@@beachcomberfilms8615 Technically, he's wrong, but also right. He's right about the planet Jupiter itself being a gas giant, and the part where he could be considered wrong would be for missing the reference to the Jupiter Lander spaceship from "Lost In Space".
I never had a chance to use a Vic-20, since the first computer I used was a Commodore 64 back in 1985, and I didn't get to to own a C64 until 1994. I might try to get a Vic-20 at some point in the future to see what it was like (my cousin had a C64 BBS in the mid 90s and he showed me a Vic-20 cartridge he had but I don't know if he had a Vic-20 or not). Since 'penultimate' means 'next to last' does that mean you're coming out with another one with even more capabilities? I didn't know it was even technically feasible that a single cartridge could be made that could provide memory expansion, a menu system and a bunch of games all at once!
There were lots of 'Ultimate' and 'Final' cartridges that then got updated, so you have 'Final Cartridge 5' etc. I was honest from the start. I'll keep tweaking and adding more if I can. It's already on revision 5, so that's 4 more than the first 'Penultimate' cartridge already. I could add more carts, but we struggled to come up with another 30 that were good enough.
Wow, Pentagorat is ludicrously impressive. And it's one of my favorite genres, too: isometric adventure! Mad props to the people responsible for that -- it couldn't have been easy to program.
Omega Race was my fave on the Vic-20 growing up, too! Glad to see it included here. You are right, stay bouncing between walls in one dimension is the way to play it!
Such wonderful memories these videos invoke. The Atari 800 was my first computer, I love seeing the Wico Stick again. Those were the best joysticks you could buy back in the day bar none.
That joystick was the one we all fought over when I was a kid with our 8-bit Atari systems. My mom claimed it as her's, but I often snuck playing on it myself. One of the best joysticks I've ever used.
Interesting fact about Star Battle... It was coded by former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. RIP. Iwata was a huge fan of the early Commodore computers (primarily the PET and Vic-20), and his first computer was a PET
Great video, the Vic was my first computer too. I was the envy of my friends here in the U.K. as they all had Sinclair ZX-81's. The Jeff Minter game at 11:21 is definitely Grid Runner, it was the first "proper game" I had for my Vic-20.
Actually, it's Matrix. The sequel to Gridrunner. It needed 8k memory to run it whereas Gridrunner was unexpanded. I think the game was called AMC in the US, hence the confusion.
8:43 As you already know, there is certainly no need for any "sprites" to get smooth or fluid motion, only a decently fast CPU with direct access to video RAM. (As far as I know, many archade machines of the time had no "sprite" hardware either.) Color collisions due to character based graphics is another matter.
the C64 was the very first computer that I ever used way back in the early 80's and "Rat Race" was the game that I played on it, the computer belonged to my uncle so I had limited access to it, I really miss those days.
Another quick comment: I spent HOURS playing Shamus on the Atari 400. It was more like Montezuma's Revenge than like Robotron. It had goals and potions and stuff along with various maze-like levels (I believe there was even an accessible map). I'd suggest digging up some instructions and giving it a go. It was quite fun, and I haven't seen it in decades!
Woo, Commodore stuff! This is awesome! I started with a C64 when I was a kid, but I had some friends with an old Vic 20 and a bunch of cartridge games. It's great seeing what the little beige Pre-64 was capable of.
The Vic-20 has no sprites? That's actually truly amazing. Considering the games that were made for it. Well, no hardware sprites, that is. EDIT: Oh, man, all that work to make a C64 ending screen and Patreon just changed their logo!
Very cool expander cartridge. I had a VIC20 as my first pc and also a Wico Command joystick just like yours. Was great to see you give the little computer that could some love. Great episode.
