games as well. (Star Trek and Buck Rogers.) I already said it there, but I'll say it again... bravo for cart labels with some color and art to them! Phooey on text labels! Unfortunately, I consider this carts label to be its high point.

Game name: Cosmic Cruncher
Company: Commodore [Vic-1922]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Pac-Man variant. Different graphics but same overall concept.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Fair to average. And I'm being rather generous, I think. Lots of flickering on the 4 characters that chase you, for instance. Big blocky graphics, for another. All in all, it's almost ugly.
Sound: Not bad, but could be better. The Pac-Man theme can almost be recognized, which is surprising as this was a legalized remake. With some work, the sounds could become fully recognizable...
Gameplay: Good. It is almost surprising, as the screens look so bad that you almost don't even want to give it a try. Put this game's code for gameplay with say Jelly Monsters character graphics and we would have a really nice port of Pac-Man, I'd say. (There may be more work than that, but it would get you fairly close, fast.)
Overall: Mixed. Sort of the game that could have been but never was. The authorized version of Pac-Man is no wonder, itself, so maybe...
Ad Text: "Maneuver your 'Cosmic Cruncher' through the Milky Way and 'Crunch' all the pulsars in the galaxy... eleven challenging levels of play... over 300 color / maze combinations. Exciting arcade action!" (Seen on page 104, Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play" magazine.)
Trivia: Commodore wasn't the only game company to try to make money on an unauthorized Pac-Man game. Magnavox also made a Pac-Man variant to hopefully sell more of their Odyssey2 home game systems. Mags then said Magnavox got sued, lost, and had to change their game to one that wasn't such a close copy of the original. (This adds fuel to the argument that Commodore had similar problems. Whether they were actually threatened or were just scared, I don't know.)
Trivia: See also Pac-Man, Jelly Monsters, Trashman, and probably others. If any of you ever get tempted to cut up Vic20 cartridges to make "multicarts" or what not, Cosmic Cruncher would be a good choice! It's not like they are rare. They are practically an ultra-common. A reason for this may have been Commodore pushing it harder, since they now knew for sure that they wouldn't get in trouble for it?

Game name: Cosmic Jailbreak
Company: Commodore [Vic-1927]
Author: Commodore UK (1982)
Game Type: Variants of arcade coin-ops "Space Invaders" and "Rip Off".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Plain looking, but it works well enough. You can't easily mistake the characters for anything else. Nice sneaking-in-from-the-side effect. It gets to you over time and helps build up game tension.
Sound: Pretty good. Has those familiar SI background sounds to it.
Gameplay: Fun. Give it a try before you dismiss it for its simple looks.
Overall: Silly but fun. A nice combination of two excellent arcade games.
Comments: Compare this game to Spectravideo's Ape Escape. Who copied who? Did the Spectravideo authors later sell their game to Commodore, who made this version? Did Commodore just liberate it via their UK offices? Or were both games based on a third I don't know about? There is definitely something going on between these two games. If anyone has some solid info on this, let us know about it.

Game name: Creepy Corridors
Company: Sierra On-line, Inc. [CCL-401]
Author: Don McGlauflin (1983)
Game Type: Original game, influenced by Wizard of Wor and others.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Only two colors, but the screen resolution is very good. Watch your character and see if he doesn't move like the WoW character.
Sound: Sparse. Only a few sound effects. Actually, that's kinda nice!
Gameplay: Fun, if a little slow-paced at first. Avoid monsters while moving through a maze and collecting special objects. Hey, I think I vaguely remember hearing about a game like that; Pac-something or other? Hee, hee. This game also has touches of dungeon style play.
Overall: They took various ideas and integrated them well. It's a fun game as is, and a model for future integration efforts. Perhaps a good starting point for a modern Vic20 rendition of Wizard of Wor?

Game name: Crossfire
Company: Sierra On-line, Inc. [CFL-401]
Author: Gordon (1981)
Game Type: Authorized translation of the Exidy arcade game "TARG".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Simple, but maybe that is good after a while when things speed up?
Sound: Average. Nice effects but no music.
Gameplay: Good enough. Move in four directions and fire at aliens. And of course, avoid them while moving through the maze.
Overall: I am not personally in love with the game but you can't win them all, right? Maybe others will find the play mechanic appealing.
Review: "Targ (Exidy): One of the most unique approaches to the maze chase contest presents alien invaders moving over a grid of city streets seen in overview. The game has become a home classic in a slightly altered form as Crossfire from On-line for the Apple II and Atari computers." (Not to mention the Vic20! Text taken from Electronic Games magazine, June 1983, pg 89. The article listed Targ among others they called "some forgotten coin-op gems".)
Trivia: Title screen says "Jay Sullivan's Crossfire". Not sure why.

Game name: Dancing Bear
Company: Koala Technologies
Author: See Trivia. (1983)
Game Type: Not really a game. Maybe call it an "entertainment experience"?
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 1 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Cute. A bit simplistic, perhaps, but very cute! One bear plays the piano while another bear dances on stage. Not quite like the modern phenomenon of Full Motion Video, so don't be scared away.
Sound: Not bad. Considering the Vic's limits, not bad at all!
Trivia: Screen credits say "Produced by Audio Light" and list the names of Greg Hospelhorn, Rosemarie Rotunno and Rick Parfitt.
Comments: Koala later made the Koala Pad device for the C64 machine. This cartridge must have come with some sort of external device; it doesn't seem to respond very well to the normal input devices. Without having one, it wouldn't be fair to do a full review. Nor did we have access to the original instructions. And the screens refers to a cassette, too. Oh well! The cart itself is cute...

Game name: Deadly Duck
Company: Sirius
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Original game, perhaps similar to Imagic's Demon Attack.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Plain-looking due to the black background screen, but well done.
Sound: Simple effects and not many of them, but it suits the game.
Gameplay: Good. The dropping bricks which temporarily box you in may be either loved or hated, depending on the player. But it is fun.
Overall: Fun enough. Demon Attack and others were really just upgrades of Space Invaders, with various twists. Each has its pros and cons.
Comments: Game is really only 4k in length, although it takes 8k to run.

Game name: Deadly Skies
Company: Tronix
Author: Thomas Kim (1983)
Game Type: Variant of arcade coin-op game "Carnival".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. Nicely done side-scrolling, clean object definitions, etc.
Sound: Average to good. Just sound effects, but they are done well.
Gameplay: Fast to frantic. Avoid flying objects out to get you, while your helicopter drops bombs on ground-based targets.
Overall: Very good. A nicely done update of the carnival game theme, with fast play action and good gaming suspense. How high can you score?
Trivia: This is a 4k game internally, although it requires 8k to run.

Game name: Defender
Company: Atarisoft
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Authorized translation of the arcade game Defender.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Impressive, but not perfect. The movement is pretty jumpy, to get as much onscreen as they can and move it as fast as they have to.
Sound: Good. Some of the sounds are very nicely done if a little rough.
Gameplay: Good. I generally rate all home versions of Defender pretty easily however as I don't think many home machines handle Defender well. It is just too fast and demanding a game to copy it perfectly. Only Jeff Minter's Jaguar game "Defender 2000" gets that nod.
Overall: Try it yourself. Fans may find some imperfections but someone who is not familiar with the original game may not mind them. The arcade original was a love-it-or-hate-it proposition, anyway.
Review: "The macho game: Defender. Defender is a game of superlatives. It requires the best hand-eye coordination of all the games (with the possible exception of its sequel, Stargate), and it is the most difficult to teach. Many think it is by far the best, most exciting, and most challenging game there is. Others believe it to be undeniably the worst, the most difficult to understand, the most frustrating, and the most pointless game of all. Defender is the ultimate macho game -- women rarely play it -- because it requires loud, frequent blasting of the enemy." (Seen on page 54 of "Score! Beating the top 16 video games" by Ken Uston, 1982.)
Review: "Defender has very complicated controls, and you will never be more than a novice without mastering them, learning to use them as automatically as you breathe... Mastering Defender requires some perseverance, but most players find the effort worthwhile." (From pages 76-78 of "How to master the video games", 1981, by Tom Hirschfeld. Bantom Books, ISBN 0-553-20164-6.)
Trivia: The arcade original was a 1980 Williams effort. It is widely felt to be one of the most demanding and difficult videogames ever devised. Nearly two decades after its initial arcade release the original still commands much respect from those who've played it. Eugene Jarvis, the original programmer, deserves a hall-of-fame award for making it, IMHO. Robotron should seal that deal...
Trivia: Here's one to keep you awake at night, wondering. Inside the code of the game itself is this message: "COPR.HES,1983 V1.1x". Wow!
Comments: To give you an idea of how hard the original arcade game was, I once watched a 5-year old play against his older brothers. The five year old, on tiptoes, couldn't even see the screen. He was in "Use the force, Luke" mode the whole time. His scores and his brothers scores weren't much apart. After seeing that and seeing how quickly my quarters were disappearing, I decided two things: (A) I loved the game and (B) there was no way I could afford it!

Game name: Demon Attack
Company: Imagic [720050-1A]
Author: See Trivia. (1983)
Game Type: Translation of Atari 2600 game "Demon Attack".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Excellent technically, but may look plain at a glance, due to the empty black background. The game was faithfully ported over from the popular Atari 2600 console, and looks as good or better.
Sound: Very good. No music, just sound effects. Just like on the 2600.
Gameplay: Addictive. This was a very popular game, then, and still fun now.
Overall: Very good. This game was good enough to spawn many imitators.
Ad Text: "First, Bill played Demon Attack. Wave after wave of deadly demons bombarded Bill with lasers. The tricky demons split into two, even let loose with a few fireballs. But somehow Bill managed to wipe them out and take off into space searching for the demon's home base. Unfortunately for little Billy, he found it... Let this be a warning to all you cocky, know-it-all, self-proclaimed video game wizards out there: Laboratory tests have proven that IMAGIC games, when played in large doses, may be hazardous to your self-esteem and cause chronic Hugedigitosis (sore thumb). In other words, our games are created by experts for experts." (Partial ad, seen in Jan 83 Electronic Games.)
Trivia: Box art says "Game program designed by Bruce Pedersen."
Comments: Another Imagic game that has trouble running well on the PC Vic Vic20 emulator. Apparently, this is because it uses raster scan effects, a very sophisticated programming technique. This fact, coupled with the 4k total code length, makes me wonder if this game was made simply by altering the source code to the original Atari 2600 version? Maybe. It seems possible. Can anyone confirm?

Game name: Dig Dug
Company: Atarisoft (Licensed from Namco)
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Authorized translation of Atari's arcade coin-op "Dig Dug".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 1 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Fairly good, all in all. Not perfect but not bad, either.
Sound: Pretty good. You can tell they tried but the song gets old fast.
Gameplay: Fair. I'm much more satisfied with the C64 version, myself.
Overall: Decent as a stand-alone but mixed as a copy of the arcade game. Another game rushed out in the last days of the Vic's lifespan?
Trivia: Internal messages date the game code at "27 OCT 83". (At $a013.)

Game name: Donkey Kong
Company: Atarisoft (Licensed from Nintendo)
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Authorized translation of Nintendo's arcade coin-op.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 1 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Good. A little crude but recognizable. Well, maybe really crude? It's hard to believe Atari did their best, with 16k to play with? Other people made really good games, with only 4k to work with. Purists will note some missing between rounds graphics, as well.
Sound: Good. Recognizable sounds all around. No complaints from me.
Gameplay: Good. Seems to me to be a good enough conversion in this respect. (Gameplay is generally very important to me. I am usually willing to forgive lapses in graphics to get good gameplay.) After all, this game is fun enough on even the sub-mini B&W Gameboy system.
Overall: Good. Perhaps I'm under-rating the game a bit as it has never been one of my all-time favorite games. But it plays just as good as the arcade original or any other home system, in my opinion.
Trivia: Mario makes his debut on the Vic20 machine! And soon to come, the Nintendo home system that took over the post-crash gaming world! This point in time is right at that turning point, from hippies running the gaming industry to it being run by corporate types.

Game name: Dot Gobbler
Company: Machine Language Games
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Probably a Pac-Man clone, although this is only a guess.
Required: Unknown. We haven't seen one and thus don't have it archived yet.
Comments: One of the rarer carts for the Vic20 library, as our Cartridge List notes. Perhaps not fabulous gameplay, or it would likely be easier to find? Still, it would be interesting to see, someday.

Game name: Dragonfire
Company: Imagic [720052-1A]
Author: See trivia. (1983)
Game Type: Translation of the Atari 2600 game "Dragonfire".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. Uses raster effects like the other Imagic games. Has more than one screen, offering more variety than some others.
Sound: Average or better.
Gameplay: Very good. This is the major thing that Imagic excelled at!
Overall: Very good. A simple but fun game. Excellent, addictive gameplay.
Ad Text: "Dragons rule! The young prince hopes to defeat them -- but first he must reclaim the king's treasures. The Prince attempts to cross castle bridges. Hatchling dragons try to prevent him. They hurl deadly fireballs at the agile Prince. He leaps, ducks and sprints to avoid them! When the prince gets across the bridge, he finds a splendid storeroom -- and its ferocious guardian! He can take every treasure he touches. He must grab them all before a magical exit appears and he can escape. But the dragons become smarter and faster! Their fiery breath spells doom!" (From the box art.)
Trivia: Box art says "Program designed by Tim Yu." Who programmed it?

Game name: Face Maker
Company: HES (Licensed from Spinnaker) [C324]
Author: Jay Stevens (1983)
Game Type: Educational. For young children. Assemble funny faces on-screen.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick. Disable bank 1 if present.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart you may need the original instructions. Then again, maybe not. Fire it up for your toddler and just wing it? (I can't wait to see if my little nephew likes this one or not.)

Game name: Fast Eddie
Company: Sirius
Author: Kathy Bradley (1982)
Game Type: Original climbing game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Almost Atari-2600 like in its looks. Still, the characters are easy enough to make out. Simple-looking, but what the heck?
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Fast and seemingly well-balanced play. Run around, grab all the stuff, jump over your antagonists, etc. Simple, but can be fun.
Overall: I tend to agree with the review below. I'd take more games like this one over disappointing arcade conversion, etc.
Review: "This climbing game sends your on-screen alter-ego, Fast Eddie, zipping up and down ladders and darting along five floors in his quest for prizes. The valuable items float overhead, some stationary, others bopping along at a healthy rate of speed. With the 10 prizes per screen appearing two at a time at different locations, Eddie's task is not an easy one... Game designer Mark Turmell, and Kathy Bradley, who converted Fast Eddie for the Vic-20, have produced a fun game. If not exactly state-of-the-art, it does a good job with the computer's capabilities. The graphics are okay, and the play-action adequate. Not a game to write home about, but not the worst way to pass an evening either." (Seen in Electronic Games, Dec 83, pages 80-81. Review by Charlene Komar.)
Review: Also reviewed by Compute's Gazette; page 102, October 1983 issue.
Trivia: Don't confuse this game with "Fast Freddie", a rare arcade game that featured a side-scrolling character that hanglides. The two games have similar names, but are otherwise very different.

Game name: Final Orbit / Bumper Bash
Company: Sirius
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Two games in one: a space shoot-em-up and a pinball simulation.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good or better. The space game looks brighter, more colorful than the pinball game, but both are technically impressive. Neither raster effects nor bit-mapping are standard options on the Vic20.
Sound: Good. Mostly just sound effects, but they work well enough.
Gameplay: Both games play well and as you might expect for their game types.
Overall: I really like the pinball simulation. It may not be as realistic as simulations on other (later, more powerful) machines, but it is fun just the same. One of my favorites! The space game is OK but I just don't usually get excited by that type of game. Try it.
Trivia: This cartridge is odd in a number of ways. It has two 4k games inside one 8k chip for one. But only the pinball game had any copy protection code in it. This may mean that both games were originally intended to be on separate cartridges, but were later combined into one game cartridge. Anyone know more about this?
Comments: To flip between games use the "C=" key in the lower left corner. The space game controls with a joystick, as you might expect. The F and L keys control the pinball flippers. Press F to load a ball into the ramp, L to adjust, both F and L together to start.

Game name: Fourth Encounter
Company: Thorn EMI [THC 22005]
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original vertical shooting game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Average or better. Displays some technical finesse in the things that it does, but they are subtle enough to be missed by most of the gaming public. Does a good job of moving multiple objects on the screen at once, even if each of them looks fairly simple. Or odd. The opening wave looks like flying carrots to me.
Sound: Average. Your "ship dying" sound can get annoying after a while.
Gameplay: Average. Not bad, but not stunning either.
Overall: Maybe a little more tweaking in what was there to make it a truly interesting shooting contest? Most of the essential elements are there but they lack that last little oomph to be really great.

