Gameplay: Not an easy game! The aliens don't let up. The sound was particularly cool and I was never able to work out exactly how I did it to recreate it for subsequent games.

Comments: This game is approximately 3Kb. It was hand assembled and was typed in byte by byte. Debugging was difficult, requiring that I either patch the executable or when the patch was too large jump to a patch added to the end of the program. The program makes little use of colour because I was using a B&W monitor and didn't occur to me until I'd written a large portion of the code.

Author: Brendan Jones
Requires: Unexpanded VIC-20.
Written in: Machine Language.
Download: Click here to download BJ's VIC-20 Arcade and Adventure Pack.

Gameplay: It plays a lot like the original.

Comments: Memory was a real worry here; The invaders aren't represented by an array. They only exist as characters on the screen. In each game cycle the characters are shifted horizontally and when they reach a boundary down and reverse. Like all my VIC machine code games I ended up having to slow it down to make it playable; First run the invaders had landed before my finger was off the return key! In hindsight with only a bit more work I could have made the movement much smoother and added barriers that you could shoot a small tunnel through. Still, not bad for 3Kb!

Author: Brendan Jones
Requires: Unexpanded VIC-20.
Written in: Machine Language.
Download: Click here to download BJ's VIC-20 Arcade and Adventure Pack.

Gameplay: The game is missing something. Maybe the Qerbs are too cute? Maybe it's too easy to avoid their return fire by ducking back to the middle? Maybe because you know it's practically impossible to defend both sides at once, and thus unwinnable? The rate of fire is too fast too. Play this one on a fast emulator (PCVIC) and you'll at least get a few good rounds. This is a second generation clone; I'm not sure what the original even was!

Comments: It's about 3.5Kb. By 1983 I'd started University, writing an assembler and pseudo-pascal compiler. I wrote Qerbs merely to test the assembler. This was much faster than hand assembling!

Author: Brendan Jones
Requires: Unexpanded VIC-20.
Written in: Assembler.
Download: Click here to download BJ's VIC-20 Arcade and Adventure Pack.

Gameplay: A damned fine adventure. This is a difficult adventure to solve, but I'd hardly call it impossible. Explore the environment using one or two word sentences; eg. "get inventory", "look", "search", etc. If you really get stuck e-mail me for a hint (if I can remember! ;-) The only real flaw is that at one point you'll have to type "wait" for about fifteen turns. I was trying to establish a dramatic effect, but in hindsight one "wait" should have sufficed!

Comments: This was my last and largest text adventure. It was produced with my "Adventure Compiler." The compiler prepared the adventure from a specification for use with a machine language library. The library was very fast, handling most of the adventure management. All the programmer need do was specify the behaviour of objects in BASIC. It was a shame that text adventures became extinct, superceded by bloatware adventures that keep stopping to shovel animated cut scenes down your throat. It's less of a shame that this genre of bloatware became extinct too. "House of Demons" implemented a clever copy protection scheme I found myself having to uncrack 14 years later (without notes!) If you're not using the PCVIC or V20 snapshot you'll need to read README.TXT to find how to start the game.

Author: Brendan Jones
Requires: VIC-20 with 16Kb exansion memory.
Written in: BASIC, Machine Language.
Download: Click here to download BJ's VIC-20 Arcade and Adventure Pack.