For those who are unaware, coulrophobia is described as the “morbid fear of clowns.” Psychologists have looked at a lot of causes for the condition, and one of the most common explanations is that it touches on the uncanny valley: an inner revulsion to something that almost seems human, but not quite. Add to that cultural factors like Stephen King’s Pennywise and real life serial killer and birthday clown John Wayne Gacy and it’s frankly amazing that clowns can work anywhere.  Still not convinced?

I present this clown from the old cereal Sugar Krinkles…

…and Lon Chaney from the 1928 film Laugh, Clown, Laugh.

So, with all that said, what could possibly be more terrifying than a video game completely devoted to clowns? Quite a bit as it turns out. Despite having a nightmare inducing cover, the video game Clowns (originally released as an arcade in 1978, and then appearing on the VIC-20 and Commodore 64) is an incredibly unassuming game. It’s not even original. Produced by Bally Midway, the game is a direct copy of the 1977 Exidy game Circus.

Gameplay is incredibly simple. You control a springboard with two clowns at either end. A group of balloons hovers high overhead. You launch the clowns from the springboard into the balloons, gaining points for each balloon you collect (every jump gained you 10 points, yellow balloons earned 20 points, green balloon earned 50 points and blue balloons earned 100 points. In addition, if you cleared all yellow balloons you received 200 bonus points, an additional 500 bonus points for clearing all green balloons, and 1000 points and an extra life for clearing all of the blue balloons.) To make things a bit more challenging, you have to catch the clowns on their way back down. If they hits the ground three times, the game is over. For all intents and purposes, Clowns (and Circus) are just a variation on Atari’s 1976 game Breakout.   

So maybe it’s not the most terrifying game ever created, but seriously who thought that cover was a good idea?

The post The Nightmare Fuel of “Clowns” by Bally Midway appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

That was the year that Imagic published Dragonfire, designed by Bob Smith. The game was originally released on the Atari 2600, but ported to systems like the Intellivision, VIC-20, Commodore 64, and ColecoVision. The game’s manual established the premise:

“Dragons have driven the Royal Court from the Castle

“O we are lost, lost” laments the King.  “Without our vast treasures we
cannot raise an army ‘gainst these accursed dragons.  Our Kingdom must
now languish under lizards!”

“Nay, not so, my liege!” replied the young Prince.  “None knows that Castle,
those many bridges and storerooms, better than I.  Give me leave and I
shall loot those lizards of their plunder and restore my lord to his
birthright.”

“Brave boy,” said the King, fully pleased.  “But,” he added darkly,
“beware dread dragonfire!”

Each level was broken into two segments. The first involved crossing a drawbridge to reach the castle while dodging fireballs shot forth by the dragon. The flaming death could be avoided by jumping or ducking, depending on the flame’s location. The second stage found you inside a storeroom with the dragon. Your mission was to collect the treasure scattered about the room as you avoid the dragon’s flames. Once you have collected all the loot, a door opens which leads you to the next level.

Subsequent levels were merely repeats of the first, with the speed of the dragon’s attacks increasing with each new level.

The game was a success, going on to receive a certificate of merit  in the category of “1984 Best Video Game Audio-Visual Effects (Less than 16K ROM)” at the Arkie Awards. As an interesting footnote, in 2004 designer Bob Smith placed the game’s source code in the public domain.

So now, dear reader, we turn to you. In honor of Appreciate A Dragon Day, leave a comment telling us your favorite video game dragon.

The post Beware Dread Dragonfire! appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

I’ve been on a quest of my own recently: to find information about the Commodore VIC-20 game Key Quest. I first heard of the game while reading an article about the top 10 games ever created for the VIC-20, a criminally underappreciated computer. Like any good quest, it started with the promise of a rare treasure. The article stated, “There’s only one real downside to this game: there’s only one known copy.”

Only one copy? How could that even be possible? A quick on-line search revealed a couple things: emulators of Key Quest have been created. People have even used it as the inspiration for their own homebrewed games (for instance, Treasures of Ali Gar in which you play a wizard running through a maze in search of treasures). There is also startlingly little information out there about the game’s development.

It was released in 1983 by Micro-Ware for the VIC-20 and written and programmed by Randy Ubillos and David Dixon. A two page review of the game was written up in the December 1983 edition of Compute!’s Gazette. However, nothing in the review discusses its development. It does however provide a detailed look at gameplay.

The premise of the game is simple. A wizard stored up treasures in the dungeon beneath his fortress. He also created creatures called Gorbs to defend his treasure. You control a character running through the dungeon to collect treasures. The Gorbs chase you through the maze-like dungeon. It actually has a bit of a PacMan feel to it. You have to collect treasures spread throughout the dungeon rooms, and once you colelct 12 a key will appear. You pick up the key and then have to make it to the door, which leads you to the next portion of the dungeon.