Game name: Frogger
Company: Parker Brothers (licensed from Sega)
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Authorized translation of the arcade coin-op "Frogger".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Poor. Very uninspired. Like they didn't know the Vic20 very well or they just didn't care. Most likely, the latter.
Sound: Good. Effects OK, song good. But it doesn't play during the game!
Gameplay: Fair. Most of the mechanics are there but something still lacks.
Overall: Poor to fair. I can't even seriously call this version "good". If you really want a good version of the original Frogger try the one Starpath made for the Atari 2600 (via their Supercharger).
Trivia: The original arcade game was put out in 1981 by Sega, who had licensed it from Gremlin. According to information seen in the "2600 Connection" newsletter, Frogger was based on a game from Atari called "Space Race". Frogger is definitely better known. The arcade cabinet artwork included tire tracks near the screen.
Trivia: This game had 8k of available space to use, but may have been rushed out the doors. Whatever the reason, not all that space was used for game code. About 3k of the 8k is empty. Poor choice! Note that early ads from Parker Brothers show they were making and selling C64 and Vic20 games at the same time... I can only assume they put far less effort into the Vic20 market's game, figuring that you had to take whatever garbage they offered you.

Game name: Galaxian
Company: Atarisoft
Author: See comments. (1984)
Game Type: Authorized translation of the arcade coin-op.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Blocky and fat but they move reasonably well. The designers were definitely convinced from the start that the Vic20 couldn't handle the original graphics "as is". Before you agree totally, take a look at "Star Battle"... Atari's is colorful, Commodore's hi-res. Neither reach arcade emulation perfection. It's a give-and-take.
Sound: Good. Most of the sound effects are very well done.
Gameplay: Not bad at all. They captured the arcade look and feel pretty well, all in all. Galaxian was basically an updated Space Invaders game (diving aliens), but wasn't as fast-paced as later vertical shooters. The one-bullet-at-a-time was that way in the arcade, by the way.
Overall: Aside from the blocky lo-res graphics, not bad. Give it a try.
Trivia: Internal binary codes reveals this message; " 1984 designer software bill bogenreif 6". (See it at $AFD8 to $AFFF.) One can only speculate that this meant that Atari bought this version from some outside source, rather than program it themselves?
Trivia: This is one of only two 8k games by Atari; the rest were all 16k. There doesn't seem to be any date-related pattern to explain it. I imagine they weren't as worried about saving $ on memory chips and just used up whatever memory they felt they a game needed.
Trivia: I have no idea why they waited this long for this cart to be made in the first place. Galaxian was popular for years before they got around to releasing a version. And when they did, apparently it was written by someone outside the company. Why? I can imagine that the "gaming crash" left Atari internally disorganized. So other reports have indicated. This cart and Jungle Hunt are the only two cartridge titles to have been released with an onscreen date of "1984", even though internal messages sometimes date the games well into December of 1983 or even into January 1984. Not even Commodore released any carts beyond 1983; they shifted to the C64 and so did the rest of the marketplace. This definitely helps to explain why Galaxian is such a hard cart to find!

Game name: Garden Wars
Company: Commodore [Vic-1932]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Original game, involving mazes and shooting.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very Atari-2600 looking. Almost surreal in some ways. Trippy.
Sound: Average or better.
Gameplay: I think you either need to (A) be on heavy pharmaceuticals or (B) have the original instructions to understand this game. But the gist of it is the standard run-around-in-a-maze-and-shoot-things. Things seem to move quickly but your movement controls are picky.
Overall: You decide. I'm staying neutral on this one!

Game name: Ghost Manor
Company: Xonox
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original game, released on multiple home gaming systems.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Crude. Almost Looks like a direct port from the 2600 machine.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Awful! One of the most boring games I've ever played. Maybe very small children will find its pacing to their liking. Maybe!
Overall: Disappointing, even for a Xonox game. The best I can say about it is that maybe we're missing something, without the instructions? With a light gun to shoot the objects this might be OK, but...
Trivia: Most games by Xonox have a reputation among most classic gamers as being of the lowest possible quality. I most certainly agree! It is interesting to note, however, that internally the cart were made of very high quality parts, suited best for mass production. How's that for misplaced priorities? Making many games, all bad?
Trivia: Cart label reads: "Plays on Vic20. Use Joystick controllers. Turn off console when inserting cartridge. Read instructions before playing." My cart was a single-ender, by the way, not a double. Which makes no sense, as this isn't stand-alone material.
Comments: Try pressing F1 then F5 to start the first level. Touch the ghost as many times as you can, then you progress to the next level. If you just stay in the center he'll come to you, but you have to be moving in some direction or it doesn't count. Such fun! Whoopee!

Game name: Gold Fever
Company: Tronix
Author: Corey Ostman (1983)
Game Type: Original climbing game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Another "hi-res" eye test, uh, I mean game. Seems to be built on character graphics. Some cute animation on the characters.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Not bad. You have to know that ladders are ladders, and that they invisibly extend up and down. You'll see what I mean, when you try it. After learning that, it's just a simple matter of running around collecting all the gold then finding a level's exit door.
Overall: Not bad on its own merits but pretty good for a 4k game! Could be fun to play just seeing how many levels you can beat. As intended.

Game name: Gorf
Company: Commodore [Vic-1923]
Author: See comments. (1982 Commodore & 1981 Midway)
Game Type: Authorized translation of the arcade coin-op game "Gorf".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Fair to good. This looks oversimplified at a glance but the real arcade machine was the same way. A fairly good copy all in all.
Sound: Average for a home machine. The arcade original had built-in speech capability, which just wasn't possible to duplicate on most home machines. (The C64 has it, but only if you bought a special piece of add-on hardware called the "Magic Voice." I typed up all the phrases once, and put them on the Internet.)
Gameplay: Good. A simple-but-enjoyable multi screen space shoot-em-up.
Overall: A decent copy of an arcade classic. Fun enough, but no speech.
Ad Text: "(The smash-hit arcade game!) Midway's incredible coin-operated game is now on cartridge for the VIC! Includes 4 completely different games, multiple levels of difficulty, some of the best cartoon graphics ever devised for video games. Invaders, gorfies, death ships, saucers, aliens... it's terrific!" (Seen in the Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play" magazine, page 104.)
Review: An article in the Summer 1983 issue of "Commodore Power/Play" magazine, pages 38-39, lists ways to use programming bugs to get very high scores. The article was written by Jeff Bruette, one of the Commodore programmers that helped to make this very game.
Trivia: Onscreen messages credit the following people as authors of this version: Bill Hindorff, Andy Finkel, Jeff Bruette, Eric Cotton, Mike Scott, and Jimmy Snyder. (Displayed in that order onscreen.)
Trivia: It must have been very interesting to have been around the folks at Commodore in their earliest Vic20 years. This is one of the first game clones actually OK'd by the company that owned the rights. (Earlier games had been made, released, then yanked off the market.) Perhaps because it was so unusual for Commodore at the time, ads then would not let you forget that this conversion was perfectly legitimate and approved by the copyright owners.
Trivia: It's interesting to note that these officially sanctioned carts were some of the first to have been copy-protected, even in ROM. If you copy the ROM's image to RAM (from an unmodified cart) the resulting image will not run in RAM. My question is, whose idea was this; Commodore or Bally/Midway? (Does anyone know for sure?) I can see BM wanting to protect their stuff, as the whole reason they were collaborating was Commodore tried to infringe on them. But if it was Commodore's idea, how hypocritical were they? Am I too harsh? Over half their first 12 carts are questionable! They make their system popular on the merits of other's games and then decide to protect later games from their own customers? Who did they think they'd attract with that type of marketing? Yeesh! Then again, maybe BM saw it this way, and demanded protection?
Comments: In the first mission, you can wipe out the entire bottom row of bad guys before they start firing back, if you shoot carefully.

Game name: Gridrunner
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C312]
Author: Jeff Minter (1982)
Game Type: Variant of the arcade coin-op Centipede.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Simple but effective. The game doesn't seem to lack anything.
Sound: Good. Mostly laser blasts and the like but it all works well.
Gameplay: Very good. Fast-paced and addicting. If you've never seen the game its a bit like Centipede on steroids, with extra features.
Overall: Very good. Jeff Minter made his reputation on games like this.
Ad Text: "$5 says you can't beat Gridrunner. Gridrunner is the toughest, fastest, arcade quality game ever to challenge a Commodore or Atari computer owner..." (HES ad, Compute's Gazette, Oct 1983 pg 19)
Ad Text: "Is Gridrunner unbeatable? No one, not even the author, has ever achieved the last Gridrunner. It is an extremely fast-paced arcade quality game designed to test your coolness under fire and challenge your reflexes. As the pilot of Gridrunner, a combat ship, you must annihilate the various enemies traveling along the 'Grid.' High scores are possible only through the mastery of the patterns of the X/Y zappers and the Gridsearch Droids which, when destroyed, mutate into potentially lethal pods. Gridrunner has 32 levels of difficulty (20 levels in the Vic 20 version). To this date, the 13th level has been the highest achieved." (HES ad, July 1983 Compute's Gazette magazine, page 31.)
Review: "...Gridrunner is about alien Droids in the year 2190 who are stealing electricity from Earth's orbiting power station, the 'Grid.' To stop them, a combat ship patrols the Grid. In the game, the Grid is a large lattice on the screen, and Earth's combat ship moves along the lower portion, firing on segmented Droids, dodging the X/Y zappers, and eliminating mutating yellow pods which some times lodge in the lattice." (Text from an article about Jeff Minter. See page 52, August 1983 Compute's Gazette magazine.)
Trivia: A 1996 Sony Playstation game was released with the same name. What's up with that? Wonder if they knew and did it on purpose?
Comments: This is a 4k game internally although it requires 8k to run.

Game name: HesMon
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C302]
Author: T. M. Peterson (1982)
Game Type: Utility cartridge, used to read and write machine language code.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions. And a good understanding of 6502 machine language programming. Among those who had such needs, this was once a very popular cartridge.

Game name: HesWriter
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C304]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Utility program. A word processor.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions. It is really doubtful that many will use any memory-limited word processor in this day and age. However, keep in mind that Bill Shakespeare had only a sharpened feather and a bottle of ink... compared to that this is high tech! Any WP beats a typewriter.

Game name: Home Babysitter
Company: Commodore [Vic-1928]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Educational / entertainment for small children.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Big and simple. It fits the theme and does the job well enough.
Sound: Interesting. The ABC song is kinda cute, I think. The memories...
Gameplay: Geared to a very low age bracket. For its market, its pretty good.
Overall: Should work well at its intended purpose of entertaining toddlers. It may even help teach them something in the process. If nothing else, they'll learn the very basic concepts of using a computer.
Trivia: The title screen calls this program "Home Babysitter II". Why? Was there another one put out on tape, or planned as a cartridge? What happened to #1? Tape? Or am I missing something obvious?
Comments: The cartridge includes sections on counting, learning your ABCs, and assembling funny faces on the screen. Small children will need some adult help to get started. Once they know the keys to press (remember that pressing RESTORE takes you back to the main menu, for one) they may do just fine on their own.

Game name: Household Finance
Company: Creative Software
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: "A home application program."
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Comments: See Personal Finance by Commodore. Creative licensed this title to them. The two seem to be identical, other than the titles.

Game name: IFR (flight simulator)
Company: Academy Software
Author: Rom Wanttaja (1983)
Game Type: Flight simulator. (Instrument flight only.)
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Average. Just a display of gauges on a cockpit; no scenery of any kind. Yes, this is functional and fits the theme -- instruments only -- but the gauges are still not quite graphic masterpieces.
Sound: Good to very good. I like the engine idling noises and such.
Gameplay: That depends. I like it, but mostly because of all the cool ways I've found of crashing. It doubt it was intended to be amusing but it is the way I play it! (Useful info... hit "E" to eject!)
Overall: You have to have a taste for this sort of thing. More realistic flight sims exist today (at least speaking graphically) but this one has its individual charms. Overall, not bad for Vic20 flight. Probably excellent, if you just want to fly by instruments. For its time, this was probably amazing... and for 8k it still is!
Review: "Has a quality of realism which sets it apart from others, even those I've tested in flight school." (Compute's Gazette.)
Review: "Great program!" (Info-64.)
Review: "It is tremendous fun." (Compute's Gazette.)
Review: "Flight tested by an air traffic controller, two skilled pilots and an elementary school class. Highly recommended by all." (Midnite Gazette.)
Review: "This is an unbelievably realistic simulation of the difficulties facing a pilot in instrument flying. I'm a 747 pilot and I think that this simulation could do a lot to improve the reactions and instrument scan habits of even very experienced pilots." (747 pilot, Power Play, Feb/Mar 85, pg 31)
Trivia: The author recently contacted Paul LeBrasse, making some nice remarks on our Vic20 resurrection work. (Thanks!) He also said he writes books for a living now, so check that out. He claims that this cartridge sold 30,000+ copies on the Vic20 alone. This is believable, if you've ever seen how steadily his ad ran in any of the big Commodore mags back when. He later made a version for the C64 computer as well. (Thanks for all the info; appreciated!)
Comments: You definitely need the original instructions if you hope to fly the plane with any degree of success and actually land it. But you can also have fun discovering key-presses by Zen, as I do.

Game name: In the Chips
Company: Creative Software
Author: Gene Genoar (1983)
Game Type: "Concept home education program"
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Jawbreaker II
Company: Sierra On-line Inc. [JBL-401]
Author: Doug Whittaker (1982)
Game Type: Maze & eating game. Original, but flavored by Pac-Man just a bit.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. Large and blocky, but it doesn't really seem to detract.
Sound: Good. Decent theme music and some nice sound effects.
Gameplay: Good. Probably best played by younger children or those who like games that are somewhat slower paced. But it can be fun.
Overall: Good. Nothing sensational perhaps, but a fun look at a simple game with some personality. A cute "alternative" game, for those times when you're sick of the same-old-thing syndrome?
Review: I can't find the article now, but I know I read of at least one reviewer that liked this game a lot, from way back when. (Sorry!)
Trivia: Released on multiple hardware systems as were most On-line games.

Game name: Jelly Monsters
Company: Commodore [Vic-1905]
Author: unknown (1981?)
Game Type: Clone of arcade classic "Pac-Man". Apparently very unauthorized.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick or keyboard play.
Graphics: Some flicker and occasional glitches, but overall very good. Uses up nearly all of the screen for its maze, unlike Atari's version. Impressive technically, considering the hardware limitations! (Q: is the flicker due to this being a PAL-based/European game?)
Sound: Sounds closer to the original than Atari's official version does.
Gameplay: Not bad at all! Beats most other game console versions by a mile.
Overall: Very good. It's hard to believe this was done on a 3k computer! Atari should have just slapped their name on this one instead.
Trivia: This is another one of Commodore's earliest-released carts that is heavily rumored to have been a "way too close to the original" clone of an arcade classic, so it was pulled off the market. This is probable as Vic-1922 is another Pac-Man clone, but has been changed quite a bit from the original. Probably due to its legal status, this is one of the harder Commodore cartridges to find.
Comments: Use the cursor keys to center the screen image at start-up. This is not a bug, per se, but a built-in feature of the Vic20.

Game name: Joust
Company: Atari
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Vaporware. (Translation of the arcade coin-op game "Joust".)
Ad Text: Shown in an ad in Compute! on page 4, June 1984 issue. This ad shows computers lined up, with boxes of Atari games piled up on top. The effect was a list of sorts; what games had come out for each system. Stargate was no longer listed, but now Joust was shown for the Vic20. No screen shots or other "proof" were shown. I really doubt we'll ever see a production cart, but perhaps a prototype exists somewhere? (On cassette or disk, most likely.)
Trivia: The original arcade game, by the way, was a 1982 Williams effort. One of its main claims to fame was that it was the first game to allow two players to play at one time, instead of taking turns.

Game name: Jungle Hunt
Company: Atarisoft (Licensed from Taito)
Author: unknown (1984)
Game Type: Translation of the arcade coin-op "Jungle Hunt".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Fairly good. They got all the individual elements into the game but each of them is a bit blocky; almost abstract looking. The usable screen is cut nearly in half. Is that good or bad? The horizontal dimension is more important to the gameplay than the vertical one is and it creates a cinema-like wide-screen effect! Besides, the arcade original wasn't really a graphic masterpiece.
Sound: Good. They captured the feeling of the arcade game fairly well.
Gameplay: Good. Simple perhaps, but fun. Captures the arcade's feel well. Master each screen's required skill, and move on to the next one. Each task is fairly simple to master but keeps you coming back.
Overall: Good. I liked the arcade original quite a bit. Although this is not a perfect translation it captures the look and feel well. Perhaps a good game to try if other games frustrate you easily?

Game name: Jupiter Lander
Company: Commodore [Vic-1907]
Author: Hitoshi Suzuki, HAL laboratory (1981)
Game Type: Clone of the arcade game "Lunar Lander".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard controlled.
Graphics: Fair, but better than I remember the original arcade game being. The original game was one of Atari's first B&W vector graphics units, produced at roughly the time Asteroids came out.
Sound: Good. Simple, but fits the mood of the original game.
Gameplay: Hard! Some people may find it frustrating, at least at first. Modern players may feel its too much work and too little reward. However, this is pretty much true to the original arcade game.
Overall: It definitely represents a piece of gaming's early history. Try it yourself, then decide whether that is good or not.
Ad Text: "Pilot your 'Jupiter Lander' through the treacherous crevices of a mysterious planet. Variable rocket thrust, anti-gravity, horizontal retros." (Seen in Spring 1983 Power Play magazine, page 102)
Review: "This is a pretty slick lander game with some interesting variations. The best point is that it provides a close-up of the landing site." (From Electronic Games magazine, Nov 1982, page 49)
Trivia: Definitely gives one a feel for how far home computers had grown. This is arguably as good as the original arcade version was.
Trivia: Commodore may have gotten away with copying Atari's 1979 coin-op game "Lunar Lander" when they made this game, primarily because Atari apparently copied theirs from an earlier PDP-11 game of the same name. This game is very deeply rooted in gaming history!
Comments: See on-screen instructions for keys; 3 function keys are used as upward thrusters, A and D keys are used to move left and right.

