Denial

This game of the moment is not one game, but a comparison of six games of the same type. The game I chose was Centipede, a classic Atari coin-op that is claimed to be the first game designed by a woman (although the urban legend has one or two things to say about this) and lead Atari to develop some new, pastel colours compared to the dark ones used in space games before. On purpose, I left out Gridrunner and games alike it, as it improves Centipede by too many things to make it comparable.

Sorry for the huge screen shots; VIC-20 resolution as emulated doesn't look good when reduced in size IMHO. You can download the files here.

We start off with Centipede itself, an Atarisoft conversion. It runs from a 16K cartridge and features smooth movement. Unfortunately it seems the screen position is fixed at NTSC? It looks good, plays in an easy speed but maybe 16K is a little overkill.


Country Garden is a +8K game by A.J. Trott. It differs from the other by having a green, garden like playfield. The player smoothly moves around, but maybe it is a little too easy?


Caterpilla may have been one of Ocean Software's rather few VIC-20 titles (the GB20 crew can probably correct me). It has some nice graphic effects, is maybe a little faster than the other two (but I don't see much difference between level 1 and 9) and apart from the boring intro screen is rather OK for an unexpanded game.


If I thought the previous games were on the slow side, Crawler is not! Rather than a slowly moving worm, there are dozens of egg like things making their way one by one, in such a speed that you may get spastic movements only by watching it. Unexpanded, and I don't know if you should get that much bonus for remaining mushrooms when you die...


Exterminator by Ken Grant, Nufekop was one of the games I had a copy of with my first VIC. I thought it was quite playable, and it still is. However, it only operates with keyboard - a big drawback. It also runs rather slow, with a ticking sound that makes me think of the egg clock.


And last, but not least: Night Crawler by Jimmy Huey of Interesting Software. I also had a copy of this back in the days. If it is for playablity, this is the game I would buy! It has almost all the features found in the other games, a decent firing cannon and Pac-Man on the screen! I would have loved to see Atari getting a license not only to develop Pac-Man for home computers but also use the character in their own games.


There may be more Centipede or Millipede clones for the VIC-20, but those were the six I could find on Zimmers. My personal conclusion, as written above, is that Night Crawler is the winner out of those. I'm sure Jimmy Huey could have added some smooth movement and make an 8K or cartridge game out of it if he had wanted.

I love these posts, but why wouldn't Gridrunner fit in here?

Due to the cannons to the left and bottom of the playfield, and the fact that "mushrooms" are generated by the cannons, not on the playfield to start with. But if you insist, you can of course vote for "Other" and claim that Gridrunner is just another Centipede clone, but better.

thanks for putting them in one zip file.

i transferred them all except crawler (i forgot about it) to a vic, and played them.

i scored each game in four categories, (graphics, sound, controls, desire to replay", and used "bad", "good", or "excellent" for scoring.

here is how i scored them:

graphics sound controls replay
night crawler e e e e

country garden e g e e

centipede g g e g

exterminator g g b b

caterpilla g b b b

i think my daughter will probably like country garden the best, because it is easier than night crawler

chris

I'm suspecting that the one I played back then was a 7th version .... I will check...

/Anders

Yes, I'm sure there are others. I have a machine code listing from Your Computer! about a game called Millipod. Unfortunately there seems to be typos or errors in the game, as it crashes out, despite carefully proof reading every hexadecimal number and even trying to spot the error myself. Maybe I should give it another go, and post a faulty binary (or even disassemble it) for those 6502 enthusiasts who like to debug.

I loaded it to see and it was Centipede by Frank Siegmund, A.D. Software (C) A. Dripke 10/82 for 8K expanded vic.

/Anders

Hm, ok. I doubt it was commercially available under exactly that spelling, or A.D. Software would probably have received a letter from Atari's legal dept.

Tonks mentioned in Retrogaming Times #73 that Arachnoid is a Centipede clone with a twist. I'm not sure if it is closer to the original than the Gridrunner variation though.

Among C64 titles, I find Bug Blast by Alligata, Bug Squad by Softek International, Centropods by Comm*Data, Maggot Mania by Commodore, Space Train by Kavan, Zompy Stomp by Nibbles & Bits, all in 1983 and Spectipede by Mastertronic 1984. At least one of those titles may have made it to the VIC too?

Here it is:
http://user.tninet.se/~pug510w/datormus ... pede8k.zip

/Anders

Quite nice, although it twice the size of an unexpanded game.

Btw, here is that broken game from Your Computer. Yes, it freezes after a few seconds. I have the original hex dump, so later I may go through it to see if there are some typos, but unfortunately I believe I already have spotted and fixed one or two errors from the original listing, so a disassembly may be required:

http://www.cbm.sfks.se/files/milli-sys6410.prg

Here are a couple of other Centipede clones I am fond of.

Aracnoid

Video Vermin.

Both are good graphically and most importantly feature smooth movement of the "centipede" which many of the others don't have.

By the way, I think it is blasphemy to call Gridrunner just a Centipede clone. Such talk should have people expelled from the forum

So, almost a month since last GotM. I know we had a long delay in the winter, but does anyone like to take up the baton?

Yesterday I stumbled across this German website which has four disks of VIC-20 software. Some was unknown to me, and most is only in German, but interesting nonetheless:

http://www.willcox.de/index2.htm

Click on "Runterlad-Gebiet" and "VC20". The BASIC version of Biathlon from Epyx' Winter Games (for C64) almost cries for an improved version with better movement and where the skier can move diagonally. Pac-Ball is also an interesting concept which would become better with more traditional Pac-Man movement. Currently you change direction with one key and move in that direction with the other key, kind of step-wise Pac-Man.

Just to say it's Nightcrawler for me, as all the other versions were too slow. Although having said that, Nightcrawler was insanely fast but at least you could clear all the mushrooms in a very short space of time.

I've got the Your Computer game Millipods typed in and running correctly by the way. It's nothing special - average graphics and slow fire rate. From memory, maybe they published some corrections to thehex in the mext month's issue like they did for their Gridmaina game. I've got ALL the listings ever published in that magazine typed in by myself incidentally. Maybe I should dig the old tapes out sometime...

Some Vic 20 Centipede game high scores [can't find my Night Crawler high score though]...

Mushroom Alley - 137699
Crawler by Anirog - 58489
A Country Garden by Audiogenic - 9090
Minipedes by Anirog - 46450

Sure, if you find any correction or a working program, dig it out and I can see if there is a hidden typo somewhere.

Mushroom Alley and Minipedes, I don't remember off hand.

Just played Centipede (yes, it was sold commercially under that name!) by Frank Siegmund and A.D. Software. Sadly it seems almost completely unknown. I googled it and found only this thread.

But I did find information about Andreas Dripke, who must have given A.D. Software its name. He is the author of several german Vic 20 and C64 book. So it is most likely a german game. My version, however, had a red cover that said Honeyfold Software (a british company) and was sold by Swedish Company Tial Trading who seems to have bought the Swedish publishing rights from Honeyfold.

There is certainly no shortage of competent Centipede clones for the Vic, but I find this to be perhaps the best one. It is fast and plays very true to the original. I would certainly be very interested in finding out more about Frank Siegmund. Perhaps he did more games for the Vic? It seems too slick and professional to be a first effort!