Down With O.P.P. (Other Publishers’ Programs) for the VIC 20

 When the Commodore VIC 20 exploded onto the scene, the ensuing software rush took many forms. Some companies translated their established software hits in-house, but some liscensed their games to other publishers entirely and allowed then to translate them to the VIC. Let’s look at three.

Apple Panic (Originally Published by Broderbund, VIC 20 Version Published by Creative Software)

VIC 20 Version By Unknown. Possibly Tom Griner but he was too ashamed to put his name on it.

While everyone was cranking out Space Invaders clones and later Pac-Man, Centipede, and Defender clones as a part of their software lineup, some clever programmers went to the arcade and looked for more obscure inspiration to rip off. Ben Serki at Broderbund apparently saw Space Panic, the first arcade platform-and-ladder game, and brought it to the Apple II as Apple Panic, making it an early hit for Broderbund as well as an early computer platform game.

Space Panic predates Donkey Kong and the player does not jump nor ascend to the top to rescue anyone. Instead they dig holes, trap enemies in said holes, and fill them in to eliminate them. Apple Panic does this too, just on the Apple II. Oddly enough, the Atari computer version was not Atari Panic and the translation to the TRS-80 was not TRS-80 Panic. Thus we arrive at Creative Software’s (licensed from Broderbund) version of Apple Panic for the VIC 20, which was not called VIC 20 Panic. It turns out the little blob enemies are "wandering apple monsters" so maybe that's the justification.

I remember playing Space Panic in the arcade when it came out and loving it. A platform and ladder game was a completely new concept ahead of Donkey Kong, and although it did well in Japanese arcades, Space Panic did not make a splash in the USA. I do not remember it controlling badly but that is what one gets with Apple Panic on the Commodore VIC 20.

It's not even the Burgertime effect where the on-screen character one is controlling has to pixel-align very precisely with a ladder to be able to use it. Lots of early platform games have that, and the ladders and character are big enough here to make it manageable. Pushing left or right makes the character move that way until another input stops it - moving up, down, or the opposite direction, as well as pushing the button to dig.

It’s the digging that is bad here. The screens are randomly drawn with platforms and ladders between them each time one plays and at each new level one reaches during play. With at least two ladders intersecting each platform, sometimes more in the middle platforms with above and below ladders reaching them, diggable spots on each platform become scarcer. On top of that, the player cannot dig a hole on the space next to a ladder or another hole, and apparently can't dig while standing next to a hole or ladder either. 

Compounding the limited diggable spots issue is the fact that getting the player to dig on a spot is very touchy. One walks toward the diggable spots away from ladders in that silly animation, and when one is over a certain spot the animation shows a sort of raised shovel, meaning that the spot ahead is diggable. Pressing the button starts the dig, but it seems that if the player animation moves beyond the "shovel held high" part before the player presses the button they miss the dig and have to start walking again and press the button again but aligned with the shovel. I honestly can't say for sure.

Want more design brutality? The player starts on the bottom level of the screen and not on a platform that is diggable, but a Minecraft bedrock kind of floor. So immediately the goal is the climb up at least one level and reach an area with a large enough open spot to dig one hole, avoiding the red blob apple monsters. The first level has three, the second five, and the third level has seven apple monsters to start. Their programming seems to shift from relentless to clueless at times.

I had thought in Space Panic and other versions of Apple Panic that the holes one digs could be aligned and monsters could fall further for more points, but that is not the case with this VIC 20 version. The monsters get trapped in the holes and when filled in, fall to the next platform below and die. Players that run into their own holes fall through but I could not fall more than one platform before landing as the holes would not quite line up. 

The game gives the player a fair amount of time once a monster is trapped in the holes to fill it in and the monster will start flashing blue and sounding a warning before escaping. The goal is simply to trap and bludgeon each monster to clear the level. A bonus timer counts down very very slowly and there is no penalty for letting it count down to zero, so finding a good spot on a wide enough platform and digging two holes and standing on an island in between them worked for me. 

It’s too bad Apple Panic on the Commodore VIC 20 controls so poorly because as a challenging game design it stands alone on its merits. Even with the aforementioned shortcomings it’s still fun enough until one remembers Lode Runner is a thing.