Game name: K-Razy Antiks
Company: CBS Software (by K-byte & Kay Enterprises co.)
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Original maze game, ported to many platforms.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Mixed results. Mostly, its done very well, but with some slight imperfections or things that could have been done better. For instance, the ant animation is good but the anteater's is fair.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: It looks like it has a lot to it but I didn't quite "get it". I didn't have the original documentation so I'll cut it some slack.
Overall: See gameplay. It has potential, if one understands its rules.

Game name: K-Star Patrol
Company: CBS Software (by K-byte & Kay Enterprises co.)
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Original horizontally-scrolling space shooter.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Simple, both in coloration and general shape.
Sound: Average. Just sound effects.
Gameplay: Too slow paced for me to enjoy much. Maybe a good beginning game? Not much reward for the player as I see it. Just target practice.
Overall: I didn't play this game much. If it just repeats the same idea over and over, at a snail's pace, I'd say they wasted the 16k. It did include some novel ideas, but none that I think really made much of a difference in the overall gameplay experience.

Game name: Kids on Keys
Company: HES (Licensed from Spinnaker) [C325]
Author: Frank Tendick (1983)
Game Type: Educational.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Kindercomp
Company: HES (licensed from Spinnaker) [C322]
Author: Jonathan Creighton (1983)
Game Type: Educational.
Required: 16k RAM (8k in banks 3 & 5). Joystick. Disable bank 1 if present.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Lazer Zone
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C3__]
Author: Jeff Minter (1983)
Game Type: Original shooting game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Plain black background looks, well, too plain before you begin to play. You'll be thankful for the lack of distractions, later on!
Sound: Very nice sound effects and lots of them.
Gameplay: Geez! Too much to keep track of simultaneously until you develop new skills to. Which means, you play it a lot. This is not to be taken as a complaint, by the way. It will keep you coming back.
Overall: Thank you, Mr. Minter. Another ballistic blast-fest to enjoy! But as said elsewhere, this game requires more than just a good aim to feel you've mastered it. The unusual play mechanic offers a nice respite from the same-old-same-old videogaming blues.
Review: "Jeff Minter's latest, Lazer Zone, has a novel play-mechanic. The computerist controls shooters which move along the bottom and right-hand edges of the playfield depending on which direction the player pushes the stick. There's a lot of subtlety along with the shooting in this one." (Seen in Electronic Games, Sep 84, page 64)

Game name: Lode Runner
Company: Broderbund
Author: Mike Wise and Doug Smith (198_)
Game Type: Climb and run game, with some puzzle-solving aspects involved.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Plainly colored but detailed enough. Great character animation.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Wonderful in any of its ports. Extremely well balanced and paced.
Overall: A classic game. In any of its versions, on just about any gaming platform, Lode Runner can offer hours of contented entertainment.
Ad Text: "...You will maneuver through scene after scene, running, jumping, drilling passages and outfoxing enemy guards in a secret underground hideaway as you pick up chests of gold stolen from the citizens of the Bungeling Empire. There's no end to the thrills, chills and challenge." (Partial text from Broderbund ad in Dec 1983 Compute's Gazette.)
Trivia: See the entry for Apple Panic for some historical notations.

Game name: Lunar Leeper
Company: Sierra On-line Inc. [LLL-401]
Author: Dr. Bob of I.C.G (1981)
Game Type: Original space game, heavily influenced by coin-op Defender.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 1 and 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Nicely done. A static screen shot will not show off the wonderful character animation. One of the best efforts on the Vic20. See it!
Sound: Average or better.
Gameplay: Fun. Sort of like a simplified Defender. You are still trying to rescue land-based people in a space ship but you have fewer enemies to contend with here. Some may consider that improvement!
Overall: This is a very well done game. Especially due to its youthful age (1981) this is a very impressive piece. Play it. Show it off.

Game name: Machine Language Monitor
Company: Commodore [Vic-1213]
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Utility program. A tool for programmers who want to code in ML.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions. This program may also be called VicMon at times. The keyboard commands used in the program are explained in the "Vic Revealed" book by Nick Hampshire, if you can't find the original docs anywhere. (If I ever get some free time, maybe I'll type them in and upload.)

Game name: Mastertype
Company: Broderbund
Author: See trivia. (1983)
Game Type: Educational game. Learn to touch-type by shooting space objects.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Good. Some graphics are more detailed than others but it works. The explosions look unrealistic but are very colorful.
Sound: Good. Sound effects almost sound blurred sometimes, but are nice and clear on others. Nice deep Game Over effects, nice zaps, etc.
Gameplay: Fun enough. It has its tension built-in if you don't know how to touch type very well! (Hee hee.) But that's the point, isn't it?
Overall: Good for either learning to touch-type better or blasting things.
Trivia: Title screen says the copyright is held by "Lightning software", and credits "Bruce Zweig & Jim Fox with Edward Chu" as authors.
Trivia: I couldn't resist bragging about this... I own a prototype cart of this game! In a special, hand-openable case, with a dot matrix printer label which states "Mastertype. Sample. Property of Broderbund software not to be sold or given away." It also has a handwritten "38" in the upper right corner. A piece of history?
Comments: To really use this cart, you may need the original instructions. However, if you're willing to experiment with touch-typing, know that your four left fingers rest on the ASDF keys, the right hand sits on the JKL: keys and your thumbs rest near the space bar. This is the "home position" that is used when touch typing. It will make sense as the game progresses through its exercises.

Game name: Maze
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C3__]
Author: Tom E. Griner (1983)
Game Type: Original treasure collection / maze game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Another techie show piece by Mr. Griner. Neat title effects! Character based, but nice animation on the various characters.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Good or better. Nice tension from the monsters chasing you. The concept isn't very original but the game is fun to play.
Overall: Dungeon games were very popular in this time period. This is a nice example of that genre. Competent in all areas, I'd say.
Trivia: I am slightly biased against this program since my absolute, all-time favorite simple dungeon game is a 1982 piece by Don Worth of Quality Software... "Beneath Apple Manor" for the Apple II. It kicks butt, in my humble opinion! That game is the only reason I still have an Apple II computer, actually. Don, if you still have the source code, please release it on the net. The world deserves to see more of that game, IMHO. Another good one was Epyx's "Sword of Fargoal" game, released on both the Vic20 and the C64.

Game name: Medieval Joust
Company: Thorn EMI [THC 22007]
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original game; a medieval jousting simulation.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very good, considering Vic20 limits. Hi-res and split-screened.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Without the original instructions, who knows?
Overall: It has potential, I suppose, once you figure it out. Might be an interesting novelty item. Where else can you simulate jousting?

Game name: Menagerie
Company: Commodore [Vic-1926]
Author: D. W. Johnson (1982?)
Game Type: Variant of arcade coin-op Frogger.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Plain looking. Big empty backgrounds, big one-color characters. The characters are nicely drawn and detailed however.
Sound: Below average to pitiful. Could be much better, even on the Vic.
Gameplay: I like the original Frogger better. So will you, most likely.
Overall: This is one of Commodore's worst efforts, as far as originality, gameplay and sound is concerned. What were they thinking? This is the type of game that should have been released on tape only.
Trivia: I am beginning to think Commodore got pretty lazy, or something, at about the mid section of their Vic20 cartridge library. Had they already bought up all the good licenses then available? This game and a few near it, number wise, strike me as "filler".
Comments: Normally, I'd say that you should go see the authorized version of Frogger but it isn't much better. Sigh. Go see it anyway.

Game name: Meteor Run
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1613]
Author: Roger L. Merritt (1982)
Game Type: Part Defender, part Asteroids.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Mixed. The backgrounds are plain, the ship is nicely detailed and somewhat colorful, the aliens look like they got lost during a game of Space Invaders and the meteors look like chocolate chip cookies. Some movement is slow and jerky, some is smoothly done.
Sound: Average to annoying.
Gameplay: Not all that much fun. Partly because I'm comparing it to the two games it was obviously modeled on; Defender and Asteroids. Both are much more fun than this game. The sum is less than its parts.
Overall: Roger Merritt and UMI both did much better. Not their best!
Ad Text: "You're in command with Meteor Run... guiding your craft through treacherous meteor fields... fighting alien ships... dodging exploding photon torpedoes... fighting your way to the red star, Alderbaran. The closer you get, the more hazards you encounter. You're surrounded with challenging adventure! This action-packed game will hold you spellbound for hours. Just imagine the fun you'll have!" (Seen in Electronic Games magazine, Nov 82, page 44)
Comments: (From Eric Gustafson, via the Internet) "In Meteor Run, it's possible to kill aliens without ever pressing fire. Once you start a game, your ship doesn't appear until you actually hit the fire button - but meteors start to appear and the aliens are buzzing about. If an alien hits a meteor, he's destroyed. Wait a while and the game will clear levels for you. I used to leave my Vic on for hours - you see, the manual promised that you eventually got to a 'black hole', and I reasoned that eventually the game would kill aliens off by itself until it got there. Sadly, I suspect that any 'black hole' was simply poetic writing on the part of the authors." (I verified it. It works, but I never saw points registered for it. As to the black hole I haven't a clue.)

Game name: Mine Madness
Company: Thorn EMI [THC 2200_]
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original maze / elevator game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Average. A hi-res set of character graphics with very few colors.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Darned if I know. I haven't figured out the point to it all. Just don't get squished by the elevators coming down; that's obvious.
Overall: Not much fun at all, if you don't know how to play it. May be a fun game. It certainly tries to be tense and fast paced.
Trivia: Almost surely one of the last cartridges put out by Thorn EMI for the Vic20. It seems rarer and harder to find than its siblings.

Game name: Miner 2049'er
Company: Reston (See comments.)
Author: Jerry Brecher (1983)
Game Type: Climb and run game, released on many gaming platforms.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Excellent. Very nicely done, all around. Bright colors, clear layouts, nice graphic and technical flourishes throughout.
Sound: Excellent. Few sound effects but what is there is very well done.
Gameplay: Great. A very nice version of the popular game. Don't be ashamed to show it off to people who own other consoles. Play, play, play!
Overall: A wonderful example of what could be done if only programmers and their employers took the time and effort to do it right. As this was a late release (1983), it is all the more impressive. Most other companies were slacking off horribly on Vic stuff by then.
Trivia: Full cartridge label text: "MINER 2049er - VIC20 by Jerry Brecher Original design by Bill Hogue. (c) 1983 by Big Five Software Licensed in conjunction with Compu-Vid International ISBN 0-8359-4423-9"
Comments: Press fire to start each level. It is making sure you're ready.

Game name: Mission Impossible Adventure
Company: Commodore [Vic-1916]
Author: Andy Finkel (1981)
Game Type: "Scott Adams Adventure Games" series. (#3 of 5.)
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 2 and 3). Keyboard controlled. The game starts when you type "SYS 32592" and hit the RETURN key.
Ad Text: "'Good morning, you mission is to ...' and so it starts. Can you complete your mission in time? Is the world's first automated nuclear reactor doomed? This one 'radiates' with excitement!" (Seen in "Commodore Power Play" magazine, Spring 1983, page 105)
Comments: See the entry for Adventure Land Adventure for more information on any of the games in this series.

Game name: Mobile Attack
Company: MSD
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Variant of arcade coin-op "Targ".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Simple but functional.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Good. Smooth enough movement, reasonable game balance, good pace.
Overall: Good. I like fast paced games with good response... this works.
Comments: We only have access to a tape version so far. The cart is presumed to be identical or better. See also Crossfire; it's very similar.

Game name: Mole Attack
Company: Commodore [Vic-1912]
Author: unknown (1981?)
Game Type: Part of Commodore's "Children's series".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. The graphics of the moles are large and easy to recognize. At least at first. As the game speeds up, you'll make mistakes.
Sound: Good. Definitely aimed at little kids; hit the moles on the head, and you get the expected bonk noise. Hit them on the butt, and...
Gameplay: Excellent for its intended audience. Some fun, even for adults. And maybe hilarious at adult parties, with enough cold beverages?
Overall: My little nephews ought to love this when they get old enough!
Ad Text: "A colorful 'cartoon action' game. You're trying to keep those nasty moles underground where they belong but they keep popping up! How many can you clunk before time runs out? Fast, fun, frantic!" (Seen in "Commodore Power Play", Spring 1983, page 105)
Review: "It's a mole invasion! The pesty little devils are popping up all over, and its up to you to rout the beasts and send them fleeing back underground -- and you've only got 60 seconds to do it!... Mole Attack will probably be a favorite among younger arcaders. Even though the eye-catching graphics combine well with the time-limit excitement, adults will probably find the game too simple and repetitive to get many repeat plays." (Review by Charlene Komar, page 70, in the June 1983 issue of Electronic Games.)
Comments: The keyboard may work better than the joystick does, as it is set up more like the 3-by-3 grid the moles are displayed in. Ideally you'd have a custom-made controller for this game, with a big arcade button per mole. I just might make one for my nephews.

Game name: Money Wars
Company: Commodore [Vic-1925]
Author: Commodore and Hal Lab. (1982)
Game Type: Variant of "Space Invaders" for the most part.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Graphics: Fair to middling. Mostly plain, but some nice effects. Your death by electrocution is cute in a sick sorta way, for instance.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Fair. It moves too slowly for me to love it. Kids might like it, as might anyone who likes slower paced games.
Overall: Fair to good. Depends on how much credit you give them for their creative flair in re-using elements from various other games.
Comments: When using an IBM and an emulator, use the comma (,) key to move right. The semi-colon key (;) mentioned onscreen is differently placed on the original Vic20 keyboard.

Game name: Monster Maze
Company: Epyx / Automated Simulations
Author: R. A. Schilling (1982)
Game Type: First-person maze game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Simplistic line drawings for rooms and you don't even want to see the monsters up close. Then again you could diss Doom and its clones, many years later, for being blurry and pixelated, so...
Sound: Average, but they were trying. Sorta cute funeral dirge.
Gameplay: You can get the basic idea by just fooling around but having the original instructions would be nice. Standard maze stuff, mostly, except for the fact that you are looking at it via first person.
Overall: See gameplay. Not a bad game. I prefer Epyx's "Sword of Fargoal" myself but what the heck. One of Epyx's first efforts at gaming.
Trivia: Just waiting to be "DOOM"-ized by somebody? See also Capture the Flag and Creepy Corridors for similar honors.
Comments: Some keys to use: P shows an overhead map and R is to restart.

Game name: Moon Patrol
Company: Atarisoft [RX8532]
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Translation of William's 1982 arcade coin-op "Moon Patrol".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Good or better. Not all they could be? Atari was also releasing a version for the Commodore 64 then; their effort went there? Don't get me wrong. These graphics aren't bad, just large and blocky.
Sound: Very good. The tune is catchy and the effects all sound good.
Gameplay: Good. Some other home versions are better but this is not bad.
Overall: Good to very good. A nice porting job, overall.
Ad Text: "Leaping patrol cars? Yes, you drive a Moon Buggy across the lunar landscape in this action-packed cartridge that combines all the thrills and challenges of space driving and maze games." (From the multi-lingual box art.)
Trivia: Internal messages at $a013 say "Jan 16 1984 FPR rev 5L".
Trivia: Atarisoft put part numbers on their outer box art but not on the actual carts. This makes it harder for us to track part numbers as most places to buy these old carts only have the cart itself. The reason we want the info is to help track down vaporware; to either confirm a cart was actually made or was just planned. We can't tell if there is a pattern until we get more part numbers. Any solid info appreciated if you have access to original boxes for any of the other Vic20 game cartridges by Atarisoft. Thanks!

Game name: Moses (with or without 8k RAM)
Company: Century
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Utility program; 65C02 machine language assembler.
Required: Unknown, as we don't have one.
Trivia: Ads claim 27 new opcodes available. The 65C02 is an upgraded and more advanced processor than the standard variety 6502 chip.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart you'll need the original instructions, etc.

Game name: Mosquito Infestation
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C3__]
Author: Tom E. Griner (1982)
Game Type: Part "Missile Command", part Galaxian.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Plain looking, but relatively sophisticated for a machine that wasn't supposed to be able to do bit-mapping. The title effect is a show-off piece for sure. (Jeff Minter once commented online about Mr. Griner's coding skills, using proportional fonts as his example.) Does it compare to Tempest 2000? No, but for a Vic...
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Response seems a little slow, so you'll have to plan in advance rather than just do twitch responses. But chasing all those bugs around builds more game tension than you might think. And lest you think the game is pointless and soon over, that funky looking hose thing at the top of the screen is a refill for your bug spray gun.
Overall: Good to very good. The game can be fairly fun and its coded well. There isn't much to whine about; maybe that plain looking arm? If that. The Intellivision bragged about its graphical abilities; do you remember that doctor game they put out? Enough said, eh?
Trivia: A secret message found coded into the carts internals (at $AF4B to $AFFF): "(THIS SPACE FOR RENT)(THIS MEMORY IS PROTECTED BY A MEMOGUARD ALARM SYSTEM-SOFTWARE PIRATES BEWARRE(C)1982-)!PROGRAM BY TOM GRINER, 777-36 SAN ANTONIO RD. PALO ALTO, CA. 94303! TAKEO" (Might TAKEO perhaps have originally been TAKEOFF?... my guess.)
Comments: This is a 4k game internally, although it requires 8k to run.

