Game Review: Commodore 16 Games Pack I (Commodore 16 and Plus/4, Melbourne House)

Melbourne House published the Commodore 16 Games Book in 1984, and this book contained thirty BASIC type-in games that would suit a wide range of genres and tastes.  If you do have the book, it had checksum programs too so you could check if you entered the data correctly before playing the game, and hoping that all the code would work properly.  To save you the hassle, Melbourne House released the thirty games across two games packs of fifteen, the first of which being this one.

Naturally being all written in BASIC, the quality will vary.  Some do take advantage of the better graphics commands that the Commodore 16 and Plus/4 offered, whilst others seem very basic and are therefore quite short to type in (and indeed load.)  There are consistent controls across most of the games with Q for up, Z for down, I for left and P for right and space for fire as needed, although why the programmers did not utilise the classic QAOP controls are a mystery.  With that in mind, the games are in order of how they are loaded from the cassette – eight on side one and the remaining seven on side two.

Micro Minotaur

You start at the bottom of the screen, and the minotaur is marked with an M.  You need to move through the grid, accumulating numbers, and stopping at squares marked X along the way to get a clue to the final number.  When your score matches the random number that has been set, you can press T to guess and you will be told if it is correct.  The minotaur moves towards you quickly each move and you are often caught before the answer is even guessed or revealed.  It is quite basic but at least has some educational levels to it for younger game players.

Breakin

The game is effectively a Breakout clone, with the ball moving diagonally and green brick squares to hit at the top. There are three game layouts and different bat sizes, and if you allow the ball past the bat to bounce below you, that is one of nine balls lost.  Due to the quite linear diagonal movements, it soon becomes tedious waiting for the ball to hit a set of bricks along a path and boredom sets in as a result.  The game does slow the ball down a lot if pressing a key to move the bat as well, which shows the limitations too.

Warlock

This game is a choose your own adventure game, where you are normally given three choices, either to move left, right, or forwards, or to attack, retreat or cast a spell when encountering a monster.   You can gain or recover strength based on being attacked and what you find, and there are chests to open or dark passages to explore.  Whilst often what determines your outcome can feel a little random, there is some promise here and the lure to work out a suitable way to use the spells wisely, open the chests and get as much of a high score as possible is quite good fun.  Certainly, one of the best offerings here.

Unscramble

Do you remember those sliding tile puzzles, where you need to slide the pieces across an empty square to make the tiles show the correct pattern or number sequence?  Well, this is what Unscramble is.  It does play very well, with the movement of the tiles easy to spot, and the numbers marked well with different colours, using the colour palette of the system, to arrange the tiles.  There is no time limit either so you can take your time and work out a sensible way of arranging the tiles.  This does prove to be quite addictive and maybe having an option of different sized grids may have been nice too.

Blockade

For two players only – and effectively a sort of Snake variant.  Move your block around to stop the other player from being able to move around, blockading them in, and do not go back on yourself.  Because this just uses standard PETSCII characters, it appears much more basic than it is, and naturally you will turn back on yourself and give a point to the other player in the process.  Not very good to be honest and one that is best skipped.

Hangman

Guess the word by selecting a letter, and watch the hangman graphic build up if you get incorrect guesses at letters.  Some of the words are short with three letters, and could easily be a wide range of different words, so does become quite difficult to guess correctly before the full hangman appears, again in glorious PETSCII graphics.  Nothing to write home about, and longer words so you can at least have several different letters to guess, may have prolonged the gameplay a bit here.

Dragon’s Lair

No, not the laser disc one wrong move and you die arcade machine, but a simple adventure – with a fatal flaw. When you load from the cassette and start to enter a command or two, the game exits to BASIC with an undefined statement error.  Checking that reveals the program goes to line 60 – which does not exist.  You can sort of skip that by adding 60 REM as a line and re-running, but the actual line 60 is a couple of PRINT statements, when the book is checked.  As a result, the flow of the game only works well with that correct statement in, and even then, seems a lot less playable than Warlock.  It is also not good enough that considering that the game was saved and typed in to save you the hassle, that it does not even work properly.

Blackjack

The simple card game completes side one, and the in-built card suits into the PETSCII graphics works well here to show the hand.  You can bet what you like, stick or twist accordingly, and hopefully win some of the stake from the computer opponent before they reveal a queen and an ace for blackjack, effectively bankrupting you in the process.  It is okay for a quick go and at least does allow you to win some virtual money on occasion, although you may find that the odds are sometimes loaded against you.