Choplifter (Originally Published by Broderbund, VIC 20 Version Published by Creative Software)

VIC 20 Version By Tom Griner

Younger gamers might not know about how awesome Choplifter is and was when Dan Grolin created it for the Apple II in 1982. Of all the Defender-inspired games that emerged, in my recollection only this one focused more on it’s rescue aspect than the blasting of enemies. It’s not to say Choplifter doesn’t have the player shooting at tanks, jets, and weird satellite drones, because it does, but the gameplay and indeed one’s score is centered around the picking up of sixty-four little pixel guys and landing them safely back at the starting point base. 

I first played it on the Apple II in our high school’s computer lab after a classmate hacked it. It had crisp black and white graphics and smooth scrolling and controlled well. The helicopter can face left, right, and forward and switching between those directions involves pushing left, down, or right while holding down the fire button. It sounds clunky in text but works intuitively in action and is quick to pick up.

The player gets three choppers with no extra lives available and starts at their base, flying left into enemy territory. A parallax-scrolling border fence lets the player know when they’ve crossed into it, a rare example of 2.5D from that time. Some pixel people may be wandering around loose, waving at the chopper to be rescued but most are in houses that must be bombed by the enemy before they run outside for rescue. 

The chopper can hold up to sixteen hostages before the player must return to their base and let them out, where they then get counted as a successful rescue and added to the score. All of this must be done carefully, as the chopper and its bullets can definitely harm the little guys as much as the enemies. The game also counts the ones lost as well; what this means is that the highest score possible is a perfect game of 64 rescues and zero lives lost. 

So the action is a mix of shooting at enemies and rescuing people once the area is clear, a temporary clearance at best as they will quickly spawn more to hinder the rescue. Legendary Commodore VIC 20 programmer Tom Griner was tasked with bringing Choplifter over and he did a great job using three basic colors. The sky is black and dotted with a few stars to help maintain the parallax scrolling effect; the ground is ketchup red, and everything else is lime green from the helicopter, planes, tanks, houses, and rescuees.

There's some lag and flicker when there is a lot going on the screen but it's manageable, and some poor collision between shots and targets seems to be present. A tone sounds out when a jet is fast approaching and a beep to let the player know a life has been lost. A blue line at the top of the screen holds the score, remembers the session high score, and says " By Tom Griner", where the "i" in Griner is replaced by a little pixel guy.

Speaking of the programmer, I think he wanted to show off a little on the VIC at this point, as the start of each of the three choppers used opens up with a weird green kaleidoscopic swirl circling the screen. Part of me feels that Tom was showing off his VIC 20 programming skills with that one. That's fine with me as Choplifter on the Commodore VIC 20 is a lot of fun and a game I consider essential VIC 20 software.

Choplifter was a little later translated and enhanced by Sega into an arcade game that became a hit, and I still have Choplifter HD downloaded on my PS3 whenever I want to, but since I have a love of early 1980s computer software, I'm glad I got the VIC 20 cartridge ready to go whenever I want that classic fix.

Shamus (Originally Published by Synapse, VIC 20 Version Published by Creative Software)

VIC 20 Version By Tom Griner

I saw Shamus in advertisements for the Atari computers at the time and magazine articles but didn't read too deeply into what it was. From the screenshots I saw, I had assumed it was the arcade game Berzerk brought home in style for lucky owners of those early computer powerhouses, and that was that. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I grabbed a complete translation for the Commodore VIC 20 that I realized what Shamus really was: Berzerk combined with Atari VCS's classic Adventure

This is an arcade game with a quest built in, and that was pretty cool to discover when the title screen booted up. Instead of infinite and randomly-generated mazes, Shamus has a persistent map with color-coded keys to discover and use in color-coded doors to reach an definite end boss battle with the Shadow. There are potions here and there for extra lives, and a "?" that when touched can either be another extra life, nothing at all, or summon the Shadow.

The Shadow, in addition to being the end boss, is also this game's "Otto". In Berzerk, Otto appears if the player lingers too long on one screen to hunt the player down and is invincible. When the Shadow appears to chase Shamus, the player can shoot at it to slow it down for a few seconds and escape. I found that a manageable tactic in the Commodore VIC 20 version. 