Game name: Mountain King
Company: Beyond
Author: Concept by Bob Matson, programmed by Jim Stolzenfeld. (1983)
Game Type: Original game, released for many home gaming platforms.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Nice! This is one of the better graphical games. None of the ports were all that complex looking, so they spent time on getting the movement very smooth and making the character animations good.
Sound: Great. The sound effects actually add to the gameplay instead of just being something tacked on at various intervals. The falling effect, for instance, is really enhanced by the sounds. It makes the game experience deeper because of it... which is very, very rare for a Vic20 game. Bravo for your extra effort, folks!
Gameplay: Lots of fun. I suppose the gameplay is much the same on most of the other ports. Same concept, anyway. This games response to your input is very finely tuned. Just quality all the way.
Overall: Bravo! 1983 seemed to be a turning point in the Vic's life. Some programmers got better with time while others just gave up and did as little as possible once the market started moving towards the C64. This is a fine example of quality, craftsmanship and fun!
Trivia: The Vic20's programmers were definitely learning the machine well at this point. Too bad the market dropped out of Vic20 stuff... but then again, we all had fun with our C64's, right? Just as a point of interest, take a look at other 1983 games. Like Frogger, for one. Or Ms Pac-Man. I rest my case about quality standards!

Game name: Ms. Pac-Man
Company: Atarisoft
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Authorized translation of arcade coin-op.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Average, maybe even poor. The characters are blocky as heck. The Vic20 is capable of far more but you'd never know it from this! It is pretty hard to see how a game like this wasted all of 16k?
Sound: Good. The sounds are recognizable enough to enhance the gameplay.
Gameplay: Good. I play the accelerated arcade version most, so perhaps my sense of timing is off when I feel like this pace is a bit slow? But aside from nit-picky purist type flaws the gameplay is good.
Overall: Good but not great. Maybe I'm being harsh on this game as it is one of my (and lots of others) all-time arcade favorites, but I think they could have done better on this conversion. It isn't bad, per se, just not a convincing simulation of the real thing. I guess it's good enough for casual play if you are not a purist.
Trivia: Internal messages at $a013 say "Dec 31 1983 Revision 4L".
Comments: Another game I loved in its arcade version but am not thrilled with at home. For those of you who love Ms. Pac-Man (arcade), if you are disappointed with the VIC version, try the Atari 7800 one. It is fast and smooth and all on one screen. I like that version best, even though I have fancier versions for later home machines like the Sega Genesis, and many other home ports of the game. I feel that only the actual emulated arcade code beats the 7800.

Game name: Mutant Herd
Company: Thorn EMI [THC 22004]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Original game, involving herding creatures into a central pen.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Plain and simple. What were they thinking about on color choices?
Sound: Average. Some of the sounds can get annoying fast.
Gameplay: Mixed. One of those "you'll love it or hate it" things.
Overall: I didn't like it much, but others play it often. You decide.

Game name: Number Nabber, Shape Grabber
Company: Commodore [Vic-1941]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Educational. Two math-related games on one cartridge.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick. Disable bank 1 if present.
Trivia: The last known cartridge in the series made by Commodore. If any one knows of a Vic20 cart number higher than #1941, let us know. But with carts of such dubious value to the Vic's main market, which happened to be avid gamers, this is probably the last one.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you may need the original instructions.

Game name: Omega Race
Company: Commodore [Vic-1924]
Author: Andy Finkel with Eric Cotton (March 1982)
Game Type: Translation of the coin-op arcade game "Omega Race".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Excellent. Translating vector graphics is always hard to do.
Sound: Excellent. They seemed to have captured the arcade's essence.
Gameplay: Excellent. They did a good job of converting this classic game.
Overall: Excellent. Commodore worked hard on this game, and it shows.
Ad Text: "(The smash-hit arcade game!) The ultimate space game. You've got one Omegan fighter maneuvering against droid ships, command ships, death ships, photon mines and vapor mines. Fantastic 'rubber band' boundaries, multiple levels of difficulty... all the features that make the Bally/Midway game so successful! One or two players" (Seen in Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play"; page 104.)
Review: "This translation of the coin-op space shoot is, in the minds of many, the best game currently available for the Vic-20. It's not in full color, but that's only a minor annoyance." (Seen in the Nov 1982 issue of Electronic Games, page 49.) A photo caption in that same article says "Despite the monochrome graphics, Omega Race is a top-notch computer game program."
Review: "High-powered conversion of the classic arcade game. Race around an oblong block where the score is displayed, firing lasers at Droid ships and mines they've planted in space. Lack of gravity is convincingly worked into action; you must wheel around and hit the engines to stop. Droids turn into Command ships if not knocked out fast enough. These become Death Ships, which release more powerful Vapor Mines." (From page 53, Jan/Feb 1985 Computer Games)
Trivia: Yes, this game is reproduced in black and white instead of color. The reason for that is simple; the original arcade game was also black and white! It was an early "vector graphics" based game. In other words, the arcade graphics were similar to those of the arcade classic "Asteroids," or to those on the Vectrex machine. The arcade original of Omega Race was a 1981 Midway game.
Trivia: One of the first video games with a built-in secret feature? "Power Play" magazine, put out by Commodore themselves, ran a two-page article on bugs found in this game and in Gorf, another converted arcade classic. (See Summer 1983 issue, page 38.) In part it says "...is not really a bug in the true sense, so let's call it an 'undocumented feature.' Normally in this game you get three ships when you start. However, if you hold down the SHIFT key while pressing either F1 (for joystick) or F3 (for paddle) at the beginning of the game, you will get -- count 'em -- five ships! Let's see if that improves your score!" (Article written by Jeff Bruette, one of Commodore's in-house game programmers.)
Trivia: An interview with Andy Finkel, another Commodore programmer, said that there is another secret key-press sequence. If you hold down Commodore, Ctrl, and Shift at the title screen, then press Return you will see the programmer's credit screen. You may have to wait a few seconds into the title or press the keys twice, but it does work. (Interview by Rick Melick and posted on his homepage.)

Game name: Outworld
Company: UMI (licensed from Tensor Technology?) [1635]
Author: Thomas A. Giguere (1981)
Game Type: Original game, heavily influenced by "Missile Command" and others.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Very nice. Colorful, detailed, nice moving starfield... they even went so far as to sign their name to it in script! A cute touch.
Sound: Good. They really tried. Impressive, given the Vic's limitations.
Gameplay: Fun. The play mechanic is a mix of many games; protecting your ground-based city with a moving crosshair is obviously Missile Command. However, the asteroids that drop on you break into two and then four pieces as in Asteroids. And the force field over a cityscape looks a lot like Imagic's Atlantis game. All in all, I think they integrated these separate elements well. It plays well.
Overall: A good game regardless but all the more impressive since it was done in 1981; right in the beginning of the Vic's lifespan. Some game companies took until 1983 to start making similar efforts!

Game name: Pac-Man
Company: Atari
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Official translation of the "Pac-Man" arcade coin-op.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick required.
Graphics: Fair. The maze seems half-sized and there are some small glitches in the character's graphics. Even so, the graphics are much more recognizable than those in the infamous Atari 2600 conversion!
Sound: Fair. Some parts sounds like Pac-Man should. Some aren't so good.
Gameplay: Good. Not much better or worse than game console versions of the arcade classic. At least it lets you choose a level to begin on.
Overall: Playable but perhaps a bit uninspired? Flawed but still OK.
Trivia: The arcade version was a 1980 Midway game, licensed from Namco. Many other versions of Pac-Man came out for virtually every game system before and since. It couldn't be helped. Pac-Man was hugely popular then and still rakes in some coins in the arcades today.

Game name: Panic Button
Company: First Star Software, Inc.
Author: unknown (198_)
Comments: Vaporware? The game was reviewed in the May 1984 issue of Compute magazine. See page 124 for the details. Nothing else known yet as no one we've heard of seems to have seen a copy of this game. We'd love to get our hands on one to archive it for everybody. First Star had a very good reputation on other machines so if this cart does really exist it's probably a pretty good game.

Game name: Personal Finance
Company: Commodore (Licensed from Creative Software) [Vic-1929]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Not a game; a home utility to help you with your finances.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard controlled.
Trivia: One of the hardest Commodore cartridges to find. Probably due to its non-game nature; the Vic20 was primarily used by avid gamers.
Trivia: Creative Software may have sold their "Household Finance" cart to Commodore. Both companies separately released this one program.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Pharaoh's Curse
Company: HES (licensed from Synapse Software) [C321]
Author: Alick Dziabczenko (1983)
Game Type: Original climb and run game.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Nice! Mono-colored (Hi-Res) characters may detract a bit but the overall effect is very well done. Nice character animation, good thought put into each level's particular look and so on.
Sound: Could use a little more work but they made a reasonable effort. Nobody seems to have mastered the Vic's sound capabilities enough to keep from being annoying after a (short) while. A nice try.
Gameplay: Whoa! Boy did they make good use of their 16k memory! (I'm sure I haven't said that yet!) Multiple levels that actually look and feel like different levels, instead of just another screen? Wow. This is one of the deepest Vic20 gaming experiences I've seen.
Overall: You have to see this one. Another example of what the Vic20 was capable of doing all along, once programmers learned the machine for a couple of years or so. (Then just as they were getting very good at it, along comes the C64, and bye-bye Vic20 market!) This is one to show to people if they tell you the Vic20 died due to poor software titles, low machine capabilities and so on.
Ad Text: "A fortune -- yours for the taking. But can you avoid the ghost of Rama & the evil mummy? Are you nimble enough to leap the chasms and avoid the booby traps standing between you and freedom?" (Text from Synapse Software ad in Oct 1983 "Compute's Gazette" magazine)
Trivia: Title screen says: "Original by Steve Coleman". Also says something about entering a "secret code word" or using the joystick? (Internal codes says something about you getting it right, too.) The original cart was copy-protected; maybe the code word was a reference to a look-up authentication code? If someone has a copy of the original docs would you let us know for sure? If it was an authentication-type protection code, it may have been one of the first of its kind. Of course other options are probable too.

Game name: Pinball Spectacular
Company: Commodore [Vic-1920]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: A variant of both pinball simulations and Breakout-style games.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Paddle controller.
Graphics: Large and blocky, but at least they are colorful. Nice scrolling title / instructions screen. Fair to middling in overall quality.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Some interesting ideas but I don't care what their ad says... this does NOT play "just like" real pinball. For one, pinball has electro-mechanical flippers, not a Breakout style paddle. Yeesh! Lots of hidden stuff to find/activate, or so others tell me.
Overall: A decent game on its own merits, but real pinball this is not! I normally wouldn't bristle this much over Commodore's stretching the truth, but on this one I do take offense. Heck, I've been a "real pinball" fan since the days that someone first told me that "Space Invaders" was just a fad that would soon pass, and in any case no videogame could ever replace pinball machines. So there!
Ad Text: "Plays just like a true pinball machine... only computerized... flashing lights ... quick 'flipper' action!" (Seen in "Commodore Power Play" magazine, Spring 1983 issue, page 103)
Trivia: An article appeared in the Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play" magazine; see page 72. The then-current champ, Joe Ferrari, talks about strategies he used to score over 1,500,000 points.

Game name: Pipes
Company: Creative Software
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: "Concept home education program"
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Ad Text: "Arlo is a hard-working plumber, but a touch absent-minded. He's building a water supply system for the whole neighborhood, and he really has his hands full. Help Arlo decide what kind of pipe to buy and where to put it... his limited budget doesn't leave him much margin for error. Figure out the shortest, most economical way to get everyone hooked up... and just hope poor Arlo has remembered to open and close the right valves. A marvelously entertaining and challenging exercise in planning, economics and spatial relationships for all ages." (Seen in EG, Dec 83, page 78)
Trivia: Ad also mentions this program was "selected as some of the 'most innovative computer programs' 1983 CES Software Showcase Awards"
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Pirate's Cove Adventure
Company: Commodore [Vic-1915]
Author: Andy Finkel (1981)
Game Type: "Scott Adams Adventure Games" series. (#2 of 5.)
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 2 and 3). Keyboard controlled. The game starts when you type "SYS 32592" and hit the RETURN key.
Ad Text: "'Yo-Ho-Ho and a bottle of rum...' You'll meet up with the pirate and his daffy bird, and encounter many strange sights as you attempt to go from your London flat to Treasure Island. Can you recover Long John Silver's lost treasures?" (Seen in "Commodore Power Play", Spring 1983 issue, page 105)
Comments: See the entry for Adventure Land Adventure for more information on any of the games in this series.

Game name: Poker
Company: Commodore [Vic-1908]
Author: S. Matsuoka (1981)
Game Type: Video poker game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Graphics: Mixed. Nice deck of cards but awfully blocky title graphics.
Sound: Average at best. You'll want to make liberal use of a counter-clockwise hand motion, after finding your volume control knob.
Gameplay: Sorta neat. I like the card games on my IBM just fine, thanks, but this was a trip down memory lane. I just wish the darned game didn't make me wait so long between button presses. Oh well.
Overall: Las Vegas' poker machines look much nicer, but this is cheaper.
Ad Text: "Casino-style poker recreates the real thing! Superb animation and sound effects add to the fun, mystery, and luck." (Ad in the Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play" magazine, page 103.)
Review: An article in the Nov '82 issue of "Electronic Games" has a photo caption for this game. It says "The high resolution graphics of Poker produce a beautiful electronic deck of playing cards." Keep in mind that the Intellivision had "high resolution" back then.
Trivia: Internal codes indicate the program was written by S. Matsuoka of HAL Labs in Tokyo, Japan. But no credits were given onscreen.

Game name: Polaris
Company: Tigervision
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original submarine game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Hi-res graphics but with a very limited color palette. Maybe this suits the game just fine, as its supposed to be underwater?
Sound: Average, maybe even a little sparse. Just missile sound effects.
Gameplay: Multi-screen (and therefore multi-mission) does enhance gameplay. You're not endlessly repeating the same exact tasks all the time. And it's paced fast enough to please me, which isn't too easy.
Overall: More fun than it looks at first. Give it a try before you dismiss the game as an underachiever. It "grew on me" quickly enough.
Ad Text: "Polaris. Three screens triple the action. Captain a sub in enemy waters. In three action-filled screens, you're attacked by everything from bombers and subs to underwater mines. With 16 progressive levels of difficulty, only a military genius gets through." (Seen in Electronic Games, Dec 83, page 128. B&W ad; 1/4 page.)
Trivia: The ad above also stated that the game was "nominated 'Best Action Video Game' (by) Electronic Games Magazine".
Trivia: The screen credits "the electronic boat division of Tigervision" for what that's worth. No person was actually named, however.

Game name: Pole Position
Company: Atarisoft (Licensed from Namco)
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Translation of the arcade game "Pole Position".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Pretty good. Considering the limitations of the Vic, impressive. They simply dropped some game features (like road signs) rather than try to include them and make the whole game suffer due to it. (Wise.) Some flicker at times, perhaps, but nothing too annoying.
Sound: Good. Sound effects are nice, engine noise is nice. Well done.
Gameplay: Good. Purists may object to the missing stuff. Others won't care.
Overall: Good or better. Someone was really getting to know the Vic. See what I've said before, about the programmers maturing at the end?
Trivia: Internal messages at $a013 date the cart at "Jan 30, 1984".
Trivia: One subtle graphic detail that may go unnoticed; notice that the screen goes from full left to full right. No border. Neat, eh?

Game name: Predator
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C316]
Author: Tom E. Griner (1982)
Game Type: Original game, perhaps with a bit of influence from "Joust".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Pushing the poor little Vic into territory it was never meant to go! Bit-mapped graphics, tiny little fonts, etc. Check out the impressive little animation, complete with fireworks, when you set the top high score. Cute touches like that make games special. When Jeff Minter was interviewed online, he said much the same.
Sound: Average or better.
Gameplay: Unusual subject matter makes it harder to "get into" the game at first, but gameplay is well balanced.
Overall: Some may love its style of gameplay, some may not. But it is a technologically impressive game either way.
Trivia: A message found secretly coded into the carts internals (at $BFA6 to $BFFF): "PROGRAMMED BY TOM GRINER 777-36 SAN ANTONIO RD.PALO ALTO CALIF. U.S.A.(C)1982-KEEP OUT..." Mr. Griner said in an online interview that he once kept a list of all who responded.

Game name: Princess and Frog
Company: Romox Inc.
Author: Bob Horn (1983)
Game Type: Clone of the arcade coin-op game Frogger.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Colorful enough. Might be impressive on some other gaming console.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Experienced gamers might not like it, but perhaps kids would? You decide, but personally I like many other Frogger clones better.
Overall: I tend to agree with the magazine review shown below.
Review: "This is a copy of Frogger and a pathetic one at that. Since Parker Brothers and Sierra already make excellent versions of Frogger for the Atari, the last thing anybody needs is another one. Romox puts their games on erasable chips that allow you to go back to the store and have another game transferred onto them. With games like this, that may be the only redeeming quality." (Review text for Atari computer version, from page 52 of Computer Games magazine, Jan/Feb 1985 issue.) We have no knowledge about the internals Romox used for Vic20 carts; ROM, EPROM or EEPROM?

