VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Discussion, Reviews & High-scores

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Which is your favorite Qix inspired VIC title?

Shark Attack (1982)
4
29%
Slap Dap (1983)
3
21%
Squeeze (1983)
6
43%
Other (elaborate in a post)
1
7%
 
Total votes: 14

Vic Porter
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by Vic Porter »

... but of course it is not that easy. Turn out exomizer wants to use some bytes below that lowest address ($1000), so it was reading garbage and sometimes working. Attempt #2 required disassembling the game and shaving off a few bytes to raise the lowest address. So here is a version that should always work.
Attachments
squeeze_fix1.zip
(4.57 KiB) Downloaded 94 times
Boray
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by Boray »

Nice! Thanks!
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hasseapa
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by hasseapa »

OK, here's my strategy.
squeezestrategy.png
It should be self-explanatory. It's just a loose guideline and the areas 1, 2, 3 do not need to look exactly as in the screenshot, but the vertical tunnel between area 1 & 3 should be one square wide and the last area to fill.
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by Vic20-Ian »

How about Traxx by Jeff Minter?
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by hasseapa »

Vic20-Ian wrote:How about Traxx by Jeff Minter?
I actually did play Traxx parallel with the other games. As a VIC-game I kind of relate it to Shark Attack. Not only because of the game play but because they both have an in-game tune. IMO Traxx is a rather cheap Amidar-clone and very frustrating to play but somehow enjoyable because of its rendition of the joyful Amidar tune.

Well, someone called Amidar a dumb man's Qix :lol:
hasseapa
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by hasseapa »

This is what Jeff Minter himself says about Traxx on the Llamasoft website http://minotaurproject.co.uk/lc-8bit.php
Somewhat control-impaired Amidar-inspired grid-painting game with *incredibly* annoying tune that won't shut up and drives you absolutely insane.
I LOVE the tune :P
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Ola H
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by Ola H »

Traxx is an ok Amidar clone that lacks:
BUT

has the GREAT tune of the original game! (who wrote this? I have always wondered - is it a well-known Japanes pop/folk/kids-tune?)

And the paint roller game mode plays well enough. I certainly enjoyed the game very much before I had Rollin - a superior Amidar clone on the C64. I always loved the arcade original.
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by Cliff »

Hey folks!

Sorry for the necro-bump, but I just came across this site last night and wanted to contribute briefly. I'm Cliff Ramshaw, the author of Shark Attack. I was thrilled to see some of you were playing it (relatively) recently, and even more thrilled that some of you seemed to enjoy it. Many thanks!

Someone said they associated me more with BASIC games, and it's true I started out with those, but eventually learnt machine code form a couple of articles in - I think - Computing Today magazine. These days I use C++ and CUDA.

The game *was* inspired by Qix, although I never played the original. I read a brief article about it in Computer And Video Games magazine and it captured my imagination. Shark Attack was my attempt to create something similar.
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by joshuadenmark »

Hi Cliff

Welcome to our community, nice to have you here. Do not worry about necro-bump, 2017 is kind of yesterday for us old timers.
Kind regards, Peter.
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by English Invader »

Cliff wrote: Thu Aug 06, 2020 8:18 am Hey folks!to

Sorry for the necro-bump, but I just came across this site last night and wanted to contribute briefly. I'm Cliff Ramshaw, the author of Shark Attack. I was thrilled to see some of you were playing it (relatively) recently, and even more thrilled that some of you seemed to enjoy it. Many thanks!

Someone said they associated me more with BASIC games, and it's true I started out with those, but eventually learnt machine code form a couple of articles in - I think - Computing Today magazine. These days I use C++ and CUDA.

The game *was* inspired by Qix, although I never played the original. I read a brief article about it in Computer And Video Games magazine and it captured my imagination. Shark Attack was my attempt to create something similar.
It is a true honour to meet you, sir. Shark Attack is one of my favourite games for the VIC-20. Did you have anything to do with the ZX Spectrum and BBC versions? And did you make any more commercial games for the VIC?
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Ola H
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by Ola H »

Hi Cliff!