Ah.. the Vic20. Was envious of my two friends who had one each back in the mid 80s. We played some of the games on that cartridge, most with some errors loading since they only had tape decks with poorly copied tapes. ^_^ Cool credits screen... appropriate to use the Vic20 for this here. :D
Thanks - brought back some great memories. Seeing that Pentagorat tape remained me when I attempted to convert the Sinclair Spectrum game, Atic Atac, on my Vic-20. I think I mapped all the graphics pretty accurately, even get the loader working but got stumped at the actual gameplay (a minor issue...lol). My other attempt was building an assembler as machine-code was the only way to build performant software and was a pain to convert into all the ASCII codes. Yep - never finished that either...but my career in IT started then I've done pretty well out of it. Back to the Penulimate Cartridge, it reminded me quite how much time I spent on Radar Rat Race - I was stupidly good at it and knew all the routes to go for maximum score. Wonderful :-)
My VIC-20 with a tape drive and a 300 baud modem was the first thing I ever got online with. I switched to an Atari 800XL with a 1200 baud modem a few months last, what a difference. Still, the VIC-20 was special and BBS's were new and exciting.
Ah, my first computer, Vic20. Brings back memories. Couldn't afford an Apple II, or even other game system back then. The only way I got the Vic20 is I told my Dad, who never spent more than $25 on my christmas present, that I wanted the Vic20, or nothing. I said it would be a great learning tool, which it was. Spent many hours learning to program, and all it's capabilties, even hooking up a modem and connecting to the Compuserve service, which was unbelievably expensive, and didn't accomplish much, in any case. Ha! Thanks for the video, Greatly enjoyed!
This was my first computer, also and I loved it, despite being originally disappointed that I didn't get an Atari computer. Omega Race was one my favourite games on my Vic 20 (also having got it and the Vic 20 at the same time). Indeed, the original arcade game was a vector graphics based game.
Thank you for your videos. I spent my youth with the entire gauntlet of Commodore Computers starting with the VIC-20, then the 64, the 128, (even side stepping and stumbling with the Plus 4, the Commodore 16, and the 128D) before I made the leap into the PC realm. Your videos take me back to a simpler time...Thank You Again
The worst that I remember about the Vic-20 was those damn expander cartridges. Some games required EXACTLY the 8K cartridge, so if you only had the 16K then you couldn't use it. The 16K was actually quite useless, I didn't have a single game that needed it. The 8K would have been very nice to have, I had a bunch of games I could never play that needed it.
The VIC20 was also my first computer. My Father bought it at a garage sale to shut me up wanting a new computer. This was the late 80's so there was already 386 computers and NES's out there. My Vic 20 had the cassette tape drive, and it felt like it took at least 30 mins just to load up Pong! When I eventually found some cartridge games for the VIC20 that loaded instantly and had better graphics it felt like a god send. But at least the VIC20 did teach me basic computing.
Nice to see Omega Race mentioned, my first cartridge for the Vic 20 as well 8-Bit Guy, and Choplifter for the C64.. Damn I'm getting old, these games are ancient.
My dad bought us a Vic 20 and a 64 back in the 80’s. He made a cartridge box with switches so if we wanted to play a game we’d just have to flip the switch and the game would load. At school we had a n Apple II and really wanted one of those but your videos have shown me how awesome the Commodore computer actually was. He had gotten a summer olympics game. Played the heck out that. It used to play the National Anthem when you won the gold. Awesome sounds and graphics.
Just got the Penultimate Cartridge from the UK today. Can't wait to try it out. Thanks for showing us a review of it. I probably wouldn't have known about it without seeing your video!
Great video as always. It would be nice to see a complete version of Planet X1, but I know you are very limited on time, so I totally understand. Very impressive graphics for a VIC-20.
Wow, that took me back! My favorite games were always the Scott Addams games. I would use lots of taped together typewriter paper and use an electrical outlet cover to draw perfectly shaped rooms and then label where each direction lead. Just used a pencil to trace the outlet hole for each room to keep me from drawing them too quickly and eventually too large requiring more of my Mother's typewriter paper lol. I also agree that some game programmers are either lackadaisical or too rushed by the companies in which they work wanting to get something out for Christmas. Prime example would be the Atari 2600's PacMan vs. Ms. PacMan. I learned to program on my Vic20 and just fell in love with computers in general. I owned the Vic20, the Plus4, the 64/128 combo Commadore and a couple of Amigas throughout the years. Love your videos, I'll be a subscriber.