Penetrator

Head up and down the three mountains, pressing space bar to eliminate the aliens (shown as black dots) on screen.  When the number of aliens is below five, you can then swoop down to the bottom to collect the pilot, although you do need to be quick.  This soon does turn into a constant move up and down with pressing space rapidly to remove the aliens, and as a result can get tedious quickly as it becomes more of a rapid keyboard pressing festival instead of a game worthy of any skill.  The idea is fine, the execution less so.

SAM

You command a surface to air missile from the bottom of the screen.  Space fires the missile and you can use left and right to turn the missile and aim it towards the enemy and destroy them, with the enemy not standing still.  Despite its primitive graphics this did prove quite addictive, with you being able to rotate the missile how you like if it does not go off screen, and proved satisfying when you hit enough enemies to progress with a good hit ratio.  Sometimes the simpler ideas work well and this is the case here.

Siege

It is you versus the Commodore 16 as you aim to fire ballistics over to your opponent’s castle before they do the same to you.  The aiming and firing along with adjusting the angle and direction may seem basic, and two player mode would have been good to offer, but there is at least some playability here and some nice sound effects as you hit the bricks of the castle and increase your score.  It can suffer a little slowdown when moving the ballista across the screen before firing, but does at least give you the option to break the central wall enough to build a gap as you need.

2D Maze

A random maze is generated, which sometimes does not show anything after the Please Wait message when the program runs.  You can turn left or right and go forwards, with the maze being shown in hi-res graphics, much like the likes of 3D Maze by Mastertronic for the VIC-20.  A colourful wall awaits should you be able to turn left, right and go forwards to find the exit.  Had the maze generation been consistently working, this may have been a good task to find the edge of the maze but appears not to be fully playable on some occasions, and that is a shame.

Zapp

Did someone say Missile Command?  Well, that is what you get here.  The high-resolution graphics here do show a good sense of the missiles, the lines drawn as the attacking pods swoop down towards the cities with an attempt to destroy them.  The crosshair is drawn well although does not move as fast as you would like to fire the missiles, and before long the pods have already destroyed two of the three cities.  A nice idea reasonably well executed with good use of the graphics mode, but ultimately too difficult to be worthwhile.

Star Trader

Despite the game not having hardly any graphics, the ambition and size of the game is clear.  As a pilot you travel around several planets, buying various goods at a cheap price and then finding another planet to sell them on, at a profit, whilst also avoiding the space pirates who will take your goods as well as being able to pay back any taxes from your initial loan to purchase the second-hand spaceship.  This does prove to be a reasonable space trading game and although sometimes just screens of mainly text, the buy and sell works well enough once you have worked out a path, and the interaction with the space pirates adds a different element to the game too.  Although a simpler version of Bug Byte’s Star Trader for the Commodore 64, as a simulation, it does play well and is one of the best games here.

Looney Landa

The high-resolution graphics capabilities of the system are put to very good use here, as the backdrop is drawn, and the status display showing the pitch and roll of your ship is also well done.  You need to steer left and right and use the thrusters as necessary to land your craft on the landing pad, which inevitably is in a difficult place to land cleanly.  The very nice use the graphics and good playability does show well here, and you may end up having to take several attempts to land the craft properly, but it does give you satisfaction when you do so.  A solid playable game to end side two and the final game.

Final Thoughts

Commodore 16 Games Pack I is very much a mixed bag across the fifteen games.  There are some which stand out as being a good example of what BASIC code and utilising the high-resolution graphics can do, as well as some adventure games which are reasonably good fun, especially Warlock.  On the other side, some of the games appear to be much too simple for their own good, and having one missing lines of the original program and not working correctly is a cardinal sin.  There are some good games in amongst these, but those are the ones that you would be fast forwarding the cassette too and ignoring those that are just too dull and boring to play.

Whether you may find this good value will also depend on if you purchased the book which has all thirty games in.  Whilst you would need to type them all in yourself, there would be some satisfaction of getting them working, and you can learn as you type how you may want to adjust them – as the book gives you a break down of the variables used in each game.  The cassette release does not, so unless you have the book it may prove to be a less fruitful exercise.  One for completists and for those curious about BASIC games more than for a wider audience, I think.

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