Game Review: Commodore 16 Games Pack II (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 of typing everything in yourself, Melbourne House released the thirty games across two games packs of fifteen, this being the second of those packs.

Naturally being all written in BASIC, the quality will vary.  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, which would have made more sense, I am not sure.  There are some other games that used extra controls this time around which are thankfully mentioned in the instruction booklet.  This time around there are seven games on side one with the remaining eight on side two, so here they are in order of appearance:

Minotaur

The first games pack had Micro Minotaur, and this is the fuller version, with the ability to move diagonally as well.  The grid is a lot larger, but the same rules apply: move over the squares with an X to get a clue on the number (which can be three digits long) and avoid the minotaur marked M.  The diagonal moves help get across the board, and hitting the solid square at the top then allows you to guess the number but also accumulate any points gained by moving over squares, with the asterisk squares resetting the current score and stops the minotaur a little.  This seems more advance and there is plenty more to it, so a definite improvement.

Hunter

You are a wild animal, moving around a maze pursued by a hunter.  Using the keys you can move around what is supposed to be a maze, but is more like a grid, and avoid being captured for as long as possible.  You can collect all the dots within the grid and once you collect all forty, you have completed that level, and then can select another one when you restart the game.  This will only keep you amused for a few minutes due to the simplicity of being able to avoid the hunter as it seems to move more randomly.

Letterbox

You need to catch the falling letters on screen and when caught, deposit them in the letter box.  In a nod to being educational, when the letter starts to fall, you must use that key to move left, and SHIFT plus that key to move right, with the cursor keys being used at other times.  If your character is close enough to the letter, you will catch it, so you do not have to be fully precise.  One game aimed at children, but ultimately just too basic in its execution to engage for more than a few minutes, sadly.

Ganymede

This is a more complex game of strategy, where you need to run a small moon base on one of Jupiter’s satellites, Ganymede, hence the name.  Build the mines, collect the ore, and trade it with Earth in exchange for supplies and oxygen.  And of course, keep building the mines, as they get destroyed.  Unfortunately, it seems that you only have around three moves before you run out of oxygen and no matter which moves you do and in which order, the game is over very quickly.  Add to that the horrible garish colours of text during gameplay, and this is truly a terrible game.

Dumper

An alien space craft is dropping bombs on your shield, and must be stopped as soon as possible.  You can move left and right along the shield itself and use space to drop bricks on, thus protecting the shield.  You do need to avoid the alien fire though as that will cost you one of three lives.   The key here is the edge of the truck will drop a brick at that edge, so you can overhang a drop and see it fill for a score.  It is straightforward enough but there is some good use of colour and it is reasonably playable too.

Alien Overrun

You have been over-run by aliens and need to avoid them as much as possible.  Movement here is by W for up, X for down, A for left and D for right – why they were not made the same controls as others in the book, I am not sure.  In addition, on some difficulty levels, the ship you move around takes up around half the screen meaning that the rest of it appears to be wasted.  Pretty terrible to be fair, and more garish colours to boot will have you wondering if anyone had tested those colour combinations to avoid headache inducements.

Dungeon

Move around a dungeon avoiding monsters, with L for left, R for right and the number keys from 1 to 9 to move forward that number of paces. When you do encounter a monster along the way, you can then use T for thrusting your sword at the monster.  That all sounds promising but again the game takes place in one half of the screen, with each screen of the maze drawn with squares.  You character must turn left right and right and then the moves go in the direction faced. Even moving around drains your energy and health and you get a few screens in before you are slain with zero health left.  Dull as dishwater.

Chess

With memory limitations, chess can be difficult to get a worthwhile computer opponent who can play with a small amount of thinking time, as demonstrated on Master Chess.  Here, the delays for setting up are inevitable, and especially more so due to BASIC working out the next move.  As it does not allow for a maximum of thinking time, boredom sets in very quickly.  The confusing method of controls to work out the next square to move to also gets very frustrating too.  Perhaps the worst chess computer game I have played in a long time and completely pointless here.