You are able to defend yourself against the Gorbs, but in a limited way. You can fire either to the right or to the left. The Gorbs also will not go near the treasures, so you are in a safe space when you get to them. You gain points for collecting treasure, shooting Gorbs, and by how quickly you complete each stage. There were four unique screes to work through and when you finished them, they repeated, only with more Gorbs moving at a higher rate of speed.

(for the full review in Compute!’s Gazette visit: https://www.commodore.ca/gallery/magazines/gazette/Compute-Gazette-Issue-06-01.pdf)

Digging further, I found a thread on-line where someone claimed to have found a second Key Quest cartridge on Ebay, but no additional information was provided. After searching tirelessly on-line, it seemed that my quest to learn the game’s development history was doomed to failure. My quixotic belief that perhaps I could find an actual copy was also dashed.

Beaten and bedraggled from the journey, I sat down in front of my computer and thought, “What the heck? I’ll play it on an emulator.” Someday, perhaps gamers will sing ballads about my long, fruitless quest.

The post Key Quest: The Holy Grail of the VIC-20 appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

The world of text based adventure games was still fairly new in 1978, when Scott and Alexis Adams created the company Adventure International. Colossal Cave Adventure, the genre’s first game, had been released two years previously. Playing Colossal Cave Adventure inspired Adams to create the game Adventureland, but he wanted to write it for his microcomputer (a TRS-80), an idea his friends deemed impossible. In Adams own words, he was, “not daunted by their laughter” and, six months after beginning, the game was released by The Software Exchange of Milford, New Hampshire and Creative Computing Software.

Alexis Adams, Scott’s wife, came up with the idea behind Pirate Adventure. Players began the story in their London flat before being transported to Pirate Island. From Pirate Island, the player had to figure out how to build a ship that would transport them to Treasure Island. This ship building element was something unique at the time. According to Adams it was, “different from any that had ever been written before. Instead of simply searching for treasure in this Adventure, you now had an added ingredient–a mission.” On Treasure Island, the player had to locate the lost treasure.

As with other text based games of the time, action was achieved through simple two word commands like, “Climb Tree” or “Get Book.”  There was also a special two word command used later in the game, “Say YoHo”, which became the name of Scott Adams’s regular column in SoftSide Magazine.

The original Pirate Adventure was created for the TRS-80, but eventually found its way to a wide variety of systems including the Apple II, Commodore PET, VIC-20, and ZX Spectrum (among others). Commodore engineer Andy Finkel programed the Commodore version of Pirate Adventure (as well as four others adventures created by Adams). The source code for the game was published in a 1980 issue of BYTE, allowing other creators to make similar games.

Both Adventureland and Pirate Adventure enjoyed success, and Adventure International went on to create a number of other popular adventure titles such as Voodoo Castle, Pyramid of Doom, Savage Island, and Sorcerer of Claymorgue Castle, before moving on to graphic adventures like the Marvel superhero series Questprobe (which featured the Hulk, Spiderman, and members of the Fantastic Four). Sadly, the company went bankrupt in 1985, at the tail end of the video game crash.

Adams left the video game industry for a time, going to work for Insight (a company created by John Mathias, former head of the games department for Commodore International. The company later became AVISTA and later Esterline). Fifteen years after Adventure International went bankrupt, Adams returned to the world of adventure games with Return to Pirate Island 2. It was a happy return for the man proclaimed, “the creator of the personal computer gaming industry.”

The post Pirate Adventure and the Story of Adventure International appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

I’ve wasted countless hours playing the 1986 Bally/Midway classic arcade game Rampage, where players controlled George (the giant ape), Lizzie (a Godzilla knock off), or Ralph (the werewolf) and used them to destroy cities. The game was a popular success, spawning a series of sequels, and eventually a feature film which was (very loosely) based on the arcade, but it wasn’t the only monster mayhem game of its era. A full blown monster invasion was sweeping across the gaming world.

In 1981, Epyx released Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! for the TRS-80, Apple II, and Atari 8-bit (releasing ports for the C64 and VIC-20 later). The game allowed players to choose between a variety of monsters with names like Goshzilla, the Kraken, the Glob, and Mantra. Players could also grow a monster, but the end goal was to destroy cities around the globe. Before you attacked the cities, you selected one of five game objectives: Balanced (gaining points for everything), Killer Monster (gaining higher points for killing humans), Combat Machine (which gave points for killing combatants, but not civilians), Destruction (which focused on destroying structures), and Survival.

A year before Rampage, Electronic Arts released Mail Order Monsters for the Commodore 64. The game allowed players to create custom monsters and then battle each other or, in single player mode, the computer. Battles took place across the globe and terrain affected your fighting.

