Lost game from the '80s: Scumbotron!

[EyeballKid]

LATEST:
4th (and hopefully final?) version: Try It Now!

older:
3rd version: Try It Now!
2rd version: Try It Now!
1st version: Try It Now!

-- original post --

The other day I was in the basement, clearing out some of that general household clutter you accumulate over the years, and behind a teetering pile of Commodore PETs I found a box of EPROMs I'd fished out of a dumpster way back when.
When I was a kid in the early '80s there was this electronics company on a crappy industrial estate in the bad part of town. I think they mostly manufactured electronic coconut shy games, ecclesiastic pyrophones and stuff like that. So on the weekends I'd go dumpster diving behind their buildings, looking for discarded electronic gear and components.

Anyway, I noticed that some of these EPROMs had "X16' scrawled on them... so out of curiosity I dumped one out. To my astonishment I found what looks like some old arcade game they must have been in the process of porting to the Commander X16! It's pretty crude, and I guess they must have abandoned it, because it's buggy and obviously isn't finished. But I figured I should upload it here at least as an historical curiosity - there are so few surviving X16 games from that era.



This was just the first EPROM I dumped. When I get some time I'll dig through some of the others - there might be some versions more complete in there, you never know!

[TomXP411]

That's a really cute Robotron clone, and a fun little backstory.

Good work.

[ahenry3068]

Well.. Maybe someone can port it to the Modern C16

[Daedalus]

OMG! I remember Robotron 2084! I was the master. I had the arcade game in my house and could roll that thing over in both score and levels.

I don't know if using keys to control it is going to cut it, though... I think you really need thedual joysticks to really do it right. Perhaps a custom SNES rig...

Well! I gotta try this version! After all, someone went through the trouble to invent time travel to get it to us.

... "What are you doing, Marty? You can't just write of version of a modern arcade game for a retro computer in the future! You could cause a temporal paradox!" "Relax, Doc. The kids will love it!"

[Daedalus]

MOAR EPROMS! Need MOAR EPROMS! Go through that box harder!

It's... uh... for a friend. He really wants to play it.

[ahenry3068]

Don't ever tell Nintendo about EEPROMS. ...

They are so allergic to community participation.

[ahenry3068]

My games in the DAY. where MS-PACMAN & ASTEROIDS

[EyeballKid]

I don't know if using keys to control it is going to cut it, though... I think you really need thedual joysticks to really do it right. Perhaps a custom SNES rig...

Aren't the 4 SNES control pad buttons arranged in a kinda-sorta directional diamond? Maybe they could work as a second stick?
Maybe the dump I uploaded already supports something like that? I've no idea - I don't have a controller...
(or a CX16, for that matter. I assume the game even runs on actual hardware without causing any explosions? You know what this old 8-bit hardware is like - capacitor smoke everywhere at the slightest provocation...)
There's a cross-hair mouse pointer on screen too which seems a bit odd. I wonder what that was for?

[voidstar]

Sounds like a DrWho episode... "humanity is just sitting down for a nice cup of tea"

Works on the r43 DevBoard hardware - and works with the SNES gamepad controls. Sounds there too, just crank up the volume a bit more.

hup. hup. hup. Great cut scenes!
"20 goto 10" said the robot. LOL

Very nice!

Next title, a gag can be popup ads for X16 NIC cards - you know you want one. The X16 cloud knows you want one too!

[EyeballKid]

Found half a broken cartridge shell face down at the bottom of one of the boxes:

cover.jpeg (118.09 KiB) Viewed 7139 times

Love the spelling. Guessing this SKU was destined for a non-English-speaking territory...
And like all 80s/90s box art, it bears such an uncanny resemblance to the in-game graphics! It's practically a screenshot