Scrambler

Guide your space ship through an obstacle course which includes mountains and then meteors and using up and down to move the ship.  That all seems fine, and the lower the ship is the more points you will gain, but putting you at risk.  However, the blocks that make up the corridors and so on are randomised mainly for being high, so you just need to head to the top and stay there throughout, as you cannot be hit, to get past,  The collision detection is also ropey for the first section and too easy for the second, which then just exits with a score at the end without any warning.  Shows some promise but not quite there.

Crash Barrier

This is a variant of the old arcade game Head On, minus the dots to collect this time around, where you need to move the car around the screen and avoid colliding with the barriers.  Some of these barriers will appear randomly in your path as well as along the borders of the screen, but without a computer opponent to avoid, it becomes a dull exercise in surviving as long as you can without a randomised barrier, which are more frequent when you get a higher score, making life more difficult for you.  You also do seem to have many lives too meaning it can take an age or the game to finish.

Snakepit

As you might have guessed, this is a variant of the game Snake and with both players having a set of keys on each side of the keyboard if in two player mode.  At least you can play against a computer opponent, but the claim that you can use a joystick is incorrect as this does not work.  You move the snakes around, avoiding the walls and each other for as long as possible.  You need to win seven points overall and that seems quite difficult against the computer opponent who seemingly can go in circles without being affected.  Not that great.

Reel Thing

Playing a fruit machine is nothing new on a computer, and Commodore 16 and Plus/4 owners at least had the colourful Vegas Jackpot to keep them occupied.  Although here you can press the £ key to spin the reels and see if you win, there is no option to do hold, nudges, or anything else which may affect the outcome of the spin.  As such it is just down to more random luck and you will find that often you will win the top prize of $150 early on – it happened to me twice, and therefore can just put in coins to your heart’s content, more like a rolling demonstration than a game.  A nice idea, but let down badly by its execution.

Mind Quiz

Guess the sequence of colours along the grid, which are entered by keys three to eight, to win.  The computer will tell you if you have the right colour in the right spot, indicated by a filled in circle, or the right colour in the wrong spot with a donut shaped circle.  In effect, it is Master Mind but does not give you the positions for the correct or slightly incorrect colours, meaning it is more left to guess work than being able to work out what works well. It has some promise but the execution is lacking here.

Tank Ambush

Called Tank Attack on the title screen, you can move around the screen in four directions, and use the number keys to fire in eight directions with 1 being up and going clockwise to 8 for top left.  The fire only has a limited range so it makes sense to try and move around and then shoot towards the enemy as they home in on you with some level of accuracy.  When you do shoot, the game seems to pause as it fires too.  It has a nice idea and although the graphics are in PETSCII, at least it resembles a small forest map.  This may have been more entertaining in two player mode.

Road Patrol

Move your vehicle along the bottom of the screen, avoiding the alien bombs that would be landing on you.  You can move and  press space to fire at the alien too.  This may have been better if the screen scrolled, but effectively the alien comes left to right at different heights, and you cannot fire in rapid succession, so timing is of the essence.  There is the occasional change of speed but apart from that there is not that much thought gone into the gameplay and quickly becomes quite boring and dull to play.

Final Thoughts

Commodore 16 Games Pack II is without doubt, the leftover remaining fifteen games from the Commodore 16 Games Book.  Whilst the first compilation of fifteen games had imaginative adventure games, and arcade and puzzle games that had some longevity, along with some games that used the high-resolution graphics for an improved look and feel, this second one, consequently, feels much more filler content to ensure all thirty games were released on a compilation somehow.

Whether you may find this of any value will also depend on if you purchased the book which has all thirty games in.  You of course 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.  With this being much less of a worthwhile purchase than the first, it does make you wonder if it would have been better value to have all thirty games in one compilation instead, rather than fleece you of your cash, especially for this one.  This ranks close to Cascade’s infamous Cassette 50 compilations for being dire.

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