Committing the Sin of Unsealing: Dodge Cars for the Commodore VIC 20

 The Wizard's Magic Toy Box / 1982 / by Scott Elder

There are lots of games for the Commodore VIC 20 on EBay that I want but I only see them for sale for a huge amount of money because they are still sealed (I'm looking at you, Atarisoft titles). I've even passed on some affordable sealed games hoping for an open one to come along, leaving the sealed ones for those who want and can afford them. Collecting sealed games is certainly a thing, with some official agency now grading them and sealing them in more plastic presumably forever, to be held and traded without ever being played. I'm good with that but I collect them to play them, and maybe write a few things about them for shits and giggles. 

But a curious old game that no one but me cares about showing up sealed for less than fifteen dollars caught my eye recently and I pulled the trigger. It's a cassette game called Dodge Cars from the company The Wizard's Magic Toy Box that was based in San Jose, California back in 1982. I've previously wrote about their game Muncher (I've also acquired Search and Destroy but have yet to blog about it) and the pattern from their games is that they are simple but functional and basically fun, cheap games. They saw a market for Commodore VIC 20 cassette games at a discount and dove in, the plucky entrepreneurs that they were.

I pay so very little attention to the vast number of YouTube videos of retrogamers self-aggrandizing and pleading for likes and subscribes, but I know that they sometimes post unboxing videos of new games or special collectors editions of new games or whatever. For the unsealing of possibly the last sealed copy in existence (unconfirmed) of Dodge Cars, I made my first video:

As for the game itself, the title Dodge Cars also happens to be the instructions for playing. The player dodges cars. To elaborate on that, the player is a black car toward the top of the screen, facing and driving toward the bottom screen, into six lanes of oncoming traffic in the form of multicolored cars and trucks. Where I live in central Ohio some drunk or other type of idiot does that about once a week. 

This is a simple game, like the kind one might find written in BASIC in a copy of Compute's Gazette back in the day, but it plays great. The scrolling effect by seeing trees along the side of the road pass works well, and the pacing - starting out slow and building up speed - is perfect. Once it gets going it's over pretty fast, but in the meantime it's good fun.

The controls are tight and precise for a VIC 20 game, with the player's car responding so fast one can squeeze between two oncoming but slightly offset diagonally cars with some practice. The game shows the current top five high scores, but does not save them on tape, so they are lost when the VIC 20 is shut off. Back then, sessions with friends were often taking turns with a single player game, so this feature was welcome.

I've enjoyed all three of the games I've found on Ebay from The Wizard's Magic Toy Box and am eagerly watching for the fourth and final one they mention in their documentation. 

There is almost no information online about The Wizard's Magic Toy Box, but Dodge Cars was designed by Scott Elder, the same one behind the company Nufekop, who created and published Dodge Cars on their own. It is my suspicion that the Wizard either licensed the game from Nufekop and released it simultaneously, or they got the rights to publish it before Nufekop started up. The other two games from the Wizard that I have were designed by another person. 

To the two or three collectors of sealed Commodore VIC 20 games out there who find this article and are anguishing over my decision to unseal this ancient treasure, my sincere apologies for that. But for me, the play's the thing, and Dodge Cars plays pretty well for a cassette game that was sealed for forty-four years.

Beaten: Cthulhu Saves The World (360)

 Well of course after playing the prequel Cthulhu Saves Christmas last year on the Nintendo Switch, it wouldn’t be long before I dusted off the original Cthulhu Saves The World, still there on my XBox 360, downloaded shortly after its release in 2010.  Attracted to the weird title and finely-crafted gameplay and presentation, I barely played it then but knew it was great, deciding to save it for when the time was right. 

Sixteen years later, my XBox 360 still chugs along, its ring redded when Red Dead Redemption booted up, its hard drive upgraded with a magic one-use cable gifted by an old friend, its ethernet port destroyed by a power surge in the early 2010s, its disc drive door requiring a paper clip and some luck to open, and Cthulhu Saves The World still stored on its internal hard drive. Microsoft's store for the XBox 360 has long since closed and the game cannot be obtained anew (it survives and is available on PC), but there it sits among my sloppily-crafted small group of downloaded XBox 360 games that I am hoping to have there forever.

Microsoft scares me though. Cthulhu Saves The World is an XBox 360 Indie Game, with no achievements and not reviewed by their board of standards and practices, yet still in 2026 it has to check in on Microsoft's servers before I can start the game. A few times this actually failed, requiring reboots of the system and repeated attempts to resolve. It's not an online game and it has no achievements yet Microsoft maintains enough of a leash on it several console generations later to make playing it troublesome at times. At some point in the future these old downloaded games will either be free of that leash or unplayable I suspect, and that will be a tragedy.

