Best VIC-20 Games?

[BassGuitari]

I've been looking at digging into the VIC-20 a bit (it's a neat feeling to be "new" to an old system after so many years of collecting!) and would appreciate some suggestions on some games I should hunt for. I know about the usual suspects like Avenger, Omega Race, and the Atarisoft games; what are some good games a little more off the beaten path? Any VIC-20 exclusives?

Thanks for you replies!

[bretthorror]

I had a Vic-20 as a kid briefly when I was really young. It fucked up and my mom sold it to my cousin for like $5 because she said I never played it. I'm sure my cousin was happy to take my carts for his Vic-20 and run for that price, I told her it was broken but she didn't believe me. I don't even think I could read when I had that unit.

 

Anyways, the game I played the most - the only game I really remember playing - is Cosmic Jailbreak, and it's a shitload of fun. Like half the games back then, it's Space Invaders, but this one has a great twist. The aliens come from left and right and pull blocks out from the center of the screen to try and rescue other aliens trapped inside. I haven't really heard of anyone else talk about it in all my life, but if you like Space Invaders clones that actually don't feel like Space Invaders for a change, try it out.

[+cvga]

I love my Vic 20. I also have an old for sale thread with lots of games available if you're looking for games.

 

Some of my favorites are...

- All of the Scott Adams games. They are simple text adventures and lots of fun. My 9 year old and I are going to try to complete a couple of them over the holiday season.

- I like several of the AtariSoft games. Centipede, Moon Patrol and Donkey Kong are all good. If I recall, Ms. Pacman was a bit of a letdown.

- Jelly Monsters is good

- It's not rare but I also really like the Vic-20 GORF

[oracle_jedi]

All the Llamasoft titles are good, especially Traxx (Amidar clone), Matrix and Hellgate.

A.E, Capture the Flag and Bandits are all great.

Spiders of Mars,

Outworld,

Atlantis

Pretty much everything by Tom Griner

Bonzo is a sort of Apple Panic game which is worth playing, I spent a lot of time on this one as a kid.

Jetpac is a lot of fun. Its better than the ZX Spectrum original.

Choplifter on the VIC is one of the best ports of the game.

Moon of Jupiter is a reasonable Asteroids clone.

Games by Postern (Mike Singleton) were simple and fun; Shadowfax, Siege and Snakepit.

If you have a PAL machine then the games by Kingsoft were very good. Especially Star Defence (Defender) and Bongo

If you like a deeper challenge, then Realms of Quest or VICtoria are both deep games with lots to explore.

Some of the new games coming out are also worth taking a look at. The new Pooyan implementation is excellent, and the VIC20 version of Doom is really quite fun.

[carlsson]

The games I've lately repeatedly returned to when posting times to the tracker are Clowns, Metagalactic Llamas, Sword of Fargoal and a few more. Most VIC games have been ported to or from other systems, but some of them tend to work better on the lower resolution - Fargoal is an example of such.

 

I also agree on Omega Race, Jelly Monsters, Pole Position (despite the dark blue road), Jungle Hunt, many of Tom Griner's games and so on.

 

What kind of hardware do you have to go with the VIC-20? Memory expansions, original game cartridges, multicarts, SD devices, floppy drives, tape recorder and tapes etc? It can be good to know so you don't get suggestions about games you can't load and play anyway.

[BassGuitari]

What kind of hardware do you have to go with the VIC-20? Memory expansions, original game cartridges, multicarts, SD devices, floppy drives, tape recorder and tapes etc? It can be good to know so you don't get suggestions about games you can't load and play anyway.

I've got a datasette unit and a few 1541s from my C64 collection, so I'm good there. The only cartridges I have are Avenger, Alien, Slot, Pinball, Omega Race, Radar Ratrace, Defender, and Cave-In (which I don't think I could ever get to work). I know I'll need to get a memory expansion or two (I'm thinking 16K should be enough, unless I happen upon a 32K cart or something) to run many of the tape games, or anything that happens to be on disk. That's something I planned on anyway.

 

Great suggestions so far, thanks everyone!

[carlsson]

Definitely get a 32K cartridge! This one is newly made by fellow AtariAge member k3ys and probably is best value for money:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/331734817056

[Dinorast73]

Or try to get a final expansion cart for your vic20. With this cart you can play and test everything

[carlsson]

Indeed, but the supply for Final Expansion appears to have dried up as Retro-Donald suffered serious medical issues and there basically isn't anyone else offering kits. IIRC it contains some preprogrammed chips that are getting hard to find as well. I've heard about more multi-, flash- and memory card based carts under development, but I don't know how many are up for sale at the moment. Of course the Mega-Cart is available but it has a very long delivery time. Some other carts like the rerun of the Behr Bonz might ship sooner, but it doesn't contain a memory expansion.

[BassGuitari]

I thought about the Mega Cart, but yeah, it seems like the time it takes to get one can be measured in centuries. Plus I'd rather collect cartridges and tapes anyway.

Sword of Fargoal just shot toward the top of my list; I love Roguelikes! How did I never know about that game before, even the C64 version? Also up there is Choplifter, Terraguard, and Miner 2049er.

[SSG]

The VIC-20 is kinda new to me as well. Fortunately I am in the market for a new console to play around with. Are all the VIC-20 games available on the C64?

[BassGuitari]

The VIC-20 is kinda new to me as well. Fortunately I am in the market for a new console to play around with. Are all the VIC-20 games available on the C64?

