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Collecting for the VIC 20


simbalion

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All my work with the Apple II series actually ended up making me confident enough to pull out my often ignored VIC 20 and try to get it going. I've only had the unit 12 years, but have always had issues with the RF boxes. Well, I finally got the unit going with a box that was given to me after fiddling with one of the adjustments inside the box and it is not a bad little gaming computer. Now, I only have 9 cartridges and am soon going to look for some more. Any recommended games to look for? I already have the following:

Adventurland

The Count

Cosmic Cruncher

Voodoo Castle

Poker

Pinball

Mission Impossible

Jupiter Lander

Star Trek

 

Now to find some other fun offerings. Sadly, the place I got my unit from and a place that had parts and carts was burnt to the ground by an arsonist in 2010. :(

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Well, just off the top of my head, Omega Race, Radar Ratrace, Gorf & Clowns. There's a lot of good games for the Vic-20. My advice, if you're serious... is to just get a Mega-Cart. Yeah, it's like $100 or whatever, and yeah, you might have to wait for it awhile, but it has so many carts/tapes/disks on it, plus all the utilities and RAM expansions and whatnot... it's really a fantastic value. If you want real carts, fortunately, the vast majority of them are super cheap, even on ebay.

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The Mega-Cart is pricey but definitely worthy of consideration, since it has every game released on cartridge, plus some other cool stuff. It depends how much you really want to get into the VIC and how much money you want to spend. As was stated earlier, most cartridges are pretty cheap (especially loose). A lot of people dumped their collections when the Mega-Cart came out and there's not a lot of competition for VIC cartridges these days. I have several carts (loose and boxed) sitting around if you're interested.

 

Ditch the RF box and get yourself an AV cable...the difference in video quality is significant. They're available on eBay from several sources...

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 2309233891711?ff3=2&pub=5574883395&toolid=10001&campid=5336500554&customid=&item=230923389171&mpt=[CACHEBUSTER]

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I've also got a bunch of spare Vic20 tapes and carts here. There are some great games for the computer, and it is partly what inspired me to take the horns for Gamebase20, the database that attempts to catalog all the games released for the machine. It's over 2,200 entries now, and keeps climbing.

 

Taken from the article I wrote for Retro Gamer magazine, these are the ten games I listed: Jelly Monsters, Omega Race, Pirate Cove, Matrix (aka Attack of the Mutant Camels in the US), Demon Attack, Sword of Fargoal, Key Quest, Lazer Zone, Astro Nell, Game Theory.

 

I would probably shove Realms of Quest 3 in there now, but it wasn't out when I wrote the piece. The last two are homebrew releases, and can be found for download on the internet.

 

At the moment I have 150+ cartridges and 300+ tapes for the machine, but I don't keep everything I get, I just keep the ones I want. Many of my purchases are done to archive them for GB20, and then I sell them on. Win-win either way, especially as I often pick up games fairly cheaply and sell them on for more.

Edited by Mayhem
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Mayhem, are you referring to the article in issue #46? I just went to their site at http://www.retrogamer.net/back_issues.php and none of the buy back issue buttons work. I'd like to read that article if they fix that link.

 

I already had quite a few Vic-20 carts when I bought the MegaCart, but that didn't stop me. I had the opportunity to buy a whole bunch of nice CIB titles (mostly Commodore brand ones) so I bought them. Would buy more if I find ones I don't have. I doubt I'd ever use them, having the MegaCart, but it's the collector in me that wants them. I have most of the ones I had when I was a kid, and then some. I did just recently sell about a dozen of my doubles for I think it was like $20 or so.

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I think the VIC is a pretty fun little computer. The advantage of collecting for it is that with the exception of some of the more rare stuff, it doesn't seem very in demand, and it in general you can get a sizeable collection for much cheaper than some of the other platforms such as Atari 8-bit.

 

A couple of other games that I like that haven't been mentioned:

Avenger (Fun little Space Invaders clone)

Rescue on Rigel (The other versions are probably better, but I still like it)

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Denial was doing a host move/software update I believe, whether or not it succeeded, I'm not sure at the moment.

 

And yes, there were plenty of racing games for the Vic20. Many of them were the old standby of "go as far as you can while avoiding obstacles" type, but there are others. I'd have to hunt through GB20 to see which ones are the good ones. Chariot Race springs to mind, but I don't know if that would work in the US (it's a UK tape game).

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Denial got hit by some spambots last week and I saw some references about the domain also being used by Jeff for other things so who knows. I cannot currently log in as I get the request for a pass code as well.

 

I just got Mega Cart but be warned, it took over a year. The Final Expansion 3 looks nice but it looked like Retro Donald was taking some time off due to family illness when I checked in last week. You could always get a uIEC and ram expansions. Eslapion (Lemon 64 and Denial name) only had a few of his 35k expansion left but if you can get one it will make most files available in conjunction with Jim Brain's uIEC - no 3K expansion or tape programs but PRG files, disks, and even cartridge files (though you have to use a small trick).

 

I second GORF as a nomination. I also highly recommend Donkey Kong.

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I recently played through the bulk of the AtariSoft games for the VIC-20. Jungle Hunt is indeed one of the better ones. Surprisingly, Donkey Kong plays very well on the VIC as well. Moon Patrol is not bad, but should have been better. Pac-Man is for completionists only. I didn't write down my opinion of Pole Position, but I don't remember being either amazed or disgusted by it.

 

As for other games, Jeff Minter's Gridrunner and Matrix (a.k.a. Attack of the Mutant Camels, not to be confused with Attack of the Mutant Camels... it's complicated) are best played on the VIC-20, even though they also saw release on more powerful machines like the C-64.

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