Enough with the depressing crap, though, as Cthulhu Saves The World was a funny, grindy, old school top-down-traversal and random-combat-with sprites role-playing game that captures the magic of the genre while making a lot of quality-of-life improvements that lets up on the traditional frustrations often experienced with those types of games. A dark, evil entity like Cthulhu would seem an unlikely candidate for being a likeable hero, but the great writing and unfolding adventure take the player there.

One of the frustrations from those old RPGs that these Cthulhu games from Zeboyd Games has reduced is the issue of infinite combat as one explores. Traditionally, dungeon levels and overland areas present the danger of constant attack, hindering exploration as one's party of adventurers tries to explore every level meticulously in hopes of acquiring loot and experience. In the two Cthulhu games, there is a set number of random encounters in each area, and once those are done, the dungeon is open to unhindered exploration ahead of the final boss encounter.

While I played Cthulhu Saves Christmas, at first I just stood at the entrance and started the fights myself to wear down the counter. I would save after every battle and head back to town and recharge magic as needed; but it was a dry, grindy process that felt a little shallow. By the end of that game I was exploring a little while I was grinding down that counter to mix it up a little. I found, however, that the interruptions of battle would sometimes throw off my mental image of the map and I would emerge disoriented, so I generally did not complete the exploration of the dungeon before finishing the required number of fights.

It was always worth it, as a well-designed game balance meant that clearing out the dungeon also levelled my party of quirky characters to where they needed to be before facing the boss at the end. Each dungeons' monsters were also a joy to behold, with all sorts of cute variations of other themes, and occasional weird one-off monsters like "Horror Writer". Fighting them with various physical and magical attacks was also great fun, seeing what spells were effective. There are lots of combat options that also reduce the old school frustration, like 1-Ups to restart the battle after a defeat, and an Escape spell.

The player can save anywhere, and victory in battle usually revives and heals the party completely. The only diminishing resource the player has to deal with is magic points; those can only be recharged in towns at the Inn or by sparse pools found in dungeons. There was usually one of those pools ahead of boss fights, so even dealing with monitoring one's magic points is more that fair when balanced out against all the other things making the game easy.

Levelling is fast and frequent, with each character getting a choice between two upgrade options each time, from stat increases to new spells to new passive abilities. It's a simple but engaging levelling system that gets the player back into the game quick. Each player also upgrades armor and weapons, with items found in chests or at shops in town, not as loot from monsters. Each item is unique to a specific player and can only be used by that character.

I was once again in the mood for an old-school roleplaying game and Cthulhu Saves The World fit the bill. Between its offbeat premise, wacky enemies, and perfectly-sized campaign length there was a lot to love here. I also love that an indie game released in 2010 and stored on a nearly-broken old console of mine for sixteen years still works most of the time. Gameplay like that is forever; let's hope the downloads we made back then are as long-lived.

A Renaissance in VIC 20 Gaming

Renaissance (UMI)

Designed by Louis X. Savain

There was an actual historic age called the Renaissance, where art, culture, and science were allowed and appreciated by the powers that be. Leonardo DaVinci has become the poster child of that bygone era for his art and inventions, often called a “Renaissance Man”. 

In 1982 United Microware Industries put his face on the cover of their Othello-inspired video game and called it Renaissance. It’s important to note that Othello was invented in 1971 as a refined version of Reversi, itself invented around 1880, loosely inspired by the possibly four thousand year old Chinese game of Go. Go had not spread to Renaissance Italy in DaVinci’s time and there’s not even historical evidence that he played chess.

Their own description on the back of the box and in their pamphlet says “Turn back the clock 1000 years and play the game of the classical masters”. Simple math would have put that as the year 982, about half a millennia before DaVinci, with Go still in China then too. 

I really shouldn’t nitpick so much about all of that as Renaissance is not just a fun, quick, and challenging way to play Othello or Reversi, it’s a software package complete with enough tools to call it a trainer on the game. Some of the options here are so advanced for 1982 that I wonder if Renaissance was their first appearance in any software. Upon consideration, I bet chess programs from that time also had them.

As much as I went on about the box, seeing it with the game on Ebay at a low price got me so excited I pulled the trigger before checking to see if UMI’s cheap-ass photocopied black and white instruction sheet was inside. It was not. I would have to just fire up the game and figure it out, not even knowing how to play Othello. Luckily, the description above does list a few features that I could correspond to the in-game menu options, which were presented as two-letter abbreviations:

  Here is what I have worked out:

• PL=Play 
• CH= Change Sides
• TA=Takeback Mode
• SE=Set Board
• HE=Help
• LE=Set Level
• LO = Load a save
• SA= Save

Now let's break this out into more detail.