Game name: Programmer's Aid Cartridge
Company: Commodore [Vic-1212]
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Utility program.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Trivia: This seems to be 4k internally, although it requires 8k to run.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Promenade
Company: Jason-Ranheim
Author: unknown
Game Type: Utility package. Specialized hardware for very advanced users.
Trivia: Included here because the company's main product, the Promenade EPROM programming tool, could create cartridges from parts the company sold. Even as late as July 1996, the company still sells parts and the latest (C64) Promenade EPROM programming tool. But no longer has any stock of any Vic20 products, unfortunately. Believe me, I asked them more than once, with no luck! Oh well.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this product, you'll need the original instructions and all the original hardware plus other accessories and EPROMs. Aside from the historical interest, go find a modern ROM burner.

Game name: Protector
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C308]
Author: Alick Dziabczenko (1983)
Game Type: Variants of both "Scramble" and Defender.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good to very good. They look a bit plain at times but everything is clearly defined, the color use is good and the animation nice.
Sound: Above average but still not fabulous. This is more the Vic20's fault than the programmer's fault. He certainly worked at it.
Gameplay: Somewhat difficult, but rewarding. He squeezed a heck of a lot into an 8k game! The puzzle solving and action mix is well done.
Overall: Very nice! Give this one a good, long look. It deserves it.

Game name: Q*bert
Company: Parker Brothers (licensed from Mylstar Electronics, Inc.)
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Authorized translation of the arcade coin-op "Q*bert".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Below average. I don't think they tried very hard. Note that each of the "sprites" are surrounded by a black border all the time, indicating that the simplest form of character graphics were used. The large size of the individual blocks confirms they were.
Sound: Fair. The tune, which doesn't play much, is short but done well. The sound effects sound a bit muffled but are generally OK.
Gameplay: Average. The diagonal movement scheme is tricky on any system so I won't mark down for that. Game speed is fairly good, overall.
Overall: Average at best. This is not the best conversion, by a long shot!
Review: "(A-) A mostly successful conversion of the arcade hit. Hop your 'hose-nose' around the pyramid until all the cubes are the same color. Various weird and amusing enemies are chasing you. The home game lacks the incredible sound effects of the arcade game, and the graphics aren't nearly as good. But it's still fun to leap onto a flying disk and watch Coily take a dive off the pyramid." (From Computer Games, page 53, Jan/Feb 1985 issue)
Trivia: Note that the early ads from Parker Brothers show that they were making and selling C64 and Vic20 games at the same time. I can only assume they put far less effort into the Vic20 market's game as this version is rather uninspired. OK, but certainly not great.
Trivia: The original arcade game had cool "speech" features, for lack of a better word, that most home games never did reproduce well. The original arcade game also had an electro-mechanical "thumper" in the bottom of its cabinet. When Q*bert falls, he appears to fall off the screen. Then there was a short pause. Then it sounded and felt as if something had hit the bottom of the game's cabinet. In its properly working original cabinet, this gave the impression that Q*bert had been the object that had struck bottom. This made it almost worth losing a guy, just to hear and feel it happen!
Comments: The joystick uses diagonals only. Turn the joystick partway on its side to try to compensate for this, if it bothers you. Just about every home system conversion dealt had this same problem.

Game name: Quick Brown Fox
Company: Quick Brown Fox
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Utility program. A word processor.
Required: Unknown, as we don't have one archived yet. It was very popular during its day, so it must have been pretty good then? The same company released tape-based add-ons for it, besides their cart.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions. And I can't see the Vic's memory and screen limits being a big plus.

Game name: Radar Rat Race
Company: Commodore [Vic-1910]
Author: Bill Hindorff (Nov 5, 1981)
Game Type: Unauthorized clone of the arcade coin-op game "Rally-X".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. Everything that Rally-X had, this has, except changed a bit to look less like the every-detail-intact copy that it is. Just change the mice and cats to be cars, the cheese to be flags, and redo the onscreen text, and you have Rally-X. Seriously.
Sound: Generally good. The background music gets a bit old, but it is at a lower volume level, so there. ("Three blind mice, see how they run...") The sound effects are OK, but could be better.
Gameplay: Just like Rally-X. Everything seems to have be duplicated. The changes in the graphics don't hurt the gameplay a bit. Still fun.
Overall: Give this one a try. It is a lot of fun, and will grow on you.
Ad Text: "The magical mouse maze makes for a fast-paced, challenging game of wit, strategy and reflexes. Excellent graphics." (From the Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play", page 103)
Review: "This scrolling maze chase sends the player scurrying along corridors on a mission to grab all the available cheese." (Seen in Nov 1982 issue of "Electronic Games", page 49.)
Trivia: Another one of Commodore's early attempts to get away with copying another manufacturer's games and sell them as their own? (See also Star Battle and Jelly Monsters.) Those two were apparently yanked off the market early. This clone of Rally-X was apparently very popular at the time, judging by the relative ease of finding one.
Trivia: The arcade coin-op "Rally-X" was a 1980 Midway game. The arcade industry saw Rally-X as the next big thing, until Pac-Man took an unexpected popularity ride. Rally-X was all but forgotten then. It had serious potential, I'll grant you that. Simple enough to attract a wide audience, with enough tension to keep interest up among the more advanced players. A quarter hog, for sure. But the best laid plans of mice and men... (Sorry, I couldn't resist!)
Trivia: There are some interesting notes hidden inside the actual code of the game... "this program was created by -bill hindorff- nov. 5, 1981 vic commandos k. of p., usa" it says at $A34B in the unmodified game code. (Does K of P = "King of Prussia, PA"?)
Trivia: Neil Harris confirmed that "Vic Commandos" was the in-house name for the small group that was working to launch the Vic20 system. He also mentioned in that same online interview that the group often spent long lunches at local video arcades doing "R&D" work.
Trivia: This game is so close to being Rally-X, that the "cheese" almost resembles the original flags and all the other graphics also look very close to their inspirations. But the clincher as far as I'm concerned; the onscreen text has precisely the right amount of characters to have originally been text right from "Rally-X"! I suspect they made a literal copy first, then made their changes.

Game name: Radiotap
Company: Kantronics
Author: unknown (1984)
Game Type: Specialized hardware. Interface package for ham radio operators.
Review: This cartridge was reviewed in the April 1984 issue of Compute. See page 100 for the article.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this, you'll need all the original instructions and hardware, ham radio equipment, etc, etc. This came out towards the end of the Vic's life, when it was obvious that many people would soon replace their Vic20 with something like the C64. It gave the Vic20 something useful to do, or that was its pitch.

Game name: Raid on Fort Knox
Company: Commodore [Vic-1913]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Maze game. See also "Radar Rat Race".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. The graphic characters are smallish but fairly precise.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Slow-paced in the early rounds, with little danger of being hurt. The game adds more guards each round, so it gets more difficult.
Overall: Average. Try Radar Rat Race for a better but similar game, if you feel this one is too slow for adult play. Kids may love it.
Ad Text: "You're scurrying through a complex of tunnels below Fort Knox. Just ahead you spot the gold... now grab it and try to escape before the guards find you." (Seen in "Commodore Power Play" magazine, Spring 1983 issue, page 102.)
Trivia: This game is basically a rewritten version of a Commodore game called "Bank Robber". BR has a copyright date of 1981, ROFK has a date of 1982. Other than that and screen color changes, they appear to be identical. Makes me wonder if BR wasn't originally going to be Commodore's # Vic-1903? Could be, perhaps.

Game name: Rat Hotel
Company: Creative Software
Author: Joanne Lee / "Jolee" (1982)
Game Type: Original game, involving climb-and-run and treasure collection.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Simple, but they do the job well enough. Nice scrolling.
Sound: Simple, but it does the job. Theme music gets a bit repetitive, but it helps add a bit of tension to the game. Effects are OK.
Gameplay: The gameplay is the fun part here. Slow at first, but the speed builds with each round, adding to the "chase" tension. And you have to know which are the safe spots to hide out in, like a rat. Hurry, but too much speed equals mistakes! Pretty well-balanced.
Overall: One of my personal favorites and one reason I became re-interested in Vic20 software in the first place. Really. Try it. It is fun to play, even if the graphics are laughable by today's standards.
Review: The game was reviewed in the Nov 1983 issue of Compute's Gazette.

Game name: Renaissance
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1600]
Author: Louis X. Savain (1982)
Game Type: Computerized version of "Othello" board game.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Comments: Not given a thorough review, as I don't play Othello myself and therefore don't feel qualified to comment. Try it for yourself.

Game name: River Rescue
Company: Thorn EMI [THC 22001]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Variant of the Atari 2600 game "River Raid" by Activision.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Fair to good. Some portions are better than others, but overall Activision did a much better job on the Atari 2600 version.
Sound: Average. Nothing to write home about. Again, Activision beat it.
Gameplay: Average to good. It depends if you like fast-paced games or not; this game depends on blazing speeds to amaze you as it goes on. If you don't know that, you'll quit in boredom pretty early on.
Overall: Average to good. The Activision game is much better rounded and will appeal to a larger audience. Nevertheless it has some charm. Just don't try to use it to show off what your Vic20 can do!
Trivia: A pain to fit the original cart into its slot! Good luck, if you use a third-party expansion chassis, like I do. It barely fits. This is obviously Thorn EMI's first-ever Vic20 game; it shows.
Comments: This game scrolls sideways instead of vertically, but other than that, its obvious this is a game based on Activision's classic. (They both have copyright dates of 1982.) I'm willing to cut them some slack simply because this is their first-ever Vic20 game, but it could have been much better. How hard were they trying?

Game name: Road Race
Company: Commodore [Vic-1909]
Author: J. Suzuki, HAL laboratory, Japan (1981)
Game Type: Clone of the arcade coin-op "Night Driver".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard controlled.
Graphics: Good. Compared to the original B&W game, perhaps even very good.
Sound: Good but not great. Adequate sound effects.
Gameplay: Fair. I suppose you have to get used to it first, over time?
Overall: Good. True enough to the original coin-op, but not a great game.
Trivia: The original Atari arcade coin-op was black and white. It had the excuse of being born in 1976, so what did you expect?
Trivia: Because this title is based on a mid-seventies arcade title, it may seem a bit uninspired in its play. However, the idea of being in the driver's seat was a novel idea in its time. And don't be too hard on the graphics; Pong was only four years old in 1976!

Game name: Robin Hood
Company: Xonox
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original game, ported to many platforms.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: It's fairly obvious that this was a port of a multi-system game.
Sound: Average or better. They seemed to have tried to make some decent background music. It's catchy, within the limits of Vic20 sound.
Gameplay: Why bother? Maybe some people will like it, but it isn't for me.
Overall: My opinion on most of Xonox' games should be well understood by now. Most of Xonox's programmers probably had the talent to do much more, but they apparently had to cater to the lowest common denominator to make all the games alike across many platforms. I blame Xonox's management; they apparently thought that any random plastic box sitting on a store's shelves would be a money magnet.

Game name: Robot Panic
Company: HES (Licensed from Rabbit Software UK) [C310]
Author: Steve Clark (1982)
Game Type: Original vertically-scrolling space shooter.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: At first glance, this is an underachiever. The backgrounds are plain, empty and black. Your ship is a bit colorful and has some nice detailing but the enemy ships are rather plain looking. But once you start playing the game it becomes obvious where they put their main emphasis; many fast-moving things onscreen at once. Empty backgrounds are almost a necessity once you start playing!
Sound: Average or better. Nice effects.
Gameplay: Fast paced and fun. If it had fancier background art this would be a lot like the modern arcade classic "Raiden". Really! Try it.
Overall: They named the game aptly; the panic part of things, I mean. It's obvious they made the game to take advantage of what the Vic does well, and just ignored what it wasn't really good at. Good plan.

Game name: Robotron: 2084
Company: Atarisoft
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Authorized translation of William's arcade game "Robotron: 2084".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Fair enough, within the limits of the Vic20. Disappointing, of course, compared to the original arcade machine, but no shock.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Without two joysticks it just isn't the same experience at all.
Overall: Don't expect miracles, but give it a shot. None of the home game versions really capture the original's pacing, tension, or sheer number of enemies onscreen. I know, because I own the original arcade game itself, along with beaucoup home renditions for my collection of various gaming platforms, new and old. None of the home games I've seen really come all that close. Judge them as separate products? I think you have to, in a few cases like this.
Trivia: Another classic Eugene Jarvis blastfest. (See also Defender.) He really knows gaming, that's for darn sure! Bless his hyperactive heart for giving the world such pure adrenaline rushes, says I.
Comments: Just to give you an idea of the original's intensity, I paid big bucks for two brand new arcade joysticks to upgrade my original cabinet. These sticks use no mechanical switches inside; instead they use beams of light. Even with these sticks you'd better move fast; I don't last forever regardless, but man is that fun! I'm just glad I don't have to keep pumping quarters into the game. My six year old nephew also loves the original game, even if he has to stand on a chair just to see the screen and control it. I can't wait to see what he thinks of other games, after Robotron.

Game name: Sargon II Chess
Company: Commodore (Licensed from Hayden Book Co. Inc.) [Vic-1919]
Author: Dan & Kathe Spracklen (1982?)
Game Type: Chess simulation.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Trivia: The copyright date listed onscreen predates the existence of the Vic20 and therefore cannot be accurately used to tell when this program was created. Anyone have solid info on when it was made? I suspect it was made in 1982, judging by its part # positioning.
Comments: I don't play chess so I couldn't see the point in reviewing this game. (At least I'm honest.) Obviously, newer versions for more powerful machines are going to play at a more expert level. When this program was made, electronic chess was still a novelty item. The idea of playing chess, against a computer, at home, may as well have been science fiction just a few years before. Of course calculators and digital watches were recent hits then too, so...

Game name: Satellite Patrol
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C3__]
Author: Teddysoft (1982)
Game Type: Variants of "Time Pilot" and/or "Asteroids".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Really blocky in places but the color use is well done. The main part of the screen looks somewhat plainly done and this may hide the technically impressive multi-directional scrolling effects at first. The moving border effects are nicely done, as well. Some of the Vic's library just aren't done any justice in screen shots.
Sound: Average but nicely done.
Gameplay: Fun, but the multi-directional scrolling must have been quite trippy for its time! Nice pacing and good game tension build-up.
Overall: I like its gameplay and am impressed by its technical aspects too.
Comments: This is a 4k game internally, although it requires 8k to run.

Game name: Satellites and Meteorites!
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1650]
Author: Roger L. Merritt (1982)
Game Type: Variant of the arcade coin-op game "Asteroids".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. Lots of stuff onscreen, all moving around at once.
Sound: OK. The makers spent most of their resources getting the gameplay and screen "right". I can forgive the lack of background music.
Gameplay: Darn good! This is the best Asteroids variant on the Vic by far.
Overall: Excellent. It may not be a "Raiden" for lots of things onscreen at once, but it sure is impressive within a Vic20's limitations!

Game name: Scorpion
Company: Tronix
Author: Jimmy Huey (1983)
Game Type: Overhead-view maze-type shooter.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Well done. Detailed characters and nice multi-direction scrolling.
Sound: Pretty good. Love that "chain gun" sound effect!
Gameplay: Very good. The company prided itself on its fast-paced games.
Overall: If you like shooting sprees, you should like this one a lot!
Review: "If you're sick of escorting frogs across the street, you can now shoot them and feed them to your family. Scorpion is an extremely fast-moving action/maze game. With eight enemies, you don't have to look far for something to kill. The maze scrolls all four ways and the radar scanner tells you where you are. Three difficulty settings, 32 levels." ("Computer Games", Jan/Feb 1985, page 54)
Trivia: Was this game one of the first quad-directional scrollers? (In other words, a game that showed only part of the screen at any one time and let you move the world to you when going off-screen.) Most game screens at the time stayed put, and never changed.