The following year, Epyx released The Movie Monster Game for the Commodore 64 and Apple II computers. It was sort of an unofficial of sequel to Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! The game fully embraced the camp of the old creature features. It contained movie style advertisements for treats like “Gummi Glogs” and trailers for other Epyx titles. Players could choose one of six monsters: Godzilla, Spectra, The Glog, Tarantus, Mr. Meringue, and Mechatron. Like Crush, Crumble, and Chomp!, players could choose between game modes: Berserk (based on destruction), Escape (getting your monster safely out of the city), Search (where your monster must find its missing children), Destroy Landmark (self explanatory, but you had to destroy world famous landmarks), and Lunch (where the goal was to eat as many humans and vehicles as possible).

The games weren’t masterpieces of video game craft, and they didn’t revolutionize the industry. They were just fun. They were funny and exciting, and a good way to waste an afternoon or Saturday morning. What more can you ask for in a game?

The post Creature Features: Monster Games of the 1980s appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

That same year, Commodore released the 8 bit VIC-20. It marked an important step in the world of home computing, as the first truly affordable unit available to the public. It sold for $299.95. By comparison, the original price point for the Apple II, released three years earlier, was $2638.00. The Commodore PET, released the same year as the Apple II, sold for $795.

Video games became one of the primary uses for the new system and a wide variety of titles were developed for it. Commodore also ported a number of games to the system. One of those titles was Jelly Monsters.

Jelly Monsters was the American and European given name given to the VIC-20’s port of Pac-Man. Commodore had received the right to distribute Pac-Man in Japan and HAL Laboratory set about adapting the game for the VIC-20. However, in the 1970s Atari had purchased the home rights to many of Namco’s arcade titles, including Pac-Man. With Atari already in possession of the rights, Commodore adopted the name Jelly Monsters for their version hoping that this would avoid any sticky legal situations. It didn’t work.

Commodore’s Jelly Monsters was released in 1981, a year before Atari would release Pac-Man for the 2600. Atari quickly sued Commodore to have the title removed from shelves and won. Jelly Monsters was no more. The rub being that Jelly Monsters appears to have been the superior game. Of the Atari version, Electronic Games Magazine wrote, “Considering the anticipation and considerable time the Atari designers had to work on it, it’s astonishing to see a home version of a classic arcade contest so devoid of what gave the original its charm.” It didn’t get better with age either. Looking back on the version for the 2600, Next Generation magazine called it the “worst coin-op conversion of all time.” Jelly Monsters, by comparison, has been widely noted for its playability. Even the 1983 version of Pac-Man released for the VIC-20 by Atarisoft is considered inferior to Commodore’s original adaptation.

Despite its superior game play Jelly Monsters was reduced to a minor footnote in the story of Pac-Man, a curiosity in the cut-throat business of video games.

The post Jelly Monsters: The Battle Between Commodore and Atari appeared first on Old School Gamer Magazine.

SEARCHING FOR JUPITER LANDER

LOADING

READY

RUN

By 1982, the video game industry already had two titans that dominated the home video game market. The Apple II and Atari 2600 were both released in 1977 and were wildly popular. That same year Commodore introduced the PET, but it’s graphics only allowed for the most rudimentary of games. The Commodore VIC-20 came out three years later and was a good system for gaming, but it wasn’t until 1982 that Commodore would release its masterpiece: the Commodore 64.

The C64 was an 8-bit machine that would go on to become the highest selling home computer of all time. The system eventually supported over 2000 video games and has retained a devoted fan base over the 36 years since its release. Games like Mayhem in Monsterland, Impossible Mission, and The Sentinel would become classics, but it was the humble Jupiter Lander that gave the system its start.

The game was developed by HAL Laboratory, Inc. (who later produced Kirby, Mother/EarthBound Beings, and Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo). It was released on the VIC-20 and was the first game available for the C64. Early packages of the C64 could even be purchased with the cartridge for Jupiter Lander included.

For all intents and purposes the game was a rip-off of Atari, Inc.’s 1979 arcade game Lunar Lander (itself inspired by the text based game Lunar Landing written in FOCAL). Like Lunar Lander, the object of Jupiter Lander was to guide a spacecraft onto various platforms located on the surface of the planet. Also like Lunar Lander, players received fuel for executing good landings.  A gauge on the right-hand side of the screen showed the velocity of the ship and players controlled its motion by pressing A to move the ship left, D to move the ship right, and F1 to fire the ship’s thrusters. Score was determined by the landing velocity and multiplied by the number listed below the landing platform (x2, x5, or x10). Gameplay continued until the ship ran out of fuel.

The game’s raster graphics were an improvement on the simple vector graphics of Atari’s Lunar Lander. The ship resembled the Apollo Lunar Module, as opposed to the small dot of Lunar Lander. It also used multi-color graphics as opposed to the black and white of the Atari game. A simple, single voice melody played at the start, and a victory tune was played with each successful landing, but other audio was limited to the sound of the rocket boosters firing. The game only had one screen so play was limited to landing on the same platforms until the ship’s fuel was depleted.

There was nothing earth shattering about the game, but as the first game for the Commodore 64 system it represented a slight tectonic shift, a minor tremor foreshadowing a major shakeup in the gaming world.

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