Shamus rapidly shoots "Ion Shivs" at the enemy robots, with a maximum of three on the screen at one time. There are three types of robots - regular Robo-Droids that move and shoot at the player; Snap-Jumpers whose backstory says they snap in and out of the time-space continuum but that's just an excuse for glitchy movement; and Spiral Drones which spin in place and shoot. In the VIC 20 version, it matters little what these guys look like as one enters each room and the enemies are often piled on top of each other like a glitchy blob. Blast away a few and some discernible sprites emerge.

Like Berzerk, the enemies are fun to deal with, shooting a few shots from around a corner and then ducking back before their return fire reaches you, and the action is challenging enough. So let's make the walls electrified and deadly to touch, they said, and make it really tough. Shamus has that and I had to get a modern gamepad controller for my VIC 20 to play it better than I was with the traditional joystick. It's way too easy to walk into a wall in this game, and most of my deaths were from wall hits rather than enemy fire. Of course, I only walked into a wall trying to evade enemy fire.

A tone sounds if the player lingers too long and the Shadow is about to appear and chase Shamus away. Usually, there is a generous amount of time given to clear the room on the Beginner level before the Shadow arrives, but of course there is not enough time to stand around after clearing the room sipping tea. Haste is one's ally here. There are no guarantees in Shamus that upon entering the next room one will not be surrounded and instantly under fire.

Upon death one revives in the same room, restocked with enemies, at the "entry point". So dying while backtracking through previous rooms can actually revive the player on the opposite side of the room they meant to cross anyway. While the enemies restock with each visit to a room, the potions and question marks do not. The instruction sheet claims that the VIC 20 version of Shamus has "two floors of 32 rooms", which could either mean 2 floors/16 rooms each or 2 floors/32 rooms each. Wikipedia claims the VIC has 32 rooms so I'm betting 16 rooms a floor across two floors. The original Atari versionand its other ports have 128 rooms and 4 skill levels. 

The skill levels on the VIC 20 version are Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, and Expert, selected at another great Tom Griner title screen by pressing the F1 key. The theme to the television classic "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" plays on this title screen while a small animation of Shamus being chased by a robot appears at the bottom under a list of enemies and scores.

It's take me a lot of effort to just get the red key to the red lock and open more of the maze before dying so this review will not go into what happens if one beats the game. While difficult to play, and having  some collision issues between the player, their shots, and the walls at times, Shamus is the kind of game that would have made younger me giddy with delight. And that's a big part of how I measure all of these Commodore VIC 20 games I write about - through a lens of nostalgia for sure, but also with the memory of what kind of games I was looking for back then, even dreaming about.

Berzerk as an action-adventure with a persistent map and actual campaign? HES was wise to license it from Synapse Software and have Tom Griner skillfully port it to the VIC 20, as it is a masterpiece of a game that invites repeated playthroughs. If I ever actually complete a playthrough, you can bet I will write about Shamus on the Commodore VIC 20 again.

Ricochet: Strategy and Chaos on the VIC 20

 Ricochet (Epyx, 1982, Cassette w/8K Memory Expansion)

By Bernie DeKoven and J.W. Connelley, VIC 20 version by R.C. Campbell

This surprise Ebay find from a few months back checked all of my boxes:

• A game I don’t remember hearing about back in the day
• Published by Epyx (everything they brought to the VIC 20 was great)
• A completely original type of game and gameplay that showcases the diversity of game design of that era

Ricochet is the kind of treasure I was hoping to discover when I dove back into early 1980s computer software and it is an absolute delight to play. At a stretch one might call it a variation of Atari’s Warlords, with the quick, four-player action of that classic replaced by tense, two-player, measured strategy. Warlords has players trying to breach their opponent's defenses with a Pong ball and take out the king, and Ricochet has a similar goal, but victory relies on scores, gained not just by hitting the Bumpers at the opposing end of the screen, but also hitting the other player's Launchers and bouncing off of their Pieces as well.

There is a lot to unpack here, so let's start with a screenshot to help explain the basics.

Ricochet is turn-based, and at the top one can see whether it's their turn or their opponent's. Player 1 is on the left and Player 2 (human or VIC 20) is on the right.

Match Points are shown below that and are the real scoring metric of victory in Ricochet. A Match consists of two-to-five games, and the Game Score for each player appears below that. In the above example, we are just starting a game and I have not taken my turn yet. Game Score is accumulated in a lot of ways and I'll break down the highly complex scoring a little later.

