December has certainly been an exciting month for VIC-20 gamers judging by the number of quality releases just lately. It just goes to show how much love there is for Commodore’s friendly computer – take that Iain Lee!

The recent downpours and gale force winds we’ve had these past few days have made a bit of mess of things out in the garden and the sunlight shining on the windows only highlights how much crud has been flying about in the wind. That’s been the job this morning but now that all is back in order (until the next storm :-() I can fire up the VIC and settle down to some chunky pixel retro gaming.

First up we have a  port of the Atari 2600 classic, Pitfall.

Despite the fact that I’ve never been able to get the timing correct on the Gator levels, this is one hellava enjoyable game and brilliantly executed. It runs perfectly well under Vice but I had to consult the Denial forum for guidance to get it to load on my VIC – try Load “pitfall” ,8 instead of 8, 1. You’ll also need a 16k ram pack as well.

One, two three, one two three…jump, jump, run back a bit, ju…dammit, Gator grub 😦

I’ve been following the progress of Pooyan for the VIC-20 every since it was mentioned back in August and just before Christmas, a WIP, then ‘almost’ final release was made available.  Today I finally get the chance to take it for a spin and can honestly say that I’m absolutely loving it.

Although the original game dates back to the early 80’s, it wasn’t until a few years ago that i was introduced to Pooyan on the relatively obscure home micro, the CGL M5 (Sord M5)  at one of the gaming events hosted  by the Retro Computer Museum. Since then, I’d managed to acquire a copy for my NES and Commodore 64 and subsequently played the hell out of it.

This 16k VIC interpretation might not have the eye candy as the other ports (although it does have a great rendition of the intro)  the game play is spot on including a perfectly balanced trajectory of that wolf bashing super weapon – I have no idea what it is, but Wiki say’s it’s a slab of meat.

Lining up for another shot at those ballooning wolves.

Doom?….on an 8-bit computer? – no flippin way…Doom on a Vic-20? Get outta here.

This one has got to make you smile and if you’ve own the right hardware, is one to show off your +30 year old VIC.

You’ll need a 32k ram pack for this one so until I can get one myself (8 and 16k here), it’s emulation for me this time around.

Steve McCrea has done a magnificent job squeezing an approximation of ID’s classic FPS onto our humble VIC’s and comes complete with loading screen, main menu with that Doom sounding FX and even a rendition of  ‘at dooms gate’ whilst you play.

 O.k, so you’re going to have to use your imagination a bit here but it’s still mind blowing stuff when you consider the computer it’s running on.

Two guards, having a bad day.

Boulder Dan

I’m always up for a spot of Boulder Dash and this clone is really fun to play because there doesn’t seem to be a pesky timer rushing you around. Not only that, but it’ll quite happily run on an unexpanded VIC.

I can see me playing quite a bit of this over the coming winter evenings and well worth checking out if you fancy something really old school.

..and finally we have ‘Mike’s unexpanded type-in collection’  which is a collection of 21 games to sink your teeth into. I’m still going through some of these myself but have already found a few casual gaming gems.

To load, it’s best if you use ‘Load “*”,8’ followed by ‘Run’ to bring up the main menu.

Dig a little deeper around the internet  and you’ll also find a  handful of other games released this month  as well.

Long live the VIC-20!