Game name: Sea Wolf
Company: Commodore [Vic-1937]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Authorized translation of coin-op game "Sea Wolf".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. Simple-looking, but this matches the arcade original.
Sound: Very good. Again, they match the original game pretty well.
Gameplay: Very good. Much like the original arcade game.
Overall: Very good. I miss the periscope of the original, but that's all.
Ad Text: "As submarine commander you are in charge of sinking and destroying all enemy ships... destroyers, freighters and P.T. boats... an explosive Bally/Midway 'arcade classic'. Fast action fun!!" (Seen in "Commodore Power Play", Spring 1983, page 104)
Trivia: The original coin-op was a 1975 game by Midway. The ad text above is refering to older arcade games Commodore was converting over. When Commodore switched over (from the Vic20 to the C64) later, some of these games were re-converted. The simpler games, like Sea Wolf, are probably closer translations on the Vic20 than C64. Perhaps they felt that with more time having passed, the games needed to be updated? And also, to better show off the new C64.
Trivia: "Next Generation" magazine, issue 24, makes reference to a game that may be the direct ancestor of both this game and its video arcade parent. See article on Sega's co-founder, for some more info on the electro-mechanical (non-video) game "Periscope".
Trivia: The original game's cabinet made the game much more convincing and fun. A realistic metal periscope came down from the top of the cabinet. You looked through the periscope at the game screen. When you turned the periscope to the left or right, your torpedos' aiming mechanism would move with it... much like Space Invaders' moving base at the bottom of the screen. They added a visually interesting twist, however. You had four torpedos at a time. Then you had to wait momentarily for the game to reload you. Inside the periscope's eyepiece was an optical illusion similar to a "heads up" see-through display in aircraft. To know how many torpedos you had available, you had to be looking through the eyepiece. You saw a little red symbol lit up for each remaining torpedo. You fired, then one of them would turn off. When all four were gone you had to wait until they all lit up again. Meanwhile, ships were going by and you were helpless to do anything about it until they reloaded. The effect helped to make the game more immersive. It added to the game, through suspense and pace. "Come on, come on, oh finally" you would think, then blast your next four torpedos away... Did I mention that you fired them using a thumb button, also on the periscope assembly? Sigh... a joystick does this game no justice! BTW, the original Battlezone also had a periscope controller.
Trivia: This game got lots of space here (A) because I just happen to like the game, (B) because I had lots of reference materials on it, and (C) because it is a link in an evolutionary process. Think of this as a different way to play Space Invaders, basically. (Which in a sense was similar to the earlier, mechanical shooting games found at carnivals.) The concept remains pretty much the same, even if the details changed over time. And they are all fun, too!

Game name: Seafox
Company: Broderbund
Author: Programmed by Mike Wise (1983)
Game Type: Original submarine game.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Plainly colored, but the animation and fine detailing are good.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: A bit more complex than most. It's probably the type of thing where you "feel like you got your money's worth" because of it.
Overall: I like games that are simpler and faster paced, but this does seem to be a well-balanced game with real thought put into making it.
Trivia: The title screens credit Ed Hobbs with the concept, apparently.

Game name: Serpentine
Company: Creative Software (Licensed from Broderbund)
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Maze / snake / eating game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. Animation of the snake movement is pretty good.
Sound: Fair. Effects are OK, the song gets annoying after a while.
Gameplay: Good. Seems lame at first, then gets more fun as you keep playing.
Overall: Good. Grows on you... give it a try.
Ad Text: "In the Kingdom of Serpents, the only rule is eat or be eaten. Three huge and evil red snakes are slithering through a complex series of mazes, closing in on your good blue serpent from all sides. Move fast and watch your tail! Try to survive long enough to let your eggs hatch into reinforcements. Swallow the magical frogs or your enemy's eggs and you can get the strength to go on... but look out to your left... and ahead of you! They've got you surrounded, and it looks like meal time." (Seen in EG, Dec 83)
Trivia: Ad also mentions this program was "selected as some of the 'most innovative computer programs' 1983 CES Software Showcase Awards"

Game name: Shamus
Company: HES (licensed from Synapse Software Inc.) [C307]
Author: Tom E. Griner (1983)
Game Type: Variant of "Berzerk" with some new features added.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. Hi-res graphics with cool visual effects.
Sound: Nice music. Sound effects in general are very good in this one.
Gameplay: "Fast-paced" does no justice to the higher levels of this game. "Die in two seconds after entering a room" is more like it. Of course individual tastes vary, but personally I love this game!
Overall: Wonderful. I wouldn't change a thing. The C64 version kicks, too.
Ad Text: "The odor tells you the Shadow's there -- in one of four levels of 32 rooms, each bristling with danger. You know it won't be a high school prom, but there's no turning back. Shamus -- the sleuth adventure classic." (Synapse Software ad in Oct 1983 Compute's Gazette magazine)
Trivia: The arcade game "Berzerk" had a few phrases of speech, which kept players coming back for more. That isn't really needed here; the rapid pace and frantic gameplay makes up for the missing speech.

Game name: Sir Lancelot
Company: Xonox
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Variant of the arcade coin-op game "Joust".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very plain background coloring and detail, but the animation of the active characters is done well. They feel too small, however, but I suppose they did fit a lot onto the screen that way. Given their design concept, I doubt it could be done much better.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Similar enough to the real arcade Joust to make non-avid players happy, but falling short of being the same experience. A large screen is necessary to play and enjoy the game. A standard monitor might be OK, but a large TV would be better. Why? Because you are required to quickly judge small graphic differences, to stay above your opponent's lance, just as in the original Joust.
Overall: One of the only Xonox games I like. It is flawed in some ways but given the limits of the Vic20, I don't think programmers of the time could do significantly better. It's a very good effort.

Game name: Skibbereen
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1641]
Author: Joanne Lee / "Jolee" (1982)
Game Type: Combination of Breakout and Pong variants, for two players.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Paddle controllers, NOT a joystick.
Graphics: Simple but colorful. Breakout clones in general aren't very much more than big, brightly colored blocks on the screen.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: A nice variant of the Breakout experience. Having two opposing sides competing against one another was a nice idea, I think.
Overall: A simple enough game, with good game play and some nice twists. One of the few simultaneous multi-player or paddle games.
Trivia: This is a 4k game internally, although it requires 8k to run.

Game name: The Sky is Falling
Company: Commodore [Vic-1911]
Author: unknown (1981)
Game Type: Part of the "Children's series".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Uses paddle controllers, NOT joysticks.
Graphics: Good. Simple, but effective. Lots of rows of stuff to fall down.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Good. Something like "Kaboom!" (for the Atari 2600) in concept.
Overall: Good. For its intended audience of children, probably great. For adults, who've presumably played "Kaboom!" before, nothing new.
Ad Text: "Help Chicken Little by catching pieces of the sky as they fall! A great 'first game' to teach motor skills... fun and challenging!" (Seen in "Commodore Power Play", Spring 1983, page 105.)
Trivia: Some folks might say this is just a clone of the popular Atari 2600 console game "Kaboom!" by Activision. Others may point to an earlier Atari arcade coin-op game (called "Avalanche") as the ancestral game idea behind both "Kaboom!" & "The sky is falling".

Game name: Skyblazer
Company: Broderbund
Author: Jeff Silverman and Tony Suzuki (1983)
Game Type: Original game, vaguely influenced by "Defender".
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Really nice! Check out some of the more subtle tricks; the stars in the background scrolling by at different speeds (parallax), the smooth animation and movement of everything, etc. Even the attract mode is a viewing pleasure. Especially considering that an attract mode is largely an unnecessary frill in a non-arcade (home) game!
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Deep and well balanced with the potential for many hours of happy gaming. Broderbund generally gave you more than your money is worth.
Overall: I'm surprised this cartridge is as hard to find as it is. Or at least I was, until I realized people don't want to give theirs up!

Game name: Slot
Company: Commodore [Vic-1904]
Author: unknown (1981)
Game Type: Slot machine simulation.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Average. Character-based graphics used, but they work out OK. They are colorful and fairly recognizable, if nothing else.
Sound: Good. Fairly nice effects, overall. Even the wheels spinning has a nice sound to it. Nice fanfare for when you've won, too.
Gameplay: Very good, if your expectations are reasonable. The only real improvements modern systems have other this are in audio-visuals.
Overall: Good to very good. If it keeps me from going to a real gambling establishment, and saves me all that lost money, its excellent! Either way, it can be a relaxing way to kill some free time.
Ad Text: "Colorful slot machine game works just like the real thing! Great music and sound effects." (Seen in Spring 1983 "Commodore Power Play" magazine, page 102.)
Review: An article in the Nov 1982 issue of "Electronic Games" magazine has a photo caption that says "The Vic-20's Slot Machine cartridge carries its simulation so far that it actually has a coin slot."
Trivia: Perhaps Commodore's first "legal" cartridge for the Vic20? The previous carts, numerically, seemed to be non-authorized versions of other company's most popular games. (Avenger #1901 is really "Space Invaders", Star Battle #1902 is really "Galaxian", and #1903 is still an unconfirmed title we haven't managed to find, which leads us to believe it may have been more of the same.)
Comments: Fire inserts a coin(s), joystick back pulls the lever for you.

Game name: Snake Byte
Company: Sirius Software [22031]
Author: Dan Stanfield (1982)
Game Type: Snake chase game; like the light cycles in the 1982 movie "Tron".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Abstract art. That's what comes to mind when I see these graphics. They are nicely done, for this genre of game; don't get me wrong. But it's hard to identify with colored lines as game characters.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Interesting, if you like this type of game. I never really got into it myself. Try it out. See if you like it more than I do.
Overall: For a game made in only 4k of memory this is not bad. But compared to later 8k or 16k games, its just not all that deep. Go watch the movie "Tron" again and pay attention to the light cycles. It's a kick to think of this game and that movie as being historical peers. Computer hardware is obsoleted quickly; games even more so. Nevertheless, both can be fun to playfully revisit once in a while.
Ad Text: "What has 4k bytes and is addictive? Snake Byte. The game starts out politely. You, the Snake, may accept or decline the presence of the Perilous Purple Plums. Next, simply slither around the screen, chomping down apples as you go. Sound easy? Well, no more Mr. nice guy... Each time you eat an apple, your Snake grows longer and moves faster. Soon, your head doesn't know what its tail is doing. If you bump into a wall or a bouncing Plum or even yourself, you break your fangs. But, if you're a snappy Snake and scarf up all ten apples, a door will appear and you're off to a more difficult maze. Snake Byte, a game you can sink your teeth in to. It's an antidote for boredom. Fangs alot, Sirius!" (Box.)
Review: Game was reviewed in the March 1984 issue of Compute, page 122.
Trivia: Box art says "Game design by Chuck Sommerville. Vic-20 version by Dan Stanfield."
Trivia: This game is 4k long; the box art even says so. In other words, Snakebyte is half the code size of most of the later Vic20 carts, and a quarter of the size of even later games. This would explain why the game seems so simplistic in most aspects. Not bad for 4k? (Once your cart archivists looked, we found many more cartridges that were really only 4k in length... see our cart list for more.)

Game name: Space Ric-O-Shay
Company: OEM
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Unknown at this time. Presumed to be a space shooter.
Required: Unknown. We haven't yet had access to one, to archive it.
Comments: "VGA2000" has screenshots up on his web site, so it must exist. However, he has the only copy we are aware of, at present.

Game name: Space Snake
Company: Handic Benelux B.V.
Author: Geert Hofstede (1982)
Game Type: Original "dodging objects" game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Paddle or keyboard. Disable Bank 1 if present.
Graphics: Average. The movement is smooth enough with some color.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Most people would say it is frustrating, I think. Semi-pointless. Internally, it appears to be made up largely of BASIC code.
Overall: Flawed. Probably OK as a tape game, but if this was ever truly a cartridge game (still unconfirmed as yet), I doubt it sold many. Then again, it came out in 1982; still fairly early, I suppose.

Game name: Speed Math & Bingo Math
Company: Commodore [Vic-1933]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Educational. Two versions of math drills for youngsters.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you may need the original instructions.

Game name: Spider City
Company: Sirius
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original space shooter, with some influence from Defender.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: The advanced techniques used will give Vic emulators fits, so it is fairly obvious that Sirius spent some time on their graphics!
Sound: Average or better.
Gameplay: Good grief! This has that same sense of gaming tension that the original arcade Defender did and many of the same play elements. Definitely faced paced. I hope your joystick is heavy duty!
Overall: Give it a shot, but if you're using an emulated Vic20, good luck.
Trivia: Was this game originally intended to be called "Flash Gordon" and released by 20th Century Fox? An ad in the Summer 1983 issue of "Commodore Power/Play" magazine (page 100) has a pre-release ad for such a game. The screen shot looks like Spider City and the text mentions that name... "Space Rescue game on cartridge for the Vic20. Maneuver through underground tunnels and battle spider warriors to save American spacemen trapped in Spider City. Package features a full-color poster from the film." So who knows?

Game name: Spiders of Mars
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1604]
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Variant of arcade coin-op "Defender" by Williams.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Plain backgrounds and huge characters, but with smooth scrolling and fast movement throughout the game. A good set of compromises.
Sound: Average. It could use a more macho-sounding laser gun, though!
Gameplay: Not the same experience as Defender, but much the same pacing.
Overall: Give it a try, especially if you are a fan of arcade Defender.
Review: "You're the Martian Fly, defending your planet against spiders and their winged allies. They attack from all sides using smart bombs and homing missiles. If the spider makes it to the surface, you're dead. The enemy attack in large numbers and their weapons are very accurate. This game is similar to Defender, but with more interesting enemies. True arcade action, great graphics and sound effects. (A)" (From "Computer Games", Jan/Feb 1985, pg 55)

Game name: Spike's Peak
Company: Xonox
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original game, ported to many platforms.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Average or better. Nicely done (if surreal looking) mountains. The graphics on most screens are a little plain, but not bad looking.
Sound: Average or better. A nice try at a catchy opening tune. I like the feet-stamping sounds the monster characters make; it adds a bit more gaming tension, which generally gets you more involved.
Gameplay: Better than most by Xonox. I suppose this one could hold its own against most games of the times, especially on gaming consoles. Some of the screens feel just a bit like Miner 2049'er variants.
Overall: Years ago as a double-ender cart, this probably wasn't a bad deal. Now, as a freebie ROM image, it certainly warrants a second look.

Game name: Spills & Fills
Company: Creative Software
Author: Marc-Thomas Clifton (1983)
Game Type: "Concept home education software."
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Springer
Company: Tigervision
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Original platform game.
Required: 16k RAM. (8k each in banks 3 & 5.) Joystick.
Graphics: Plain looking. Compares to many of Atari's early 2600 games.
Sound: Yuck! Turn the volume down. The opening "music" sounds awful.
Gameplay: I'd have to admit that I didn't play this enough to make a solid opinion of it. The risk/reward ratio didn't keep me coming back. The use of multiple screens may be a plus, however, assuming you like the initial experience enough to want to come back for more!
Overall: Just to be fair, try it yourself. But for myself, I see why this is a hard-to-find game. A last minute "Vic20 is dying out" effort.
Ad Text: "Springer. Three screens triple the action. Help Springer, a magical rabbit, jump from cloud to cloud on a thrill-filled trek to the sun. Along the way, there are bonus points to collect and dragons to fight. And, remember, Springer has three screens. So the farther you get the harder it gets." (Seen in Electronic Games, Dec 83, page 110. Ad was about a quarter page in size.)
Trivia: The ad above has three screenshots shown, but as they are barely larger than an inch a piece, and the ad was black and white, you really can't view that much difference between the 3 screens. And with the real game fired up? Same things, in different positions.

Game name: Star Battle
Company: Commodore [Vic-1902]
Author: See Trivia. (1981)
Game Type: Clone of arcade classic "Galaxian". (Apparently unauthorized.)
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick or keyboard play.
Graphics: Good overall, but with some occasional glitches. Very colorful.
Sound: Good. Very clear separation of background music and the noises of ships, lasers. This might kick butt with a good subwoofer!
Gameplay: Very good. Arguably better than the authorized version.
Overall: Very good. One of the better Galaxian clones on any game console.
Ad Text: "The deadliest fleet in the universe is zeroing in on your star base. This mission is your greatest challenge... while you protect your base from the deadly drones you must be wary of the diving flagships with their trained escorts. This is Star Battle." (From the box art / instruction sheet. Same text also shown in French.)
Review: "Letting the invaders peel out of the formation and swoop low across the field to bomb the player's movable cannon at close range is the principle behind Galaxian. The SI sequel combines less predictable invader movements with a more exciting visual treatment." (Seen in Electronic Games, Dec 1983, pages 53 & 60.)
Trivia: The onscreen titles only show part of these internal messages: "(C) 1981 COMMODORE JAPAN THIS PROGRAM WAS WRITTEN BY - SATORU IWATA - APR.19.1981 HAL LABORATORY AKIHABARA TOKYO JAPAN"
Trivia: The coin-op game "Galaxian" was a 1979 game put out by Midway, who licensed it from Namco. The game was essentially an updated version of Space Invaders, which was a 1978 game made by Taito... but which was in turn licensed from Midway. Got all that?
Trivia: Rumored to have been pulled off the market due to legal problems. Could well be true. Opening screens refers to "Commodore Japan". (Was this an attempt to avoid US copyright law enforcement?) The French/English box art sheet was apparently meant for Canada. And this is one of the hardest Commodore-made Vic20 carts to find.

