Game Review: Innovative Cassette 2 (Vic 20, Melbourne House)

We recently looked at Innovative Cassette 1 from Melbourne House for the Vic 20 – the first in a series of three compilations, each collecting a series of BASIC listings from the Innovative Computing book by Clifford Ramshaw. While nothing special the book was intended to help give readers some fundamentals in BASIC programming and each cassette was intended to save time for those who didn’t want to type them in! As with the previous tape, Innovative Cassette 2 featured another seven games, slightly modified from the original book listings, and this time the line-up featured Alien Overun, Bomber Attack, Grand Prix, Hangman, Rat Trap, Seige, and Warlock.

Common Standards

As with the earlier tape, there are a number of things that are common across all seven games on the tape. Everything here – and in the whole book – has been written to run on an unexpanded Vic 20. While memory expansion cartridges were fairly common amongst users later on in the Vic 20’s lifespan many publishers – still tried to maximise sales by working within the confines of the base hardware instead.

In addition to the memory limitations used by all of the games, every game uses the same controls. There are no options to use the joystick and everything uses the same key combinations. If a game has four-way directional controls then it uses A and D for left/right and W and X for up/down and games that only have left/right movement use Z and C respectively. The only thing I can think of here is that the same code has been re-used for each game rather than been re-written from scratch each time.

Alien Overun

Simple plot for this one – you’re on board a spaceship which has been invaded by aliens. Simply move around the ship and avoid the aliens for as long as possible. You score points each time you move so while standing still might seem like a good idea on paper, you won’t achieve anything and the growing hordes of aliens will still wander around the ship and make their way towards you…

You can move up, down, left or right to navigate the ship and you’re unarmed so it’s just a case of survive as long as you can. There’s a continual background hum sound effect of the spaceship throughout which works quite well, and then one once you collide with any of the aliens which ends the game. As expected, all of the visuals are put together using the Vic 20’s in-built character set.

There are five difficulty levels, with more and faster aliens spawning as the difficulty levels increase. Surprisingly fun in short bursts.

Bomber Attack

According to the description of the game, it appears to have a war theme (although the visuals wouldn’t give you that impression!). You’re in control of some form of plane and have to drop bombs to destroy an enemy base below. It’s located underground so you have to use your bombs to remove enough of the surface protecting it until your bombs can reach the target.

It sounds simple enough but you’re under constant attack from missiles being fired at you, and if that wasn’t enough to deal with, there is a blimp flying overhead that you have to steer clear of. While the concept might sound somewhat reminiscent of the various Blitz clones, having a single target to aim for gives it some variety as does the fact that you are in full control of the plane itself.

It’s enjoyable in short bursts despite its slow gameplay. The only issue I really had were the controls, with everything cramped together using a diamond layout of A to stop the plane’s movement and D to move forward, W and X for up and down and S to drop your bombs making it quite uncomfortable to play. However, being a basic listing I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to re-write it and add joystick control for most coders.

Grand Prix

As the name suggests, Grand Prix is a racing game… or it would like you to believe that it is. Set on a single circular track, you have to manage to drive 5 laps of the track without crashing in the fastest time possible. Taking an overhead view like Super Sprint and endless other racing games, it sounds simple enough if it wasn’t for one thing…

The controls are absolutely atrocious and are so unresponsive that it’s almost impossible to complete a single lap, let alone five. Using A and D to move left and right and W and X to move your car up and down, there’s no logic to how the car steers. Sometimes the car seems to turn when you press the relevant key so you think you have a chance of making a corner, other times it just seems to drift towards the edge of the track, crashing at random.

Unbelievably awful and something that you’ll be rage quitting in a matter of minutes after loading it. I truly feel sorry for anyone who would have spent time typing this one in.

Hangman

Based on the traditional pen/paper word guessing game, this has been adapted to various computers for decades and for the most part this is a reasonable adaptation. The mystery word is displayed on the left hand side of the screen with all of the correctly guessed letters filled in, with the gallows displayed on the top right with the “victim” slowly building as you type in any incorrect guesses.

