Help me remember a game?

[Zaphod]

Hello!

When I was about 8 years old I was given a hand-me-down Commodore VIC-20. It was a turning point in my young life and has given me my entire career — all because of that manual with the cartoon-TV that taught you BASIC…. But I eventually upgraded to a new(er) computer and the VIC-20 was passed on to others.

Along with the manual it also came with a handful of game cartridges. One of them I have never been able to find since. It doesn’t help that I can’t remember the name of the game. I’m pretty sure the game was not from Commodore, because I’m pretty sure the cartridge wasn’t beige, but I’m not certain.

The gameplay was strange as I remember. At this point I’m very fuzzy on the details — it was a long time ago. But I can tell you the main points. You flew a little rocket ship. You first encountered lasers that went horizontally across your path, which you needed to wait for them to stop firing and shoot them out. There was another obstacle past that (vertical lasers?) but I’m not certain. After that, you flew to an area where there were buildings with small people on top of them. You picked up the people and moved them past a volcano to another set of buildings. You had to hurry because there was a UFO also picking up those people and dropping them into the volcano! Once the people were all moved, the volcano would erupt and start destroying the second set of buildings, so you had to pick the people up again and take them to a second place and drop them down a hole.

Something like that, anyway: like I said it was a long time ago!

Does this sound familiar to *anyone*? I’ve tried finding this in the past and have been completely unsuccessful. I fell down a rabbit hole of ancient computer systems today and was reminded of this. I did some more Googling and still couldn’t find anything. You would think a game with lasers, a UFO and a *volcano* would be pretty easy to find, but it hasn’t been for me!

Thank you for any guesses you might have. And while I’m bugging you, does anyone have a link for a PDF of that old manual? I wouldn’t want to victimize my children by teaching them BASIC (with line numbers no less!), but it would be interesting to show them what their old man started with…. I wonder if modern children would even be interested in a cartoon TV today…

[Mayhem]

Sounds like Protector by HES (originally a Synapse title but they licenced a few to HES, including Shamus to port).

https://youtu.be/otD3ECOms_g?si=OQvw1sdSwv_r_oHc

[Zaphod]

Wow, that was quick! That is the game! Looks like the vertical lasers were after the buildings, not before. Thank you very much!

And I Googled and found the manual: http://cini.classiccmp.org/pdf/Commodor ... Manual.pdf It was a cartoon cartridge, not a TV. But that was a blast from the past, too.

Now to get an emulator up and running. Thank you for the help!

[TheVic20User]

Nice Game! Is there a non cartridge version from this game? I good like to create a tape from the game, but i can not find it.

[tlr]

Nice Game! Is there a non cartridge version from this game? I good like to create a tape from the game, but i can not find it.

It would need at least 8 KiB expansion. If you have RAM at $a000-$bfff you might have luck with the version on zimmers (SYS 41001).

https://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm ... index.html

[TheVic20User]

Nice Game! Is there a non cartridge version from this game? I good like to create a tape from the game, but i can not find it.

It would need at least 8 KiB expansion. If you have RAM at $a000-$bfff you might have luck with the version on zimmers (SYS 41001).

https://www.zimmers.net/anonftp/pub/cbm ... index.html

Thank you very much! Works