Launchers are in each of the four corners of the screen and only shoot that one direction outward. Next to them is the number of shots left in that launcher. If a launcher is hit, it grants points to the opponent, turns red, and is knocked out for two turns. In later variations, there are random targets that appear along the top and bottom that when hit add more shots to the Launcher opposite of the one that launched the shot that hit it. Everything is twisty-crazy in this game like that.

Bumpers are the large green dots behind the white Pieces. A number next to the Bumper indicates its value in points when hit. This number increases for the winner at the end of each game; but the loser loses a Bumper. So, unlike Warlords, Bumpers are not critical hits, just the most rewarding points one can score. The Bumpers are lost at the end of each game for the player with the lowest score, which I'll detail more later in case your head is already spinning trying to keep all of this straight.

Pieces are those white dashes that sort of guard the Bumpers, or ricochet a shot right into them. When hit, they deflect the ball according to their orientation. While starting the game in a vertical position as shown above, when hit they rotate ninety degrees to a horizontal orientation, and subsequent hits continue switching the Pieces between those two states. These bring the ricocheting to Ricochet, and guess what - they can be moved by the player as well. More on that later too!

Position Markers are the small white dots in place to help one predict their shots in most variations. Shots bounce off of the small "divots" in the green barrier, not the outer part, and then follow the track of the white dots. When trying to predict one's shots out past a few ricochets, these can be helpful.

The Smart Clock at the bottom is counting down as a timer for each turn. There is both a dial with an arrow and a numerical counter next to it. If the time counts down to zero, the opposing player gets a point and the timer starts over. The actual amount of time on the clock reflects how fast one's opponent took on their turn, increasing the tension while trying to predict a ricochet or contemplate moving a piece or two.

The setup of each match involves, well, first, loading the cassette. The Commodore VIC20 needs at least 8K of memory expansion plugged in for Ricochet, which was common for games Epyx brought to the machine. A nice title screen appears and is classy enough to let the player know that there is about five minutes of loading ahead. 

Players select one of five game Variants:

1. Start with five launches (ammo) per Launcher and two Bumpers. With two Bumpers, each Match is two or three Games. With one Bumper lost per game, two or three is logically what it takes to complete a Match.
2. Adds Extra Launch Targets that can be hit for additional ammo. These appear in all subsequent Variants.
3. There are now four Bumpers per side, making the game three-to-five turns.  
4. Start with only three launches in the Launcher.
5. All Position Markers are removed, making shot prediction harder. Launchers are knocked out for the rest of the game once they are hit. 

Next the program asks if the player wants to play against the computer. Entering Y for YES prompts the player to enter the number of the computer opponent, of which there are four. The manual claims they are distinctly different but does not disclose how. I have only been beating up on Computer Opponent #1 so far.

After that, the player is asked to enter their Rating. First time players enter zero, but at the end of each match the Rating is given based on the outcome, and that number is like experience points, so one needs to write it down and enter it in at the start of the next match. The final prompt asks if the human or computer will take the first turn, and the manual hints that there may be some strategy to the decision.

Then the first game of the match starts. Once it is the player's turn they have two options: Shoot or Move.

Shooting blindly might seem like a good place to start, but the player should look at the screen to see what a launch from both the top and bottom might do. Doing so before the Smart Clock timer is up is essential, so extrapolating a ricocheting shot out past a few bounces in that time is the challenge. Also in that tight time frame, it's a good idea to check if an opponent's launch is on track to hit one's Bumpers or Launchers. In that case, it might be prudent to Move a Piece or two.

Selecting Move prompts the player to enter a direction between Up-Down-Left-Right, and then which pieces to move. This game is played entirely on the keyboard, in case that was not obvious, and after choosing a direction, the player chooses which of their pieces to move. The A-F keys represent the left side Pieces, and G-L the right side. One can move as many pieces as they want that one direction, and make only one move per turn. Once the direction to move and the pieces to move are selected, the player presses the Space Bar to enter the move and finish their turn.

