My first programs!

Allen's first computer programs for the VIC-20.
Allen’s first computer programs for the VIC-20.

Tonight, I made an amazing discovery. I finally located a cigar box full of cassettes tapes containing VIC-20 programs I wrote in 1982 (when I was just 13 years old). I am eager to see what is on them!

Amazingly, not only where the games I remember writing here, but also a number of others I had completely forgotten about (and some I am not sure what they were). The list of programs I wrote includes:

  1. Brick Layer – likely a Surround type game (like TRON light cycles, which was not out yet).
  2. Factory TNT – the tape just calls it TNT, though. This was a Kaboom “catch the falling bombs” game.
  3. Gold Grabber – ???
  4. Meteor Clash – maybe this is the one I have been calling Meteor Storm all these years. If so, it’s a side scrolling spaceship dodging game.
  5. Sky-Ape-Er – a Donkey Kong style platform game, based on one I purchased and knew I could write better.
  6. Space Shot – ???
  7. Thick Brush – likely a drawing program.

I am very excited to see what these programs were. I also have (very faded) thermal printouts of some of them, though I don’t think I could scan them and OCR them or even read them enough to type them in these days.

Off to find a VIC-20 emulator, and figure out how to digitize these tapes and get them loaded in to it…

Sky-Ape-Er Lives!

Update: I managed to load a few files so far, but most have errors. But, I found two versions of Sky-Ape-Er!

This must have been an early prototype.
This must have been an early prototype.
Pinwheels where the original enemy. For some reason.
Pinwheels where the original enemy. For some reason.
Later versions had instructions!
Later versions had instructions!
The graphics were more Kong-like here. Sorta.
The graphics were more Kong-like here. Sorta.

7 thoughts on “My first programs!

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    1. Allen Huffman Post author

      I had just taught myself BASIC that year. I had heard of a “monitor cartridge” and had been Show assembly at a C= group meeting, but did not understand what it was. Wish I had started then! If I can remap the code to use keys on an emulator, I’d love to share a video of these crappy games :-)

      Reply
    2. Allen Huffman Post author

      I am now walking through the old source code and will be posting videos and such when I can. I plan to rewrite the program knowing what I know today and see if I can improve it.

      Reply
  4. Pingback: VIC-20: Sky-Ape-Er code dissection – part 1 | Sub-Etha Software

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