In my limited experience, some are and some aren't. Some Commodore titles like Gorf, Avenger, Jupiter Lander, Radar Ratrace, and others came out on both platforms, but some, like Super Alien (cart just says "Alien" btw) or Raid On Fort Knox appear to be VIC only. There are probably some third-party VIC games that never came out on the 64, either.

[SSG]

In my limited experience, some are and some aren't. Some Commodore titles like Gorf, Avenger, Jupiter Lander, Radar Ratrace, and others came out on both platforms, but some, like Super Alien (cart just says "Alien" btw) or Raid On Fort Knox appear to be VIC only. There are probably some third-party VIC games that never came out on the 64, either.

 

This is too tempting to buy...

[BassGuitari]

It seems relatively inexpensive right now. I paid $50 a couple years ago for a surprisingly clean/unyellowed CIB system (2nd version with the rainbow badge) and the handful of carts I mentioned earlier. Another $5 for a practically unused boxed Commodore joystick (I love-hate that thing; it looks really cool with the triangular stick but it kind of torques around in your hand and the button is a little on the stiff side).

Granted, that was at a convention and people are usually a little more lenient with their pricing in those situations, but you should be able to score a nice VIC-20 set with a bunch of games for under $100.

[carlsson]

Given the visual and also audial capacities of the VIC-20 and C64 differ that much, generally you can't replace a VIC gaming experience with a C64 one. Those games available on both systems tend to not really utilize the C64 capacities anyway, or are quite different than the VIC version. It is almost like asking how many 2600 games also are available for the Atari 8-bit computers.

 

Emulation will give you good ideas what to expect before you buy.

[SSG]

Given the visual and also audial capacities of the VIC-20 and C64 differ that much, generally you can't replace a VIC gaming experience with a C64 one. Those games available on both systems tend to not really utilize the C64 capacities anyway, or are quite different than the VIC version. It is almost like asking how many 2600 games also are available for the Atari 8-bit computers.

 

Emulation will give you good ideas what to expect before you buy.

 

Well I am not a fan of emulation. This is very tempting to me to pick one up after reading about it like this!

[Guest LiqMat]

Arcade version of Popeye 2015 (32K needed to run). Now my favorite game on the VIC-20.

[English Invader]

As the owner of two Mega-Carts and a Behr-Bonz, I can say that there isn't a lot missing from the BB that I would lose any sleep over. Most of the important games like Jelly Monsters, VIC Rally X, Keyquest, Demon Attack and Dragonfire are there and many of them would be virtually impossible to find as originals (apart from the mass produced carts from Commodore and Atarisoft, a lot of them were only produced in limited numbers and only have a handful of known copies in existence).

 

The only things you would miss from the MC are the RAM expansions and some of the homebrew gems like Berzerk MMX, Return to Fort Knox and Frogger 07 but that can be remedied with a 32k expansion and an SD2IEC. If you go that way, I would recommend investing in a 4-way slot expander to save wear and tear on the expansion port.

[Mayhem]

Indeed, Key Quest is only out there because I dumped my original. I think there's 3 known copies in collector's hands. Thankfully it's actually quite a good game!

[BassGuitari]

Merry Christmas to me! Just got Clowns, Super Smash, Sea Wolf, Raid On Fort Knox, Poker, and Congo Bongo.

As a game, Congo Bongo looks and plays like a box of mashed-up ass--I think it sucks on every system, and this looks like the worst version--but it came in the lot and the cart is in spectacular condition...probably because the previous owner/s never played it because it sucks so bad!

[carlsson]

I played Congo Bongo a little over a year ago. It took me 9 minutes to beat the first screen. In total I gave it 14 minutes before switching to something else.

[simbalion]

You'll find the VIC to be a fun little gaming computer. I used to sort of turn my nose up at the VIC and ignored mine for years until early last year when I dug it back out again and discovered there is a sort of magic to the VIC that even the C64 can't duplicate. Even found a nice, second system along with a working AV cord that allows me to bypass the flakey RF boxes. I have the earlier style Dattasette and just found a printer and a VIC-1541 disk drive along with a whopping 3K expansion cart this past weekend. Also found "Learning Basic" volumes 1 and 2 complete in their boxes for the VIC.

[BassGuitari]

That was my take on it. I used to think of it as sort of a shittier version of the Commodore 64, but I got curious about it recently and found that that isn't really the case. The VIC-20 is sort of its own animal and many of the games are better than I expected; I was initially unimpressed with Super Alien, for example (I'm not real big on "Panic" type games), but gave it another shake a few weeks ago and really got into it. And that's not a game where people talk about the system and say, "yeah, you need to play this game!" So I'm having fun discovering cool, obscure games on this cool, obscure computer.

And the cartridges. Ah, the cartridges. Magnificent, the sight of a pile of different VIC-20 cartridges.

[carlsson]

In one way, the VIC-20 is a sustainable, albeit perhaps not ecological computer since it to a big degree was made up of spare chips. The VIC chip previously developed to sell to arcade game manufacturers - which with one exception doesn't seem to have happened - and the RAM chips being leftover 2114 chips split up so they'd last for a production run and not too many to keep the price down. Of course back in 1980 very few, if anyone thought about terms like sustainability and it was rather financial decisions that ruled.

 

It is also said to have been a stop-gap solution while waiting for the "real" home computer to be ready (the C64), but to be honest I am not sure the C64 would have taken off so well if it'd come straight out of nothing from a business computer manufacturer (PET), and at a higher price tag. While it could match the Atari, the Apple, the TRS-80, the TI at price and performance, the starting stretch would've been longer and more rocky if the VIC-20 had not been there to pave its way.

[BassGuitari]

Has anyone played Blue Star from Cronosoft? Looks kind of amazing.