The shots that are taken ricochet off of walls, pieces, and bumpers, but stop when they pass either side of the screen, hit a launcher, or hit an extra launch target. Scoring points in a game is done in a variety of ways. Let’s break down Game Points:

Hit any Piece - 1 point 

Hit opponent's Bumper or Launcher - 10 points during the first round, increasing for the winner of each game, meaning that the loser of the first game gets more points for hitting the opponent’s bumper in the second game.

It took me a minute to nail down what ends each Game within the match; the documentation says that “A game ends as soon as one player has run out of launches”, but I think having one launcher out of launches/ammo and the other launcher disabled from enemy fire is enough to end the game as well. If both launchers are knocked out the game ends as well. 

It’s important to win each game, but the goal is to win the match by getting the most Match Points. Dust off those math skills as they will be needed to understand how these points are awarded. Winning a game gives the winner 1 point PLUS one more point for every ten points over the loser’s score they get. So for example if the player wins 121 to 66, the winner would get 1 match point for the win PLUS (121-66=55/10 and rounded down=5 match points) for a total of 6 match points. So it's important to get a high score in each game to get not just the win for that game but also those match points. 

At the end of the match there is a screen with the results and the player’s rating. The player needs to manually write that number down and enter it at the start of the next game. I know, it sounds so primitive, but it’s not a real inconvenience.

It’s a lot of fun to play Ricochet but there are so many strategic options that it can be a bit overwhelming. I’ve played over twenty matches so far and am just now developing shot-projection skills and backtracking a shot from the opponent’s bumpers in my head to see if I have a shot.

I’ve barely scratched the surface of moving the pieces, but grasp the importance of doing so defensively in rounds where I am down to one bumper. Another thought that occurred to me in a game where I had a good early point lead was to target just the two launchers, as taking them out ends the game.

With the Smart Clock timer ticking down, I would try to predict my shots a little, mostly to make sure they weren’t coming right back at my own launchers, which would award my opponent points as well as disable it for two turns. It’s really easy to do that in Ricochet. 

In those higher-numbered variants with four bumpers each, there is more challenge and even more chaos as the additional bumpers block more of the side of the screen. Here, Ricochet dazzles as a programming triumph as a single shot can continue to hit bumpers and pieces and keep bouncing and racking up scores for both players. I would have to say that any shot prediction goes out the door after a half-dozen ricochets unless one is some sort of geometrical savant and part psychic. Instead of "git good", this game is "guess good".

Ricochet is a complex game with complicated play and the game's concept designer, Bernie DeKoven, took it upon himself to write the manual as well. It's his baby and thus his job to tell the world what the heck he has created with programmer J.W. Connelley. In addition to detailing everything I've wrote about above, he waxed a bit philosophical in the manual, and after a little internet digging I came to understand why. I would be remiss in my research of Ricochet without mentioning the influences and the life of the late Bernie DeKoven that brought him to game design in the early 1980s.

He had some extensive experience in games even before the word video was put in front of them. According to his Wikipedia entry, he created something called an "Interplay Curriculum" for the Philadelphia School District published in 1971; a "retreat center for the study of games and play" called The Games Preserve the same year; something for Philadelpia's Bicentennial celebration in 1976; and wrote his seminal work The Well-Played Game in 1978, a book lauded as a must-read for any game designer. I'm buying a copy.

Bernie DeKoven landed up at Epyx in 1982 where he created Ricochet and another strange game called Alien Garden. He must have seen the potential to apply his game design philosophies to a whole new medium, and Epyx must have realized the unique coolness of Ricochet as they published it for the big three - Apple, Atari, and TRS-80 - before porting it to the Commodore VIC 20. 

From his own writing in the manual, he was proud to work in the world of computer game design. He infers that Ricochet would be impossible without a computer, as if the game was stuck in his head until computers came home. His written introduction is three paragraphs describing the journey that the player embarks upon when playing the game, but notes that the challenge for the player is "as deep as you want to take it", meaning that with five variations and four computer opponents there is much to explore for the player that wants it.

Even though I just rambled on for many paragraphs about Ricochet, words cannot do the game justice. This game is original, strategic, silly at times, and so damn refreshing to find. The Commodore VIC 20 port looks fantastic and sounds great. I cannot praise Bernie DeKoven and his team enough for creating this masterpiece that took me over four decades to discover. I knew then, in the early 1980s, that computers had potential for nearly infinite game experiences and games like Ricochet were out there, I just wish I'd caught up sooner.