Game name: Star Post
Company: Commodore [Vic-1939]
Author: See Trivia. (1982?)
Game Type: Original space shooting game... but see comments.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick. Disable bank 1 if present.
Graphics: Average. Nice in some places, fairly crude and blocky in others.
Sound: Good. Some nice effects; laser zaps and tension effects are good.
Gameplay: Mixed. One of those "some will like it and others hate it" things.
Overall: Good, but with reservations.
Ad Text: "3D space action... you control the laser to destroy the flying aliens and objects. Allow less than 8 hits on your base and advance to the next level!" (Seen in "Commodore Power Play", on page 104 of the Spring 1983 issue)
Trivia: Internal codes indicate the design was by Greg Carbonaro and programming was by Mike Wriedel. No on-screen credits were given. These two gents normally wrote games for Spectravideo. (See also the write-ups on "Ape Escape" and "Cosmic Jailbreak").
Comments: The play mechanic is a bit hard to get used to. This hides a real resemblance to Atari's coin-op game "Tempest" in some ways. In fact, I bet that good coders with time on their hands might be able to remake this game into a Vic20 clone of Tempest. Fire up the game. Look at it and consider these thoughts. First reverse the direction the monsters travel (inward to outward). Should be easy enough. Next, change the background to be a framework web instead of the odd patchwork space station design that it is now. Now look at the game. Couldn't you just tweak things from there? Might this not be just what Commodore did, but in reverse? I bet it is possible. It seems the game may have existed earlier than it was released. That much can be seen from the dating found inside the code, compared with its post-1983 list positioning. And it was originally written by two guys from outside Commodore, who'd been liberally "influenced" by popular arcade games before. It was written earlier, but released later. Doesn't this sound as if re-writes were necessary before release? Even though Commodore had apparently bought a functioning game from these gents? By now Commodore had been scared off of too-close copies, so that fits. We have another mystery on our hands, but an interesting one...

Game name: Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator
Company: Sega Enterprises, Inc. [004-04]
Author: See Trivia. (1983)
Game Type: Original space simulation game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very good. Nice raster title effect, clean screen layouts, good split-screen control, etc. Someone knew the Vic pretty well.
Sound: Good. No background music, but the sound effects are acceptable.
Gameplay: Good. I was never fond of this type of game (it was released on many other platforms as well) but it is well done, nonetheless.
Overall: Very high quality, all around. It may have been a multi-system port, but it is a well done. Fans of the game should love it.
Trivia: Hidden internal message at $AD82: "STAR TREK BY ERIC J POPEJOY 2138293641". I don't know if that is a date code or what? First five digits could be a date: 2-13-1982. What about the other ones?
Trivia: The full-color cartridge label is beautiful, as are the other early Sega games. (Congo Bongo and Buck Rogers.) Bravo, Sega!

Game name: Story Machine
Company: HES (Licensed from Spinnaker) [C323]
Author: Michael Cranford (1983)
Game Type: Educational.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5).
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Sub Chase
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [16__]
Author: Roger L. Merritt (1982)
Game Type: Original submarine game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Average or better. Not really great or bad. They do the job.
Sound: Just simple sound effects, but they work OK.
Gameplay: Like Sea Wolf, but backwards. You are the destroyer at the top of the screen, dropping depth charges on the submarines below. Your large ship doesn't turn around very quickly, so plan ahead accordingly. Kind of neat to have more ammo available than Sea Wolf, however.
Overall: Not bad at all, especially for a game made in 4k of memory!
Trivia: This is a 4k game internally, although it requires 8k to run.

Game name: Submarine Commander
Company: Thorn EMI [THC 22003]
Author: Gary York (1983)
Game Type: Original global warfare strategy game.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Graphics: Good or better. The Vic20 had definite limits to deal with. They managed to get a lot on screen, make it legible, & balance things.
Sound: Average or better.
Gameplay: Don't know. We don't have access to the original instructions.
Overall: What is there, looks like it has potential. But without docs...
Comments: This is actually a 12k game internally. (8k + another 4k.)
Trivia: The morse code in the beginning of the game is trying to say "Programmed by Gary York OSI". The pauses for word breaks are omitted, and the morseing is quite fast.

Game name: Super Amok
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1642]
Author: Roger L. Merritt (198_)
Game Type: Clone of the arcade coin-op "Berzerk". (And upgrade of "Amok".)
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very good indeed! Much improved from their "Amok" game. Lots of nifty added features, like smooth scrolling to the next screen.
Sound: Good... but no speech, as the original "Berzerk" game had. But most other home conversions had no speech either. (The Atari 5200 Berzerk game claimed to have some speech built into the cart.)
Gameplay: Very good! Fun to play and fairly addicting too.
Overall: A well done clone of "Berzerk". Very professionally done. And a nice game as a stand-alone, too. Amok was OK, but this kills it.
Review: "Pity the poor robot guard! It seems that no matter where it tries to hold down a job, some would-be hero comes dashing in, trying to shoot the whole robot squad on some fool mission! How's a fellow supposed to keep his chips together? It's no different in Super Amok... All in all, Roger Merritt has done a nice job with this variation on an increasingly-familiar theme. Play action is fine, with a plus in a pause when the gamer moves to a new passage eliminating the old 'walk-through-a-door-and-into-a-bullet' syndrome. Also, its graphics are adequate, with the hero particularly charming when in motion... In sum, a solid game if a bit less than overwhelmingly original." (Seen in Electronic Games, Dec83, page 86. Review by Charlene Komar.)
Trivia: Just for your info, the original "Berzerk" was a Stern game.

Game name: Super Expander with 3k RAM
Company: Commodore [Vic-1211A]
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Utility program.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Trivia: There are two parts to this; 4k of ROM, and 3k of internal RAM.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions and/or the original cartridge. (A ROM image won't give you the 3k RAM.)

Game name: Super Smash
Company: Commodore [Vic-1921]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Clone of "Breakout".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Paddle controllers.
Graphics: Very simple, as any Breakout clone is. Big colorful blocks. Might be easy to see on an older laptop, if you're running in emulation.
Sound: See overall.
Gameplay: See overall.
Overall: Just what you'd expect from a Breakout clone. Simple and fun.
Ad Text: "The World Championship is at stake! As a finalist do you have the cat-like reflexes to return the speeding ball and take the crown?" (Seen in the Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play" page 103)
Comments: It may be hard to believe no, but this title was once a benchmark game. The early Apple ][ series, for instance, used their version of Breakout to demonstrate their graphic capabilities, when they were first pushing it. The Vic plays Breakout with ease, too. I wonder if there was any competition between Apple & CBM, with this game? There certainly was some strong competition over price!

Game name: Synthesound
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C306]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Educational.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick. Disable bank 1 if present.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Tank Atak
Company: Supersoft
Author: B. Cotton (1982)
Game Type: Variant of arcade coin-op "Battlezone".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Not a graphic masterpiece, but then again some people would argue that the vector graphics of the original B'zone weren't either. Do you like your B'zone graphics solid or outlined? Personally, I prefer the original flavor. Your mileage may vary.
Sound: What's there is average, but something seems lacking. The sound of your tank moving in B'zone, added some tension and excitement.
Gameplay: Could use a bit more fine-tuning, I think. It has some parts that are arguably better than B'zone (its speed) but may lack balance.
Overall: A playable but somewhat flawed clone of an arcade classic. Try it out, especially if trueness to the original doesn't bother you.

Game name: Terraguard
Company: Creative Software
Author: Tom E. Griner (1982)
Game Type: Original space shooting game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: OK but not up to the author's later standards. Some of the effects and such seem to be recycled for use in some of his other games? The exploding characters, for instance, are also used in Predator.
Sound: Average. Again, I know I've heard these same sounds before.
Gameplay: Fun enough, but not insanely fun. Not hugely flawed; it's just that I've come to expect quite a bit from Mr. Griner's later works, and this does not compare favorably to those other games.
Overall: See gameplay. You can definitely see Mr. Griner has a handle on some areas of the gaming experience, but they aren't yet as well integrated as his later works were. One of his earliest works? Sometimes, early games were hand-coded, later ones assembled; the difference in available programming tools may be reflected here?
Comments: This is a 4k game internally, although it requires 8k to run.

Game name: The Count Adventure
Company: Commodore [Vic-1917]
Author: Andy Finkel (1981)
Game Type: "Scott Adams Adventure Games" series. (#5 of 5.)
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 2 and 3). Keyboard controlled. The game starts when you type "SYS 32592" and hit the RETURN key.
Ad Text: "You wake up in a large brass bed in a castle somewhere in Transylvania. Who are you, what are you doing here, and WHY did the postman deliver a bottle of blood? It's LOVE AT FIRST BYTE!" (Seen in "Commodore Power Play" magazine, Spring 1983, page 105)
Comments: See the entry for Adventure Land Adventure for more information on any of the games in this series.

Game name: Threshold
Company: Sierra On-line Inc. [THL-401]
Author: I.C.G. (1981)
Game Type: Translation of "Astro-Blaster"; 198x Sega/Gremlin arcade coin-op.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good overall. Maybe fair compared to the original arcade? Those graphics weren't astounding, but they were better than these are. Most of the elements are still there, for the most part.
Sound: Good enough, although missing the original's built-in speech, which added a lot to the game. (Mostly frustration, but still!) However, if you didn't know about the original, it would be fine.
Gameplay: Good. Fun as is, and pretty much like the arcade originals, at least in concept. It lost the docking level, for instance. (It is more like FMV now, than a separate level requiring skill. Sigh.)
Overall: Very good. I miss the arcade original, but this is a good game.
Review: "Threshold resembles most multi-scenario invasion games with one major difference: Some vertical movement is permitted. This idea, adapted from the world's most popular NON-SF invasion game, Centipede, further reduces the stifling effects of patterned target movement on overall play." (Seen in Dec 83 EG, page 59) Unfortunately, on the Vic20 version, there is no vertical moving.
Trivia: Astro-Fighter and Astro-Blaster, the arcade ancestors of this game, were never widely available. I saw one AB machine many years ago. I would dearly love to find and play another. For me this is one of those "fish that got away" stories, so this game is of more interest to me than most. The fact that it is not a bad copy, even though it is missing speech, etc, helped convince me to pay much more attention to the Vic20. There were other versions of this game released at home; I know of an Apple II version and one for the Atari 2600, at least. Both are hard to find. The rumor among those who collect "real" arcade games is that AB machines were not all that reliable to begin with and may be rare as a result. Bottom line: any port in a storm if you want to play these games! I hope somebody emulates this game, in full, some day. Until then this Vic20 port and its brothers will serve me just fine.
Trivia: See Adventure Land Adventure for comments on a plug-in speech device made for the Vic20. Anyone want to re-add speech to this game using it?
Comments: Twenty-eight continuous shots until your laser overheats, for those of you who are counting. (Hee, hee!) Can't play this game like it was Raiden, that's for sure! It was a whole other era, then. Sierra, by the way, was one of the first companies to get out games in 1981; only UMI and Commodore jumped in that early.

Game name: Tomarc the Barbarian
Company: Xonox
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Original dungeon game, ported to many platforms.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Rather crudely done. Looks just like a port from the Atari 2600.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Rather tedious and boring, without the instructions. I doubt it is much better even with them. Not that I'll play this game long to make sure! It's multi-screen, so it might be fairly "deep" (pardon the dungeon pun) if you're willing to spend the effort?
Overall: There are much better dungeon games, in my humble opinion. Try a game of Pharaoh's Curse or Tutankham instead, for instance.

Game name: Tooth Invaders
Company: Commodore [Vic-1938]
Author: unknown (1983)
Game Type: Arcade / educational game, teaching kids to brush and floss.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Very simple and somewhat blocky, but they do the job OK.
Sound: Average or better. The sounds are pretty cute all in all. It fits.
Gameplay: Fun enough for kids or when you want a fairly non-stressful game.
Overall: Too bad this came out late in Commodore's scheme of things. It's a better game than some of their earlier efforts were, and a bit more original, too. (It wasn't that original, though, what with Activision's "Plaque Attack" game for the Atari 2600.)
Ad Text: "Prevent tooth decay and battle D.K. Germ using your toothbrush and dental floss. A great arcade / educational game." (Seen on page 104 of the Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play")
Trivia: This cart is unusual in a number of subtle ways. It is rarer than some by Commodore, as it came out when the Vic was being replaced by Commodore's C64 computer. But its release date (1983) precedes the release dates of carts that came after it, numerically. In other words, #1939 / "Star Post" is dated as 1982. Wow. Weird. Or typical Commodore thinking... take your pick! I suspect this is really a 1983 game, and the others were simply back-dated.

Game name: Topper
Company: Romox Inc. (Apparently made by TJS Industries)
Author: Tim Schmidt (1983)
Game Type: Variant of the arcade game Q*bert.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good or better. Cute effects here and there, and nothing detracts.
Sound: Average or better. Decent attempt at a catchy tune.
Gameplay: A largely cute and fun copy of Q*bert's gameplay, with some twists like tiles that disappear at times. Can be fun on its own merits.
Overall: See gameplay. Q*bert on this system was such a disappointment that I'm tempted to tell you to play this instead. At least more often!
Comments: If you are playing the game under an emulated Vic20 system you may have trouble playing this game. (If you're using keyboard controls to emulate a joystick.) This is because you are using only diagonal controls throughout the game; in other words, two buttons each, pressed simultaneously, for each individual time you move around. To move left and up, you have to actually press both those keys.

Game name: Trashman
Company: Creative Software
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Clone of the arcade coin-op classic "Pac-Man".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick or keyboard controlled.
Graphics: Good. Smallish player characters. However, the maze is larger because of it. This is a good trade-off as far as I'm concerned.
Sound: Good. Not a clone of Pac-Man's sounds, which I feel is refreshing. The "game over" funeral dirge sound effect is a nice touch!
Gameplay: A fun and addictive game; what more can you ask? (Higher levels are close to the speed level I prefer for a Pac-Man clone.)
Overall: Quite good. Anyone who likes Pac-Man should be happy with this.
Review: "...If Trashman sounds a lot like another well-known maze game, well, that's probably because there are an awful lot of similarities. But, nevertheless, it's a fine game. The graphics are very good and the setting is colorful. So if you own a Vic20 and you like to play maze games, this one's for you." (Seen in Dec 83 issue of Electronic Games, page 86. Review by Charlene Komar.)
Comments: If anyone out there ever decides to do a better job on Pac-Man than the official Atari version, consider using this game as a starting point. You could do much worse.

Game name: Turmoil
Company: Sirius Software, Inc.
Author: See Trivia. (1982)
Game Type: Shoot-em-up.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Good. Simple shapes and lines, but colorful and clearly defined.
Sound: Average or better.
Gameplay: Good grief! This is almost too quickly paced... and I like fast games as a general rule! But it never struck me as being unfair or arbitrary; when you die, its simply because you're not fast enough, not because the game just decided to cheat.
Overall: This is probably required training for anyone who's ever wondered what it would be like to "go postal" with a machine gun. (Except that this way is more socially approved, thank you very much.) The game must be in the top 10 "quickest game over" rankings, IMO. Try it out on an emulated Vic20 using a fast Pentium, if you doubt it!
Review: Reviewed on page 162 of the October 1983 issue of "Compute!".
Trivia: Screen says "Designed by Mark Turmell". (But programmed by whom?)

Game name: Turtle Graphics
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) [C303]
Author: David Malmberg (1982)
Game Type: Utility / educational title.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Tutankham
Company: Parker Brothers
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Translation of arcade coin-op game "Tutankham".
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick. Disable Bank 1 if present.
Graphics: Nicely done, with a good sense of finished "polish" throughout.
Sound: Good. The Vic limits it, but only a little.
Gameplay: Just in case the rest of the game isn't putting enough pressure on you, the game itself is timed. Lots to do. Plenty to watch out for.
Overall: One of the better games, overall. Deep and varied, but balanced.
Review: "Those who've tired of the predictable adventuring and lack of action in such early 2600 titles as Adventure and Haunted House from Atari, will undoubtedly find Tutankham one of the most pleasant surprises of 1983. This game has all the flavor an adventure fan could want -- secret passages, puzzles, and strategic use of an allotment of three lives and three laser flares (capable of destroying all enemy creatures within the area). Since it also offers all the action devotees of, say, Wizard of Wor might ever crave, Tut is perhaps Parker's best entry since Frogger! ...This is a real nail-biting, compulsive piece of game playing... Tutankham may be a few letters short, but there's very little missing here. This is a fine simulation of the arcade cult favorite and you'll soon be surprised at just how addictive this contest can become." (Seen in Electronic Games, Dec 83, page 60. Review by Bill Kunkel. Game reviewed was for the Atari 2600.)
Trivia: A review in the Dec 83 issue of Electronic Games (page 60) says that the game title was originally to be "Tutankhamen". However, "the last two letters didn't fit on the arcade casing!?"
Trivia: The arcade original was a 1982 Stern game, licensed from Konami.

Game name: Type Attack
Company: Sirius
Author: See Trivia. (1982)
Game Type: Edutainment; teaches you to type while playing a shooting game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Not really fancy, but well done. Resembles Space Invaders.
Sound: Good. I especially like the little funeral dirge when you die.
Gameplay: They did a lot with a simple (and somewhat limiting) concept. The balance between single character skills and entire words was a nice touch both for the educational and the gameplay elements.
Overall: Probably educational (teaches touch typing skills), but also fun.
Trivia: Let the title screen run a while and it will tell you "SIRIUS GIVES YOU TYPE ATTACK BY ERNIE BROCK AND JIM HAUSER" then it also adds "FAST ACTION TYPING FUN" to describe itself. Isn't that cute?

Game name: Vic FORTH
Company: HES (Human Engineered Software) Licensed from Datatronic. [C301]
Author: See Trivia. (1982)
Game Type: Utility program. An implementation of the FORTH computer language.
Required: 8k in bank 5. Keyboard.
Review: Reviewed in the October 1983 issue of Compute; see page 154.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.
Trivia: Internal messages at $BF67 say "PETER BENGTSON 1982".

