From the Vault columnist. Grew up feeding quarters to the Ms. Pac-Man machine at his uncle's pizza place; still owns his childhood SNES and every Nintendo Power he ever begged his mother for. Writes the retrospectives and the hidden-gem hunts.
Jay Sullivan’s Crossfire traps you in a city grid with aliens closing in from every edge — and the rare ability to move and shoot in different directions. A VIC-20 essential.
Before Lode Runner there was Apple Panic — Ben Serki’s platformer of ladders, shovels and murderous apples, brought to the VIC-20 by Creative Software.
Creative Software’s VIC-20 edition of David Snider’s snake classic turns the maze chase inside out — grow longer, corner your rivals, and never meet one head-on.
HES brought Synapse’s Berzerk-inspired maze shooter to the VIC-20 with its android detective, deadly lair and lurking Shadow intact — fast, twitchy and tough.
Scott Adams’ fifth adventure sends you into a vampire’s castle with a two-word parser, a three-day deadline and almost no memory to spare — a VIC-20 text classic.
Midway’s multi-stage arcade shooter squeezed onto a VIC-20 cartridge — several games in one, from Invaders-style ranks to a duel with the Gorfian flagship.
Commodore’s conversion of Midway’s vector arcade game rebuilds its bouncing, ricochet arena shooting in chunky raster colour — one of the VIC-20’s finest arcade ports.
Jeff Minter’s Gridrunner began life on the VIC-20, and it still crackles — a frantic Centipede-inspired grid war that turns 5K of memory into pure arcade adrenaline.
A Lego building book, a Pokémon counting book, a bread-factory adventure and seven more: ten verified Pico Storyware titles that outplay their obscurity.
Twenty games and gone by 1998 in the West — and 300-plus titles lasting to 2005 in Japan. The Sega Toys long tail, from Doraemon and Anpanman to Pokémon on Pico.