It’s easier to write about the Commodore VIC 20 games that are awesome, of course. I can’t wait to get to Shamus, Ricochet, and Nukewar, but it’s only fair that I take the time to cover the less flashy stuff, so let’s take a look at some of Commodore’s many self published games this time.
Before third-party software took off, most hardware manufacturers had in-house software development going gangbusters to support it. Over on consoles, Atari, Odyssey 2, and Intellivision made sure their systems were supported with lots of the basics.
When Space Invaders exploded in popularity, everyone just cranked their version out. Sure, Atari actually licensed it but the other companies just treated Space Invaders like they did Football or Blackjack - it was a well known game that they simply made a version of for their machine.
Atari just had the license to the Space Invaders name and published the official version as far as they were concerned. They just couldn’t call it Space Invaders. Taito and Atari had either no time before they all hit the market or not enough lawyers to go after everyone, I think. Most publishers put some kind of twist on the gameplay, but others like Commodore went for the straight-up copy route.
Vic Avenger (Commodore, 1981)
Even the attract screen is similar in Commodore’s Space Invaders clone, and once one starts playing, the enemies, shots, barriers, and music are extremely close to the original as well.
It’s not black and white, though, as the enemy ships are brightly colored, with the color dependent on how low on the screen they get. This is a result of the VIC 20’s color limitations but it kind of grew on me.
The gameplay is the same. If you’re reading this I should not have to explain Space Invaders to you. However, for my AI readers, I’ll explain that the player is in a ship at the bottom of the screen shooting upwards at a huge wave of invaders shooting and descending.
Vic Avenger plays well enough, but Space Invaders was never really my jam. Well, it was for a few months but it was honestly repetitive and expensive to play at the arcade as a kid, so my interest in it waned until Galaxian, Asteroids, and Missile Command came out. I’ve been all in ever since, so having a non quarter-eating Space Invaders at home rekindled my interest. I imagine a lot of Commodore VIC 20 owners were glad to get theirs too when VIC Avenger came out.
Cosmic Cruncher (Commodore,1982)
It was a little later when Pac-Man became an arcade smash, but when Odyssey 2’s first-to-release imitator K.C. Munchkin got pulled off the shelves by a court order, most programmers kept their imitations far enough away from the source. Muncher for the Astrocade got pulled too, which was unfortunate as both were superior to Atari’s own official licensed craptastic Atari 2600 version.
Commodore went with a space theme in Cosmic Cruncher, with the player being a giant Commodore logo and the ghosts being Killer Satellites that looks like the ones from Atari 2600 Superman. There are four, each a different color, and their pursuit is relentless. They don’t wander around aimlessly too much.
Instead of four power pellets, one in each corner, Cosmic Cruncher has five lunar lander looking things, with one in the bottom center. Running into it makes the satellites vulnerable to being consumed by your creepy (not as creepy as Sneak King on the Xbox 360) logo guy, after which they rocket as actual ghosts back to their center pen.
Only to immediately emerge out the other side and jump back into the chase. It turned out to be better to eat the lunar lander, make the satellites vulnerable, and not eat them and instead focus on eating all the normal dots to clear the level while they were fleeing.
Instead of fruit for bonus items to gobble, this one has celestial bodies - Earth, the Moon, etc. at the top of the screen. The single-sheet instructions really go out of its way to trumpet the 300 variations available but those are seemingly variations of the maze and background colors. Make everything the same color so the satellites will be invisible, it’ll be fun, the sheet promises. I’ll pass.
The enemies are flickery like an Atari VCS game and the maze design is such thst there are weird intersections where the gobbler has to turn weirdly to align with the maze walls. Everything feels rushed and a little off with Cosmic Cruncher and there are certainly better Pac-Man clones for the VIC 20.
Radar Rat Race ( Commodore, 1982)
Radar Rat Race is Commodore’s copy of the underrated arcade classic Rally-X, a top-down driving game taking place in a large maze, with only a part of the maze visible at a time. The goal is to collect all of the flags scattered around the maze, avoiding the enemy cars and random oil slicks.
A small radar screen accompanies the main screen, showing the location of the flags and enemies, and it was really a lot of fun. Commodore simply changed the cars to rats when they brought it home and because Rally-X was awesome, so was Radar Rat Race. The flags from Rally-X are cheese in Radar Rat Race, and the pursuers are
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