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.
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