Denial

Dasse, a friend of mine is a big collector of Software Projects games, mainly the Miner Willy series. Those were programmed by Matthew Smith for the ZX Spectrum.

Before Software Projects was formed, Mr. Smith supposedly wrote a few games for other systems such as TRS-80 and VIC-20. One of those lost games is something called Monster Muncher. According to Dasse, perhaps a few hundred copies were made, if even that much.

Has anyone of you seen this game, or anything about it? I suppose it would be dated 1981-82. The name suggests it could be one more of those Pac-Man clones, but one can't be sure. I'm grateful for any tips, and even more so if anyone has a copy they're willing to part with.

I'd guess very much that it is a Pac man clone. I've not seen a copy, and I guess it will be one of those very obscure ebay auctions that Mayhem, Bokvamme and Osgorth will be fighting over

EDIT - Paul Drury who writes for Retro Gamer magazine recently interviewed Matthew Smith. We could probably ask Matt through Paul if he by chance still had anything left of the game. It's unlikely though, as his TRS-80 stuff is long gone in a Dutch attic somewhere.

Hm, yes. I think it was Matthew himself who mentioned this game somewhere. To me it sounds like something homemade or close to it, if "only" a few hundred copies were made. I don't know the volumes for many smaller labels in the beginning, but at least 500-1000 copies of each game meant to be distributed should've been manufactured unless it was strictly mail order from home.

Anyway, it was worth a try. I know all those you mentioned, and neither Bo nor Osgorth seem to have this title in their collections, to begin with.

It would most likely be for TRS80 as he still used the machine to port code across when doing Spectrum games...

http://www.lulu.com/content/1276727
See page 11.
"Smith also wrote a game called Monster Muncher for the Commodore VIC-20, which was a blatant rip-off of the arcade classic Pac-Man. Monster Muncher was written for a new start-up software company. Written in BASIC, the game took him only a few hours to write, but the game was never published because the publisher went bankrupt a few weeks later."
Interesting info, terrible editing. Write writey write write.

Weren't all Pac-Man clones blatant rip-offs? Very rarely they would introduce new elements to gameplay. It sounds like this one could've been published as a listing in Your Computer etc if Matthew had wanted. Actually a lot of machine code games were published in various magazines, some games of such good quality they could've been released commercially if the distribution had been granted.

Any ideas who the company may have been?... could always find out who was behind the company, probably a one man band who may have an old box in his attic with a few disks/tapes from that time

Just wanted to resurrect this thread to see if anyone out there ever found a copy of the Vic 20 version?

The Spectrum version is out there, but Matthew Smith's un-expanded Vic 20 version sadly isn't just yet. It's possible that only about 50 copies or so ever sold.

Resurrecting 10 years later, but hopefully for a good reason

Matthew Smith's long lost Monster Muncher has finally been saved! (missing 41 years). After losing out on a recent auction, it was miraculously spotted in the Retro Computer Museum and has now been preserved by Games That Weren't.



More details and download at:
https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/vic-20- ... er-muncher

Video of the game in action and how it was found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQjFhHka6ow

Just tried this. It really is just a small BASIC-program. Had to look inside how to play actually. You start a game by pressing 'S" and then move with Q,A,O,P - which can easily be changed in lines 120 to 150.

As mentioned in the artice, the game has a few flaws. Maybe someone would like to fix these?

I've attached the program in a more useable format as a zipped .prg

tokra wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2024 2:04 pm I've attached the program in a more useable format as a zipped .prg

Ah that is brilliant Tokra. Could I ask permission to add this to the page as a download with a credit added to you?

Of course, no mention needed. All I did was STOP/RESTORE the program and save it with VICE.

tokra wrote: ↑Thu Sep 12, 2024 2:38 am Of course, no mention needed. All I did was STOP/RESTORE the program and save it with VICE.

Thanks Tokra (credit where credit due too), just added onto the page

As I recently did the same for Blue Meanies, I'm picking away at the basic code of this game to see how it works.

I've removed all the integer types except for on the arrays where they do save space, and changed so you can press any key to start a game.

I'll see if I can fix some of the bugs once I'm familiar with it.

That's amazing Andy - i'll be interested to hear how you get on. I'll keep an eye out!