PL (PLAY) - Ends the player's turn and allows the computer to start thinkin'.

CH (CHANGE SIDES) - The player and computer switch sides in the middle of the game. This is a pretty cool gameplay feature that might actually allow one to win once in awhile.

TA (TAKEBACK) This is a mode that pauses the game and allows the player to cycle back through the previous turns. The Move Counter is in the bottom right of the screen, and the player pushes the joystick forward and backward to cycle through the count. Pressing the joystick button exits the mode at the move count the player is on, erasing any moves forward from that point. Even if the player goes right back into takeback mode, those moves are gone, so the player should take caution when playing with this time-bending tool.

SE (SET BOARD) Here the player can set up the board before play and test various strategies. If one wants to play Reversi instead of Othello, they can just set up an empty board here.

HE (HELP) The computer suggests one's next move by showing the cursor there. It does not think about it and decides almost instantly, which scares me. I tested it against itself on level 1 and level 8 with the same result - failure. On my level 1 test, it stopped suggesting moves late in the game and apparently went out for coffee. 

LE (SET LEVEL) The range is 1-8 with 8 presumably the hardest. In my testing, the higher the level the longer the computer thinks about its next move. At level 8, it can be seen thinking for several minutes, indicated by a red game piece flashing in various open spaces on the board. In my testing of level 1 and level 8, this is the only difference. The AI at level 1 knows how to kick one's ass, but at level 8 it pretends it's hard and really really has to think about it before wiping the player out.

LO (LOAD SAVE) I tested saving a game in progress and loading it several times, but the sad result was that loading a saved game crashed the VIC 20 and locked it up with a blank home screen with just the word READY. there, without a cursor. This required a restart. It could by the fussy, 43-year old cassette drive as well.

SA (SAVE GAME) See LO (LOAD GAME).

With all these options, Renaissance was at least innovative in the spirit of the age it's named after. The ability to rewind a game in progress back in 1982 was not something I had heard of and applied here works splendidly as a learning tool as much as a cheating tool. Having a sort of AI helper suggesting moves was also new, even if here it was a complete loser in my two tests.

Features like setting up one's board and switching sides really complete the package that is Renaissance. Teenage me back in that time had little interest in classic board games being ported to computers or consoles, he wanted more fantasy role playing games and shooters with stunning graphics. Older me enjoys a variety of challenges, and while I may never get good enough at Othello to beat Renaissance, I am old enough to appreciate how much strategic depth the game has, and how well the Commodore VIC 20 handles it all.

Imagic Brought Three To The VIC 20

Imagic was one of the greatest game studios of all time, but I might be biased since they were the only third-party software company to release games on the Odyssey 2 here in the U.S.A.  After Activision, they were the second major software company spun out of Atari by disgruntled designers who rightfully wanted credit for their efforts.

Rob Fulop, the game designer who snuck his initials into Missile Command while working at Atari, gave us Demon Attack as Imagic’s first offering, putting Imagic on the map. I’ll gush about Demon Attack further down. They also brought in some (I assume) disgruntled Intellivision designers and launched a stellar line of unique games for that system like Microsurgeon, Truckin’, and Dracula. 

Their strategy of course extended to include home computers, and they brought three to the Commodore VIC 20. Two one might suspect, but the third was just good luck for VIC 20 owners.

Demon Attack (Imagic)

Designed by Rob Fulop / VIC 20 version by Bruce Pederson 

Demon Attack on the Atari 2600 is a game so insanely perfect, so peak early eighties fixed-position shooter, that even though the formula had been done to death at that point, it was all new again. Crisp, colorful graphics, varying ship designs with ships dividing into two, and sound design that blows the player away - it was all there.

It was a huge hit with players and critics and became Imagic’s flagship title, in a race with Miner 2049er to get on as many consoles and computers as possible. The difference is that Imagic cranked all of them out in-house, whereas Miner 2049er was licensed to a bunch of different companies.

On the VIC 20, Demon Attack is completely faithful to the Atari 2600 version. The movement of the player’s ship and enemy patterns are identical. The awesome WHOOSH when the alien ships warp in, the pounding soundtrack that goes up an octave throughout each wave, increasing the tension - all faithfully reproduced.