Wow, i remembered alot of those games. The VIC-20 was also my very first computer when i was 10. It was a big hit in the UK. Everyone at school had one !.
I was 16 when I got a 2nd hand Vic 20 for xmas, togethers wi th a cartridge called 'Ghost' with additional BASIC commands, like renumber, very useful but unstable. Those were back in 1984. Those were the days !
I was born in 2000, so I wasn't around for this era, but I have a certain fondness for the VIC-20. I think it's cool. I also really like its younger and much more powerful brother, the C64.
If I may say so David, I agree with you on Radar Rat Race being a Ton of Fun. Many an afternoon was spent playing that gem, the only cartridge my family ever owned on the C64. Ahh the memories...
Very cool! The Vic-20 was also my first computer, and I cut my teeth programming on it, so it holds a special place in my heart. Looking forward to your full-blown comprehensive video on it.
The way to experience Batlezone was in the arcades! It had a sight that you put your head against and two joysticks that you could make your tank go left and right, forward and reverse. It was almost like a military combat simulator at the time. I dropped a huge amount of quarters on this game back in the 80's!
I was a C64 owner and always thought the Vic20 was vastly inferior.. Just the 22 column text on bootup put me off. But these games really show off the power of the CPU. Any chance of a teardown of the penultimate cartridge? It'd be nice to see inside.. especially alongside a super-expander cartridge.
There are photos inside the production version here: www.thefuturewas8bit.com/shop/commodore/pu-vic20.html, and photos and more info on the development versions on my blog: blog.tynemouthsoftware.co.uk/search?q=penultimate
Thanks mate.. I'll probably have to spend the evening reading your blog now :-).. Nice PCB. I like the mixture of retro and contemporary with GAL and microcontroller, through-hole and SMD.
It *was* inferior, compared to the Commodore 64. That's why it never really achieved any success outside the games and hobbyist market segments. On the other hand, it actually ran somewhat faster (by about 20%, actually), which is one of the reasons that software sprites, such as those used in the official Donkey Kong port, were so viable.
Well, the Vic20 came out several years BEFORE the C64, so what would you expect. Even if they overlapped on the store shelves, the C64 was designed to be a superior unit to the Vic20. Its just too bad though that they didn't find a way to put a 6502 chip in the C64 for backwards compatibility of sorts. Perhaps it would have been impossible, or just driven the costs up too much to do so.
I think David had every right to do that, but they compared it to vintage comic books, where if a cover is replaced the value is lost. I think that is a bad analogy and a bit too precious about basically worthless (relatively speaking) pieces of plastic. David did not make labels for a rare Earthbound prototype cart. I guess Pat and Ian's point was that the video encouraged forgery. I was not convinced.
To be fair, Pat is a bit of a copyright/patent hardcoreist. He doesn't see fair-use the way he's really suppose to. Nothing Dave did in that video was unlawful in any way.
acertainshape oh, he absolutely does. it's HIS property and he wants it to look nice in HIS collection. I understand Pat's and Ian's opinions regarding counterfitting but, if someone is gonna be a piece of trash, they would have learned restoring without the help of David.
I primarily disagreed with Pat and Ian on that one, but I do specifically recall them saying "do whatever you want with your own stuff". They're just concerned as collectors and retailers that it's going to propagate forgeries and make the hobby that much harder.
My brother in-law has a TurboGrafx-16, complete with the original displayer stand. His daughter was kicking his butt, at "Bomberman", at age 5. I bought "Omega race", for my VIC 20, also.
The prices in 1980 and what the equivalent cost is in 2017: * $2000 ~ $6,295 * $440 ~ $1,385 * $399 ~ $1,256 * $299 ~ $941 All of these machines are incredibly more expensive than a modern console. We had it tough!
