Vic 20 - Voodoo Castle & my first love

Voodoo Castle

(Adventure International, VIC-20, 1979)

We had better start by getting the obvious out of the way. The Commodore VIC-20 was not a powerful machine. Your average VIC-20 game had to be programmed using less than 3,583 bytes of memory. To put that into context, a modern mobile phone with sixteen gigabytes of storage has approximately 4.7 million times more memory at its disposal than was afforded to a standard VIC-20. To have produced any games at all within such limitations is a miracle within itself. The fact that some of those games were, in reality, really quite fun and playable, would perhaps be almost unbelievable to today’s gamer.

Some games couldn’t be delivered within such tiny memory constraints though, so the machine’s expandability was utilised, with the more memory- hungry titles coming on cartridges which were plugged directly into the VIC’s memory expansion slot. This meant that fairly passable versions of the Arcade classics of the time could be played at home, with cartridge versions of Space Invaders, Galaxian, Defender and Pac Man (although often given different names) among those being available.

Game developers also used the extra memory to push the boundaries and for the first time we saw a series of text adventure games that could be played on Commodore’s home computer. The Scott Adams adventure games released on cartridge for the VIC-20 included: The Count, Adventure Land, Mission Impossible and Pirate Adventure and I played them all, but the one that I remember most fondly is Voodoo Castle.

The game is an unfolding story, told purely by text on screen, driven by the user inputting a series of two word commands, normally one simple verb and one noun, for example: “use saw”, “take lamp” or “eat food”. You can also direct your player to go north, south, east and west as well as up and down when you are near a staircase or similar. Each time you move you are told where you are and what you can see. Graphics? No there aren't any. Sound? Nope. This is a game purely for your imagination, but it embraces it and takes it partying.

You are required to navigate the play area, collect and use items, solve puzzles and eventually complete your quest, which in this case is to wake Count Cristo who is lying asleep in a coffin at the start of the game. As the number of rooms you visit and the complexity of routes between them increases, it becomes necessary to chart your progress with pen and paper, drawing ever more complicated maps, sometimes accompanied by extensive notes to remind yourself what was where and how to get there.

When providing a reviewer's opinion it is only fair to remember that these games are nearly as old as I am. For their time they were fantastic fun, offering something very different for the average gamer. Working out the (sometimes rather obtuse) puzzles and progressing was both enjoyable and particularly rewarding in the early 1980s. At the time, there was no internet, which meant that there were no easily available walkthroughs available. This resulted in the games (that in reality were really quite short) taking many hours, days, weeks or even months to complete.

However, while great fun for their time, it must be said that in this day and age they haven’t aged well. Our tastes have inevitably become more sophisticated and the player certainly doesn’t get the same level of enjoyment now that they did at the time; indeed there are some issues that are decidedly infuriating. Let's not forget that this is still a pretty small game in terms of memory, so tricks have to be played to increase its longevity.

Some puzzles are really quite un-intuitive and the game will often try and misdirect you, telling you that certain actions cannot be done "yet", heavily insinuating that they can in time, whereas in reality a lot of these were complete red-herrings. There is extensive trekking back and forth and not really achieving anything and, perhaps most annoyingly, you can die; often, abruptly, and without warning. If you are some distance from your last save, this is extremely frustrating.

The game is still available to play for free online here (though bizarrely the instructions tell you how to load a game but not how to save!)

If you are a younger gamer and would like to see what adventure gaming looked like forty years ago, then have a look, though don't be surprised if you are disappointed. For the older gamer, while still being pretty frustrating and simplistic, the game also offers a proper full-on belt of retro-gaming nostalgia which really will take you back.

And if you get stuck, do what took me nine months to work out the first time around, and “wave bag…”

AG 04/12/20218

Featured in Pixel Addict magazine, issue 2.

My love affair with the VIC-20

You Never Forget Your First Love

Alan remembers a teenage gaming fling with the VIC-20

Let’s rewind 40 odd years. It was 1983. I was 16, had just left school and was preparing for college. I had several part time jobs and, with a little money in my pocket, for the first time in my life I was able to treat myself to a substantial purchase. The lure of video games was strong, especially since my previous home gaming exploits had been limited to an old Binatone TV Master (offering games such as Tennis, Football and Squash - simplistic black and white variations of Pong).

I had friends that had showed off their Atari 2600s and BBC Microcomputers, and I had desperately wanted to be like them and play proper games in my bedroom. Yes - I admit it - I was jealous. But now I was able to finally put that right - I could afford a home computer of my own, and my heart was set on the Commodore VIC-20.

Back Story

The VIC-20 was released, first in Japan in 1980 and then worldwide in 1981, as the follow up to the Commodore PET. It was enormously successful and became the first home computer to sell over one million units. It managed this despite boasting just 5KB of RAM. And if that wasn’t low enough, one and a half of those precious kilobytes were reserved for the video display and running Commodore BASIC and KERNAL (the operating system).