Strategies and tactics from the Atari version apply here. The player gets one bullet in the air at a time, but so do the enemies. There are three enemies on the screen at a time at first but up to six once they start splitting into two.

In spite of those numbers, only the ship closest to the bottom of the screen will shoot back, with different types of bullets. The enemies start by warping into the screen at different altitudes high, medium, and low. Once the ships are eliminated another one warps in to replace it, until the end of the wave.

As the wave approaches its end, ships stop warping in and ones at higher altitudes will drop down toward the lower layer until they are all gone. Finishing the wave without losing a ship nets the player a bonus ship, up to a point I assume, and another nice little audio tone.

Imagic choose a weird color scheme for the VIC 20 box of black and silver rather than black and the usual rainbow colors seen on Atari and Odyssey 2 releases. It's a little weird but it was a tumultuous time in game packaging I guess. Whatever the box, Demon Attack is a masterpiece and an essential part of any console or computer’s collection if it was released for it.

Atlantis (Imagic)

Designed by Dennis Koble / VIC 20 version by Bruce Pederson

Atlantis lead the second wave of Atari VCS titles released by Imagic following up on their success with Demon Attack with another cool shooter, this time with multiple placed cannons doing the shooting rather than a moving ship. The cannons defend multiple sections of domed city and other things from invaders coming from above. Like Missile Command, the game ends when the city is destroyed.

As with Demon Attack, the enemy exists in several layers of sky above. They fly across the screen starting at the top layer and if not shot down emerge from the side again, one layer down. When they reach the bottom layer they fire on and destroy one section of the city. 

On the Atari VCS version the player has three guns - left, center, and right - but subsequent versions removed the center gun, narrowing the options for the player. The guns on each side of the screen shoot at a 45 degree angle towards the center of the screen, so the player’s defense rests on shooting enemies coming from the right with mostly the left gun and vice versa.

It might be tempting to lean on the left or right gun in that situation, firing off enough shots to nearly create a wall of laser fire, taking out most enemies at the higher altitudes. That strategy won’t work long, though, as some speedier ships come into play later that can be low before the player knows it.

A mix or balance of using both guns is ideal, then, but challenging. I’ll admit I’ve never gotten too far in Atlantis, but like most Imagic games, it’s always fun to try. Atlantis on the Commodore VIC 20 looks, sounds, and plays great, even if it’s a bit brutal seeing one’s failure lead to several cool underwater domed cities being destroyed on one’s watch.

Dragonfire (Imagic)

Designed by Bob Smith / VIC 20 version by Tim Yu

Another great Atari VCS game that came after Atlantis was Dragonfire by Bob Smith, a two-screen action game where the player has to avoid the titular dragonfire that comes in the form of fireballs while gathering treasures. 

The first screen has the small figure of a player running left across a beautiful bridge, spanning across a moat between two castles, and dodging fireballs. They come at different speeds and levels, so the lower fireball at pixel knee level must be jumped and the higher, faster fireball at face level must be ducked. There is a discernable pattern on the first and maybe second crossing, but after that the speed picks up and it gets a lot harder.

The danger is running into two at once while on the bridge; the lower one and the higher one coming at the player at the same time. Care must be made to avoid this, so it is wise to time going forward and jumping over the slower fireball in between the faster fireball shots.

Crossing the bridge, the player enters the dragon's lair where the large and angry dragon runs across the bottom of the screen shooting fireballs straight up toward the top of the screen. The lair is filled with treasures the player must grab for points, with the room exit at the top left only appearing once every treasure is grabbed. The dragon is a little slower than the player but shoots fireballs constantly in a sort of upside-down Kaboom pattern.

The key to survival in this room is to keep moving, of course, but back in the day I came up with running in a sideways "8" or infinity symbol, back and forth, picking up treasures that way. If I missed one, I kept moving and came back for another pass in roughly that same pattern. This kept me ahead of the dragonfire pretty well. After a few sets of the two-screen challenge, the speed ramps up drastically on both parts of the game.

It's important to note that having a two-screen game at all was still a pretty big deal back then, especially for the Atari VCS, but Imagic provided that for them as well as Commodore VIC 20 owners. With Imagic one can expect crisp graphics and sound quality and they certainly delivered that on the VIC 20. Dragonfire is quick, crisp fun that never gets old.

Those are the three games Imagic choose for the Commodore VIC 20 before moving on to the Commodore 64 for their last few years. These were safe, surefire hits and VIC 20 owners were glad to get them. Personally, I would have liked to seen some of their Intellivision exclusives ported to the VIC as well. Microsurgeon, Truckin', and several other of their hits would have played well on the machine. Oh well.