Game name: Vic Music Composer
Company: Thorn EMI [THC 22002]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Educational.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Keyboard.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions.

Game name: Vic Rabbit
Company: Eastern House
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Utility program. An accelerator for your datasette.
Required: Unknown, as we haven't found one to archive just yet.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you'll need the original instructions. And you might need the original cart, as well? (See also Arrow.)

Game name: Vic-20 Atari Cartridge Adapter
Company: Unsure; see ad text below.
Author: Unsure; see ad text below.
Game Type: Vaporware. Ads came out, but no one has ever actually seen one.
Ad Text: "Atari Cartridge Adapter for the Vic20 -- Allows game cartridges designed for use on Atari video game machines to be used on a Vic 20 computer. Produced in cooperation with the Computer Works of Phoenix." (New Product release seen in "Commodore Power Play" magazine, Spring 1983 issue, page 99.)
Ad Text: "Fantastic!! VIC 20^tm COMPUTER WILL PLAY ATARI GAME CARTRIDGES when you plug in our GAME LOADER! Wow!! Now you can play all Atari game cartridges on your 'VIC-20^tm Computer.' Atari VCS cartridge video games, Activision, Imagic, M-Network cartridges will all play on your 'VIC-20^tm Computer,' when you use our new 'GAME-LOADER' plus you get fantastic VIC-20^tm sound and graphics. List price $99.00 Sale $89.00 (Includes Free ATARI Game $32.50 List)" (Ad from Protecto, in the Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play" magazine, on page 103.)
Ad Text: Also advertised in some 1983 issues of "The Torpet" magazine, which was an "Independent Commodore Users' magazine" put out by the Toronto Pet Users Group, or TPUG. Ad text reads: "NEW. Introducing... Cardapter 1. Explore a new galaxy of entertainment pleasure with your Vic-20 computer. Designed by: The Computer Works. Manufactured and Distributed by: Cardco, Inc" They do not show the device itself in the ad. Instead, they show a box that says "NEW. Cardapter 1. Play Atari Cartridge Games On Your Vic-20." Some small print at the bottom of the page says "Dealer inquiries invited", and it lists addresses to contact in Kansas (the US), West Canada, England & Europe, and East Canada.
Comments: This is sort of the "Holy Grail" of Vic20 Vaporware, so far. Tons of expensive looking ads appeared for a while, but no person or magazine seems to have seen any actual hardware, just the ads... If you are into heavy masochism, err, I mean collecting rare and hard-to-track-down items, this is your mission. If not, it makes much more sense to plop down a few bucks at a yard sale for a real Atari 2600 system. (Radio Shack may still be selling them commercially via mail order, too?) Or better yet, find yourself a working Atari 7800 unit. It plays Atari 2600 and 7800 games.

Game name: Video Vermin
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [1638]
Author: Mike Wacker (1982)
Game Type: Clone of arcade coin-op Centipede.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick. Disable bank 1 if present.
Graphics: Good. A pretty recognizable attempt at Centipede's graphics.
Sound: Average.
Gameplay: Excellent! Very fast paced. Joystick control a bit sloppy, though. I haven't tried it with a trackball controller yet, but I will eventually. This is one of my favorites... on any gaming system!
Overall: I like this clone better than I like the "official" Centipede, or even the arcade version. Hardly a purist point of view; for shame!
Trivia: See also UMI's 16k version of Centipede, called Arachnoid. It is possible that this is a radically cut-down version of that game, although it doesn't show up in the gameplay if you ask me. Coded messages inside VV code indicate that its name may have once been Bug Attack. This could have been a working title only, however. Something happened; there seems to be elements common to both.

Game name: Videomania
Company: Creative Software
Author: Tom E. Griner (1982)
Game Type: Original shooting game.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Graphics: Simple graphics with some nice visual effects touches added.
Sound: Good. Nice rendition of "The entertainer" song, within Vic limits.
Gameplay: Almost flawed in its simplicity. Just run around a single screen, chasing and avoiding monsters that you shoot at. Lacks something. Then again, many of the console games were this way all the time.
Overall: One of Mr. Griner's earlier works. His later games were better... and bigger. This is a 4k game, although it requires 8k to run.

Game name: Visible Solar System
Company: Commodore [Vic-1930]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Educational. Explore the science of Astronomy.
Required: 8k RAM in bank 5. Joystick.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To really use this cart, you may need the original instructions.

Game name: Voodoo Castle Adventure
Company: Commodore [Vic-1918]
Author: Alexis Adams (1981)
Game Type: "Scott Adams Adventure Games" series. (#4 of 5.)
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 2 and 3). Keyboard controlled. The game starts when you type "SYS 32592" and hit the RETURN key.
Ad Text: "Count Christo has a fiendish curse put on him by his enemies. There he lies, and you are his only hope. Can you rescue him, or is he forever doomed? (Beware of the voodoo man!)" (Seen in the Spring 1983 issue of "Commodore Power Play" on page 105.)
Trivia: Text ad inside the game: "ask for ADVENTURE 5, -THE COUNT- at your favorite dealer. It will be LOVE AT FIRST BYTE!" Sort of cute in itself, I think: bad "byte" jokes ran rampant way back when. The text went on to say the game was "dedicated to all moms"; cute.
Comments: See the entry for Adventure Land Adventure for more information on any of the games in this series.

Game name

Wizard of Wor

Company

Commodore [Vic-19__]

Author

unknown (198_)

Game Type

Vaporware, until we find one to archive and review. It would have been a port of the 1981 Bally/Midway arcade game "Wizard of Wor".

Comments

The entries for this game were originally far too long. I've kept some here, and did a lot of condensing on the rest. (I had lots of notes, both pro and con, on the subject. Considering how huge the rest of this document is already, what's here is plenty!)

Until more definite information comes to light, this is all just speculation. The author is contacting some of Commodore's own original programmers, hopefully for more definite answers. But guesses are the nature of such titles until a copy is discovered.

The questions raised here may help answer questions about other titles companies once planned, maybe started, and with any luck, hopefully completed but never released... up until now? (Such things have been known to happen on other retrogaming machines!) Even if we just match Vic-19xx part numbers to titles, that is something, and worth the effort and space in my opinion, so here goes nothing...

Fact: Please note that four part numbers are currently blank or empty, in Commodore's Vic20 numerical part number series. (And that is assuming the series ends with #1941. Were any carts ever planned beyond that?) The missing numbers are: 1903, 1934, 1936 and 1940.
Rumor: One retro-gamer swears he saw "Wizard of Wor" listed in some sort of ad or brochure from Commodore many years ago. That person said he kept waiting for the game to come out, but he never found a copy of the game. He said that it definitely had a Commodore part number listed (Vic-19xx), but he could not remember which it was.
Fact: There were other arcade conversions done then from Bally/Midway that were as old as "Wizard of Wor" was in the arcades, toward the end of the Vic20's life. Vic-1931 or Clowns was a late '70s release, according to the "Killer List Of Videogames". Vic-1937 or Sea Wolf was a 1975 arcade release. (Both these games most definitely were converted and mass-produced.) Commodore referred then to these older B/M games as "arcade classics" in their ads.
Rumor: As I stated (online) some time ago, I suspect that this series of "arcade classics" was part of a settlement Commodore made with Bally/Midway, to avoid in-court prosecution for earlier copyright infringements. The breakdown seemed to me to be one ported arcade classic for each two original Vic20 carts Commodore released. If Commodore was forced to, they'd have more incentive to release these older games, even if they felt their prime years had passed.
Fact: Commodore did release a WoW cartridge for their C64 computer. It even "talked", much like the arcade version did, but only if you had a device called the "Magic Voice" attached. (Jeff Bruette programmed it. Its speech phrases were printed in the Winter 1983 issue of Commodore Power Play, on page 40). C64 Gorf also talks.
Rumor: In my opinion, and also that of magazines at the time, Commodore was trying to kill off their Vic20 market, to allow their new C64 to grab its market share and then some. So it would have made some sense, marketing-wise, to only release WoW for the Commodore 64.
Rumor: But then again, a person could argue that maybe the speech option was only for the C64; that a non-speech one could exist for Vic20 without hurting the C64's market? (Or that Commodore didn't do things that made sense very often, so why bother using any logic?)
Rumor: Recent online interviews, conducted by Rick Melick, seem to back up the idea that WoW was just dropped, sometime near the end of the Vic20's life, when the C64 was beginning to take its market. Andy Finkel, one of Commodore's original Vic20 programmers, seems to remember this being the case. (But he seems to have forgotten the details, so perhaps even he could be mistaken?) However, this pushes WoW out of the rumorware category; an insider did confirm it was once a real project that Commodore was working on!
Questions: Commodore apparently intended to release more arcade classics by Bally/Midway, late in the Vic20's life. But what other one(s) did Commodore plan to make? And how far did they get on each of them? (Would this info be listed in EG's old "Software Encyclopedia"?) Do any ex-Commodore employees have copies of unreleased games? Finished or not, it would be an interesting piece of history! And are there some undiscovered treasures sitting out there, waiting for someone with a passion for the Vic20 to find them? I guess we won't know for sure until more sources of information surface...

Game name: Wordcraft 20
Company: UMI (United Microware Industries, Inc.) [16__]
Author: unknown (1982)
Game Type: Utility program; word processor.
Required: 16k RAM (8k each in banks 3 & 5). Joystick.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. To use this cart, you'll need the original instructions, maybe more.

Game name: Write Now!
Company: Cardco
Author: unknown (198_)
Game Type: Utility program; word processor.
Required: Unknown, as we don't have one archived as yet.
Comments: Not given a very thorough review due to its non-game nature. Touse this cart, you'll need the original instructions, maybe more.

How this List is Organized: A Tutorial

Below are some notes on what you can expect to find in this document. It is primarily done by one person, who is doing this for his own enjoyment. As this is neither a co-operative group project, nor a paid project, I get to do things any way I choose to. (Which is nice.) So, here's how I chose to do it.

Some reviews are very short, and others are much longer. Sometimes this just means I know more about one piece of software than another. Sometimes this is a reflection of my level of interest, which may vary from one to another. For the most part, they all include information which should enable each user to decide for themselves if they want to explore more on their own. (Which is all any review is really supposed to do anyway, if you think about the process.)

I standardized certain things, and put them into a preset format. This allows me to simplify the process somewhat, and you to read it easier. If I can just list certain common details by their category name, for instance, I can spend more time explaining what makes one piece of software different from another. (Which is another thing that a review is supposed to be useful for, right?) I suppose you could think of it as being in an ASCII database format, sort of.

I had some fun including historical information, for lack of a better term. I know that many younger gamers never saw the eight foot tall "real" version of Battlezone, when it was new to the arcades, for instance. So, stuff like that I tried to include. Or that some of the fun of a game like Sea Wolf, when it was new in the arcades, was the fancy cabinetry. It allowed you to pretend you were in a submarine, by using a real-looking periscope to look through and to fire torpedos with. These things are not obvious; without knowing about them from some outside source, you'd never guess them just from seeing a programs output on a TV or monitor. So, I included lots of stuff like that. I hope it is interesting to you. (Enjoy!) I tried to keep in mind that users could be from two main schools of thought on this; older arcaders trying to relive the glory days through finding good home versions of their old favorites, as well as younger home game enthusiasts who perhaps have no idea what there was to be excited about, back in those "good old days" of gaming's infancy!

So without further adieu, let's explain what each category means to you...

Other Sources of Information

This list expands on the information that is contained in another text document: the VIC-20 Cartridge List, made by Ward Shrake and Paul LeBrasse. That text is more a summary of what was available in the heyday of the VIC-20 computing system, in list format. This text talks more in depth about what each of those listed items does, and gives a reasoned opinion of how well each item actually does it. See both documents, if you want the most complete info on Vic20 software.

Note that cartridge-based VIC-20 programs are usually games. A small amount of non-game software does exist in cartridge format as well, for various specialized purposes. In general, most games can be used without actually having the instructions, but this may not be the case with specialized hardware. This list does not attempt to detail how to actually use each and every device. Sorry. However, this list does tell you what expansion RAM memory you will need to run each of the reviewed items and where that expansion must be located. It also notes what input device (keyboard, joystick, etc) you must use. If something is obviously non-intuitive, I try to explain what to do, at least enough to get you started on exploring things more on your own.

Also available is a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) text and other VIC-20 documents that may be of interest to modern VIC-20 users. The "Vic20 Gamer's FAQ" will be of use to you, to answer techie questions, so that you yourself can actually use the software we've reviewed.

All of these texts should be available on the Internet, via FTP or WWW Web sites. (One of these sites is ftp.funet.fi, for instance.) Note that Usenet Newsgroups exist for the discussion of old Commodore hardware and software, including the VIC-20. A great starting place would be to get the main FAQ for the comp.sys.cbm Usenet newsgroup. Another starting place would be to use a WWW search engine like Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) to search on "Vic20". Look up the sites it tells you about, then check each of those sites for links to other Vic20 sites.

What Can You Do to Help Make this Document Better?

This first edition will probably stand "as-is" for a while. If anyone has any input to add to it, please send it to me via snail mail if email bounces back. As a general rule, I haven't had a consistent Internet email address for some time. Even when the address itself remained consistent, I often didn't have an active account. Why? I simply didn't have the time. I just finished up my second college degree. Before, I was on-and-off the net for months because of that. And now, I want a brand new ISP as every other email seems to be pointless "spam"... which should go away when those inconsiderate commercial slobs no longer have my correct email address. (So there. See what thanks you get, when you post helpful messages and such?)

I don't have concrete plans for a second edition at this point. I may just plan to collect whatever comes in, store it a while, and put out maybe one major update with everything in it... depending on overall input. Things like photocopies of ads would be nice to have. If you have copies of any info that is not listed here, then by all means send me a photocopy of it! My snail mail address is as below; please don't abuse it. Ward Shrake, PO Box 4699, Covina, CA USA 91723-4699.

Remember, that address is NOT for asking general questions that could be easily answered via effort on your part, for instance. That is why I wrote a FAQ: so people would read it. That is also what the Usenet newsgroup comp.sys.cbm is for. Sorry, but my time is limited enough as it is. I prefer to work only on things that (A) I enjoy a lot on a personal level and that (B) stand to benefit quite a few other people. (What do you want, your money back?) Besides, I really need a nice long rest, after all these insanely huge self-imposed Vic20 projects!

Acknowledgements

This text was written all by my lonesome: just Ward Shrake. Yes, I must be nuts to type all this. Sue me. I had fun doing it, usually.

And where else could I find such virgin writing territory, among the "classic era" game machines? The others were deemed to be "no fun", writing-wise, as they were all fairly well documented. So I suppose I owe Commodore themselves a hearty thanks for two things. First, for putting the Vic20 on the market. Then for killing its market off so efficiently that almost everyone forgot all about it!

Paul LeBrasse was a great help on most things Vic20 related. I said so in the Vic20 FAQ, but thought I'd mention it again. Thanks, Paul. You Vic20 fans out there really don't know how much you owe the man!

And kudos again to all those people I mentioned in the Vic20 gamers FAQ. Thanks to all who encouraged us, sold/traded carts, or were just plain friendly and supportive of our Vic20 rescue operations. Paul and I appreciated every kindness done to us. All of us benefitted from it; all those ROM images had to come from somewhere. Even if we had to pay out of our pockets for most carts, still, others located them for us.

Other "Classic" computing and/or gaming systems have their following, too. In fact, most of the organization of this document was based on ideas the author got while searching out information on other gaming systems. The software reviews done for the TurboGrafx 16 system, for instance, are extremely well done. I made this document after seeing what BT Garner and others had done with the TurboGrafx library. I owe them a debt, in as much as their reviews helped me to find some TG16 software I really liked, with minimal effort. After seeing how useful their information was, I wanted to make a similar effort for the VIC.

No good reason as to why. I just wanted to do it, and say that I did. Again, maybe someone will think this is pretty neat 50 years from now. I like that idea! Jeff Minter has said he likes having his Vic20 games available to anyone, for all time, now that they're archived. So do I. (Anyone that has taken as many art history classes as I have recently could probably see my point on this.) It's just neat. So why not? I can see myself now, trying to play these games in a retirement home...

As long as I'm crediting other's work as an inspiration for my own, I should probably also mention the efforts of the folks on the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.video.arcade.collecting... much of their info was useful to me, both personally and towards creating this document. The "Killer List of Videogames", for instance, deserves much thanks! It doesn't go into nearly as much detail as my list here does, but it lists 950 or so arcade coin-op games, and that's not bad. I have long enjoyed the true arcade gaming hobby, so I was pleased to find out that the Vic20 offered games I couldn't easily find elsewhere... at least, not until MAME ("Multi Arcade Machine Emulator") came into existence! And man, are all those neat emulators eating up all my time, recently!

That's all, folks! I hope you enjoyed this and found it useful. Bye!

VIC-20 Cartridge Software Reviews

a.k.a. Cartzilla!

Author's notes

Contents

Software Titles Reviewed

VIC-20 Cartridge Software Reviews

How this List is Organized: A Tutorial

Categories

Game name

Company

Author

Game Type

Required

Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, Overall

Ad Text

Review

Trivia

Comments

Other Sources of Information

What Can You Do to Help Make this Document Better?

Acknowledgements