That left just a tad over 3.5KB for programs, which did seem somewhat inadequate, certainly in comparison to its main competitor - the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Clive Sinclair’s baby was armed with a solid 16KB on its release in 1982 and, later on, a mouth watering 48KB (and let’s not mention the Spectrum III released in 1987 with 128KB and a disk drive!). Yes, the Vic could utilise plug-in memory cartridges but the unexpanded machine really was punching above its weight.

I’ll Tell You What I Want, What I Really Really Want

Nevertheless, my heart was set on the VIC, but I still had to persuade my parents that it was worth £129.99 of my hard earned cash.

“It will help me with my homework” I claimed, reaching for the standard argument, and probably the most overused lie of the time by wannabe young purchasers. Of course it wouldn’t. No child or teenager in history ever bought a home computer to help with their homework. I had no interest in using my beloved VIC for anything so mundane - I wanted to be clocking up high-scores on Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Galaxian and Asteroids.

My Precious

Nonetheless, the argument won out and I was soon the proud owner of a brand new sparkly VIC-20 sitting in front of the television in my bedroom. My TV at the time was a small 14 inch black and white affair, complete with a rotary dial to change channels (I’m really showing my age here - it was at least another couple of years before I could enjoy the experience in colour!).

I accumulated a decent library of games, many bought with my hard earned money, but I will also confess to having plenty of (cough) backups (ahem), swapped with friends.

Most games came on cassette and were loaded and saved using the included Commodore Datasette recorder. The challenges of finding the correct place on a tape to load the right game, or avoiding the dreaded: “? SYNTAX ERROR IN [line number]” message when you typed: “RUN” were all too real.

However once you mastered loading from tape, some of the games were a lot of fun. Indeed, when you consider the memory limitations of the base machine, it is quite remarkable how good they were. I can remember them quite clearly. There was Gridrunner - an excellent Centipede clone. Astro Gladiator was a one-on-one player versus the CPU space battle using vector type graphics, with its looks and control very much in the Asteroids mould. Skramble was a more than passable version of Scramble, and I have very fond memories of Dune Buggy; a brilliant down-the-screen 2D driving game. Of course I must mention Blitz - every Vic owner spent many an hour destroying skyscrapers by dropping bombs from a bi-plane!

Although there were limitations due to the memory restrictions and its lower resolution display, there were also numerous business and utility programs targeting the more serious user, including a selection of spreadsheets and home finance applications.

Plug In Baby

But the Vic really came alive with cartridge games that utilised the expansion slot, which enabled them to draw upon extra memory. Now the 3.5KB RAM limitation was no longer an issue. Terrific cartridge versions of arcade classics were available, such as Jelly Monsters (Pac-Man), Star Battle (Galaxian), Avenger (Space Invaders) and Amok (Berzerk) among others. Spiders from Mars was a brilliant insect based shoot-em-up with its roots planted firmly in Defender territory.

Then there were titles from other genres that were written specifically for home computers, such as Sargon II Chess, and the Scott Adams text-only adventure games. These included Adventure Land, The Count, Pirate Cove, Mission Impossible and the brilliant and unforgettable Voodoo Castle - which seduced my imagination and took it dancing. It is estimated that around 500 games were released on tape, but there were a large number of cartridge titles too, offering the gamer plenty of choice.

Learning BASIC

The machine could also be used to learn to program in BASIC. There were magazines to assist with this and some would offer entire games that could be typed in and saved. This would take a VERY long time; but not nearly as long as the amount of time spent trying to find the typos when they invariably didn’t work!

Most type-in-yourself games weren’t particularly great, and some were particularly dreadful. I wonder if anyone remembers the off-the-scale awfulness of Killer Comet - one of the do-it-yourself games included within the user manual. It’s well worth a look on YouTube for the comedy value alone!

Even though it’s been 40 odd years since I dabbled in BASIC, I can still remember commands such as POKE, PEEK, GOTO and GOSUB etc. Once I got the hang of things I would hack into a game (if it was written in BASIC) and edit the program, changing the variables to alter the gameplay.

Fighting Back

Although the standard memory was low, the machine boasted a number of other features that enabled it to go toe-to-toe with the Spectrum. In particular the Vic boasted four-channel sound which, compared to the Spectrum’s extremely limited range of bleeps, put it in a different league entirely when it came to gaming sound effects. It was also a far more substantial unit with the proper and full sized keyboard trouncing the quality of Sinclair’s mini soft-key offering.

Which was better? It doesn’t really matter. I remember VIC and Spectrum owners arguing this endlessly at college, but in reality both were fantastic machines with their own strengths and weaknesses, and both can claim credit for the seismic step forward in budget home computing in the 1980s.

Is This Love?

If you asked me to declare my true computing love, I would confess that it is and will always be the Commodore Amiga. The Amiga made lifetime gaming memories for me, and as I skipped the C64 and went straight from the VIC to the ‘mig you can imagine how jaw dropping that trade-up was for me.

But as we grow older we all carry a torch for our first love, and the VIC-20, as my very first venture into proper home gaming and computing, will always hold a very special place in my heart.

Happy times.

AG June 2024

Featured in Pixel Addict magazine, issue 23.