Oddly enough, I am pretty sure Omega Race was the first cartridge game I got for my VIC20. The majority of software was on cassette tape and that took some patience and understanding to work.. not something a young teenager (myself) would have. Really strong memories here. Thanks for the nostalgia. - Eddy
Jupiter Lander you have 3 controls if I remember correctly you have left and right thrusters and the vertical thrust is I believe controlled by the f keys since it had soft thrust and hard thrust. It was a hard game but freaking fun.
I remember this game like it was yesterday. You had to give enough thrust to get the thrust-meter stop in the small yellow region to get bonus points when you landed.
On an entirely different note, as David pointed out, you can't land on 'land' on Jupiter, though the closest you could come to that would be landing in the metallic hydrogen ocean further down, though how dense it is I wouldn't know, so I'm not sure whether your spacecraft-lander-thingamajig would sink or float in it, though it might get ripped apart in the extremely windy atmosphere long before that point...
wow, that really shows what my old vic was capable of. I would have freaked out at either game when I was a kid. From what i can see the ram expanded is well worth the price of the cartridge, and the games are just a bonus. Thank you for reviewing this.
@ 11:38 O,M,G! The Vic-20 was my first computer, and Omega Race was the first game I had on it! I went to school to study computer repair, and the C-64 was the computer choice they had. Love going down memory lane with your videos!
Jarukrit Sripaploen Me: looks through videos Also Me: crap, I need to buy a new computer 1080p is the new thing! New camera? Nah, I need a NEW COMPUTER not monitor or camera
I've got a Commodore VIC-20, need to take it out and play with it when I have some free time... ah... the good old times when I got this as a kid... so fun to learn BASIC.
@@dcfuksurmom it's actually since it tends to be very loud on camera, in another video he mentions that he normally removes it but can't actually hear it anymore because of his age
The man even programs retrogames, this guy is real, unlike manchildren on youtube complaining about everything with a wall of games in the background never to be played.
The VIC20 was my first computer... when I was 14. Hey, what about the Odyssey2 console? :) They had about 70 games total. The APPLEII was a horrible gaming computer compared to the Vic20 or C=64. The Ti TI99/4A Computer was very sexy. Small and well designed. I used to have that black and red joystick. It was one of the best ones I ever had. It was a sad day when it broke and I had to replace it. LodeRunner was a great game for Apple and C=64 computers (with higher res than the VIC20) because it ran smoother and allows the user to make their own maps. Amazing they got that much out of the VIC with Pantagorat. PS: When I was a kid 1984 with my VIC20, I really wanted an 8K ram expander. I knew that IT would set me for life! I use to imagine all the cool things I could do if only had 8K of RAM. Then I got my hands on a booklet for the upcoming C= LCD and C=128. I skipped the C=64 and went directly to the C=128 because I wanted the nicer keyboard, the 10-key for data/code entry, 80col text and faster floppy drive, even thou I never owned a Floppy drive unit in my life. I read in magazines about how horrible the 1541 was. My first Floppy drive was a $150 1541 clone type drive known as the Enhancer2000. It was very cute, about 1/6 the size size of the 1541. It was faster than the 1541, quieter, easier to open and close, etc. Back then, computers hardware from stores had 90day returns... and the day before, a game I bought was NOT compatible with the Enhancer2000. ARGH! I was able to get my money back, and spent $250 for the 1571 which was far more compatible, faster and double-sided. I think I'm getting old. Is it bad I remember these things?
The damsel in distress from Donkey Kong is named Pauline, which is my also my mum's name. I was given a Vic20 with about 15 games on cartridge (aged 5-6) which were nearly all text adventures, also Radar Rat Race which was decent. I didn't take it seriously because I wanted a Spectrum but then I got one and it broke after playing Jet Pak once and programming it to repeat a word. But then I got a Master System and everything was ok. I enjoyed the video on this channel restoring the Vic20 from what could have been a car repair shop. I like how these machines were so robust and practical for actual real life businesses. I doubt any businesses used Spectrums.