As a kid I had the impresion that Martian Raider was your most well-known game in Sweden (Romik's games were imported to Sweden bý a firm called Tial Trading), but Shark Attack was always my favourite. Insanely playable for an unexpanded Vic game and I loved that it had an in-game tune. I used to wonder if it was an original tune but nowadays I think it was based on the folk song "Blow The Man Down". Am I right? :D

Very cool that you were inspired by Qix but hadn't played it - just read about it. That seems like quite a common phenomenon among young, early game makers and often resulted in quite unique games - Shark Attack being no exception. It always seemed like an original idea to me though I had seen Qix in the arcades. The sea setting with sharks helped as it made it less abstract and more "cute" Japanese style, unlike Qix which was made by Taito America and was visually very unappealing to me (just like Missile Command and many other American arcade games).

Shark Attack just had a special flavour to it!
Last edited by Ola H on Fri Aug 07, 2020 12:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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beamrider
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by beamrider »

Hi Cliff

Nice to meet you on here.

Have fond memories of playing Martian Raider back in the day...
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by Cliff »

Thanks all for the warm welcome!

I think Shark Attack was my favourite of my VIC games, too. Maybe with Martian Raider taking second place. I may be mis-remembering, but I think that was my first fully machine coded game. I wrote it out on paper first and then typed it in. And then debugged it.

I originally conceived of Shark Attack as having a more abstract look, but the publisher had this sea thing going on. The octopi were his idea. It came about because I submitted a Space Invaders rip-off and he was paranoid of getting sued, so made me change all the graphics to sea creatures, and suggested that they disappear off the right and re-appear on the left instead of switching directions like in the original. Unfortunately, this completely destroyed the pace of the game.

Yes, the song was Blow The Man Down. I re-watched a YouTube video of the game yesterday, and I bet that tune gets old really quickly :). I wrote the baseline myself (I was a big Rush fan back then, and trying to play like Geddy Lee).

I think earlier in the thread, somebody listed most if not all my old VIC games. Just in case he missed one:
First there were three tapes of games from my VIC Innovative Computing book published by Melbourne House
There was the VIC-20 Games Pack, also published by Melbourne House, which had 5 (I think) games, one with machine code, which I think was an Asteroids clone. My favourite was one inspired by reading about Tempest. Once I finally got to see Tempest in real-life, the two were nothing like each other.
I also did The Wizard And The Princess for Melbourne House, which was a collection of five thematically connected adventure games. One of them was based on - you guessed it - me reading about an old TRS-80 game called Temple Of Apshai. That's how I found this site, because I was searching for a scree grab of that game.
Most of my machine-code/assembler games were published by Romik.
Martian Raider
Space Attack
Sea Invasion
Shark Attack
Time Destroyers
I went back to Melbourne House after that. My last VIC-20 game was Cosmonaut, a sort of platformer with only one level :)

And no, I had nothing to do with the Spectrum or BBC Shark Attack versions.

Cheers!
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by Mayhem »

Hi Cliff, great to see you here :)

Thanks for all the info on your games, thankfully it was all present and correct in Gamebase20 already. Favourite title? Probably Shark Attack too heh.

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Ola H
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Re: VIC Game Club No. 1 – Qix Inspired Games

Post by Ola H »

Thanks, great info :) Really interesting that the publisher (Romik in this case) was involved and made suggestions - some good ones (Shark Attack) and some bad ones (Sea Invasion).

I'm sure the tune got on my parents's nerves, but my brain didn't (and doesn't) work that way. i found it hypnotic and kinda addictive in itself. Also, an in-game tune on the Vic was a rare treat, doubly so as it was polyphonic. I sure savored it, so you certainly didn´t write that bassline in vain!
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