VIC-20 manual type in games - how many revisions/versions?

[allenhuffman]

I received my VIC-20 for Christmas when it was very new. It was still selling for $299.99 at the time, corresponding to Captain Kirk telling us it was "the first full featured color computer for under $300" in the TV ads.

In the back of the included book were three type-in games. When I found my old VIC-20 tapes, I was able to recover two of those programs I had saved out.

Years ago, I went looking for information on these programs and found videos of variations -- some may have been done by VIC owners, or perhaps updated by Commodore in later manuals.

The manual on Archive.org says it is the "5th edition":

https://archive.org/details/Personal_Co ... 5/mode/2up

How many editions were there, and does anyone have scans of the earlier ones?

In my case, the two programs I have are almost identical to the ones in the 5th Edition, except for some minor changes -- and the text:

Mine: Killer Comet ("Alpha Base Destroyed"). Book: Meteor ("Moon Base Destroyed")

Mine: Rocket Fighter. Book: Rocket Command.

I am curious who "Duane Later" was, credited for these games.

Does anyone know the history?

[Mike]

It is somewhat unlikely that these three type-ins would have received any kind of official "updates" during the time the VIC-20 was sold. As far as I'm concerned, the printout of the games you linked to on archive.org is exactly the one I know from the manual that came with my (German) VC-20, with no translations at all.

The open source nature of the games naturally leaded people to modify these, and those are the various variants you see floating around on the 'net. With changed texts, with changed graphics for the tank, etc. Also, when I once typed-in the three games for my Games Collection, I especially found "Tank-v-UFO" to be very 'typo-prone' - it took more than one attempt to get it right. If you are looking for the originals in electronical form, I really recommend you the versions in my collection. You will find they even include all the excess spaces and colons.

(That being said, even I am somewhat 'guilty' to have produced two reworks of Killer Comet: both in machine language, and one of them with user defined graphics)

[darkatx]

..., I especially found "Tank-v-UFO" to be very 'typo-prone' - it took more than one attempt to get it right....

Oh man I completely forgot about that classic and yes you are so right. It took me a couple of tries as well to get it going.

[allenhuffman]

It is somewhat unlikely that these three type-ins would have received any kind of official "updates" during the time the VIC-20 was sold. As far as I'm concerned, the printout of the games you linked to on archive.org is exactly the one I know from the manual that came with my (German) VC-20, with no translations at all.

I compiled my research (so far) on my site:

https://subethasoftware.com/2024/01/12/ ... -in-games/

Here's the rub. If I did not do the modifications myself, I do not know where I would have gotten them from. I got my VIC-20 very early (it was selling at the full "under $300" price of $299.99). We found only only place in Houston, Texas that sold software for it (other than cartridges at department stores at the time).

I had magazines like Creating Computing (Jan 1983 issue had two of the programs I typed in), and Compute! (later, Compute's Gazette) during my VIC-20 days. I do remember typing in all of these days, and leaving my VIC on for days so I would not lose them (not Dataset yet).

I'd love to think I was smart enough to make these changes, but seeing the program listing say "METEOR" in the manual, but the title is "COMET" makes me think I might have had some early edition VIC that had an earlier manual. Wish I still had it.

[justarb]

I have an earlier edition of Personal Computing on the VIC 20 with a copyright date of 1981. There is no mention of an edition number, so I am assuming this is the first edition/first printing of the book. The type-in listings in the back of the book appear identical the the fifth edition on archive.org. My best guess is that you have typed in these programs from another source - these programs did appear in several magazines back in the day, so maybe one of them printed the games with modifications? I will dig through some of my magazines to see if I can find the issues where these type-ins appeared...