Hello; a question for david and the rest of the community. What program would a standard office worker use at around 1986, on a commodore 64 computer, for word processing and basic accounting? I'll explain it better: I have a commodore 64 with a cassette drive and an authentic vhs camera from the day and I'm planning on shooting an emulation of what a typing experience on a commodore 64 would have been. That said i need a cheap program that can be found on cassette on ebay. I'd love to use floppies but a C64 floppy drive costs quite a lot, and i can't afford to spend much money on this project. I still need a display, though; is there a fairly cheap model which is also easy to find? Thanks you all.
Hi not sure account pure double entry accounting, but there was a spreadsheet called unicalc I was able to use unicalc at my job keeping track of a weeks production in a electrical factory of about 200 different stock items, just load each file for week ending For word processing, its hard but there are text editors like easy script or easy write The there was say in cartrige form magic deck Otherwise you run the geos desktop and use the apps For database you had superbase While not quite off topic , the Amiga was much better for business apps PS i had about 5 years worth of payslips and overtime on a unicalc spread sheet regards george
For a C64? You'll be wanting the Commodore 1702. Virtually indestructible and it matches the bread bin perfectly. Very good picture too. Prices range from a buck and a half to over $150 but they all do the same thing so go for the cheapest working one.
I can't wait to see your Vic-20 "full feature" episode. The Vic was the first computer I owned too at the age of 9. I prayed that Santa would bring me a C64 and I ended up with something that looked the same but had only 8 colours and 22 chars across the screen.. Nevertheless I learnt just about everything I could about the machine. Unfortunately software was near impossible to buy at that time. SuperExpander was discontinued.. Commodore UK eventually told me that after a 28 day wait - a long time for a child who dreamed of hi-res graphics, patterns and the likes. Still, even though I did end up with a C64 a few years later, the lack of software pushed me into learning how to program. I'll always have fond memories of typing in the Vic User Manual's "bouncing ball" program and drawing pictures with the keyboard graphics.
@@ChaseMC215 Not saying I dispute your claim or anything, but David made a video on why he considers the Speak and Spell to be a computer: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-RpeegJ0J5mE.html
9:35 As a Apple II owner, I couldn't tell you if it was a worthwhile port without hearing the digging sound. The sound design was excellent in our version of Load Runner. The sound of an enemy being consumed by refilling ground has be etched into my brain since I was 5.
I bought a 16 meg. memory cartridge and the i/p a word processing program from an electronics magazine. It took me and my kids most of a weekend. We all took shifts inputting the machine language code 8 hex-decimal bits per line w. a checksum @ the end. It worked and the most important thing I learned from it was it was absolutely necessary to have an 80 character wide screen! My next computer was a Commodore B128 bought on sale and including a monitor, a double disk drive, a printer and five software programs including a word-processor, a spread-sheet, a data-base & others that I don't recall just now. That computer could connect to an Olympia Electronic Typwriter to produce high quality o/p. I would be interested in seeing a discussion of the Commodore B128 computer in future.
Your first pronunciation of Minter was correct. For some reason, Gridrunner was renamed Attack of the Mutant Camels for the US market, when released by HES (Human Engineered Software) for the VIC,
14:35 Shamus is one of those games I remember from my childhood, playing it on the C64. It wasn't a smash hit or anything, but I've never forgotten it completely.
I love the VIC20 as it was the first computer in my house unless you count the Intellivision as my dad got it for my older sister, but even at around 3 years old I gravitated to it more then she did, and I can clearly remember playing Tooth Invaders on it, along with PacMan as my father was a big Pacman fan back in the day. :-)
Great video 8 bit guy. I've never gotten to see games for the VIC-20 so it was nice to know what all the system had. Also the Pentogorat looks good for the system capabilities. The color scheme on it reminds me what some of the Sinclair ZX games look like in other videos I've watched. Thank you.