Being written to run on the unexpanded Vic 20 is where the game falls down as it has a very limited vocabulary of probably around 20 words or so. It does give you the option to enter your own list of words in at the start but this also has the drawback of only using this new word list for any games you play rather than adding them to the original list. I did a test list of ten new words and then every game I played after than only used those ten and none of the original words.

I’m sure that would be fine if you were playing with someone else and wanted to create words for them or modified the listing yourself to add substantially more words and using a memory expansion pack, but as it is, after a few games you’ll exhaust all the words available and quickly lose interest.

Rat Trap

Rat Trap is a one of the more unusual games on the tape, more for the concept if nothing else. You’re in a maze filled with rats and have to make your way through it to reach your house at the other end. Make contact with any of them and it’s game over (obviously Cliff Ramshaw has never come into contact with any real rats as they’re some of the most intelligent and adorable pets we’ve ever owned and certainly not anything to be feared!).

The maze is fixed so each new game is identical in terms of the layout, but the rats themselves are placed randomly. They do seem to follow you so you need to move fairly quickly. The downside is that in a lot of cases they can be positioned quite close to you and it’s almost impossible to avoid them as you get boxed in quite easily. As they move at the same speed as you, moving one space for every one that you do, it’s more frustrating than it needs to be.

As always, none of the graphics have been redefined so from that side of things you do need to use your imagination with your own character and the rats, but what sort of long term appeal it will have after you’ve completed it is sadly questionable.

Seige

On first impressions, Seige (their spelling) looks like a straightforward castle defence game. Each side of the screen has a castle and what resembles a tank/catapault in front of it with a tall barrier in between each opposing side. Taking control of the one on the left, you have to move your tank left and right and fire missiles towards your enemy and destroy their castle before they can destroy you and yours.

While you can’t alter the trajectory of your tank, there’s still some planning involved as you have to work out where your shots will land based on the position of your own tank so there’s some strategy involved. However, destroying your opponent’s castle seems to have no real impact on the game other than the score you accumulate. The only way you can win or lose is through the destruction of the tanks themselves.

And if I’m completely honest, that’s the real problem with Seige. You can destroy most of your opponent’s castle and then the game just redraws the screen and you start all over again, with just both yours and the CPU controlled tank’s scores remaining intact and potentially the game could continue ad infinitum. I appreciate that the goal is to destroy your opponent’s tank, but if you were able to win the game by destroying their castle as well (or needing to do both) it would make more sense and be a more satisfying conclusion.

Warlock

Wrapping things up is Warlock, a text adventure putting you in a series of underground caves. Your goal is simple – survive as long as possible by defeating monsters, and collect any coins you can find to get the highest score you can. Playing the game and moving around the caves are done entirely through multiple choice options – for example when it comes to movement you’re presented with a list of going left, right or forward and you’re asked to select 1, 2 or 3. Combat is the same and you can choose whether to attack, retreat or use a spell.

Despite the basic options, it’s a surprisingly entertaining game although I wasn’t able to tell if the map was randomised or preset and needed to be mapped although I’d guess it was the latter and that your decisions didn’t really have any bearing on the game itself, but at least it felt as if they did.

My only real grip was the colour scheme. It’s played on a black screen and the text colour for the most part is dark blue and it can be hard to read at times. Some descriptions do change the colour occasionally but I would have preferred it to use a mix of white and yellow.

Without a doubt, this is definitely the best game on the tape.

Overall

With all of these games being written in BASIC, it would be unfair to expect too much from them and in terms of value for money I’d definitely recommend that you pick up the book rather than any of the three individual cassettes, if nothing else than the fact that you get more games for your money and you’ll get a better understanding of how each one works with all the notes that the book provides.

With one or two exceptions, the games on Innovative Cassette 2 generally aren’t even worth the time loading up as you’ll switch your Vic 20 off almost as quickly as you will playing them. However, Warlock is a genuine highlight and one that you’ll get some real entertainment from and I’d say it’s the best of not only this but the first two tapes so far. Ultimately though, this is still a tape for completists only.

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