Lost game from the '80s: Scumbotron!

[voidstar]

Perfect!

Love that 80s cartoon style vibe, where characters in masks can have "facial expressions."

Although the one in the air on the right, not clear what all is on his back - so many questions

and absolutely, even the early text adventures needed some clever marketing box art. But this one is very fitting - "Scumboron" really is action packed!

[ahenry3068]

I took the liberty of taking that nice cover art and turning it into an X16 compatible splash screen.

SCUMBOTRON SPLASH SCREEN

SCUMSPLASH.zip

(35.71 KiB) Downloaded 458 times

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[EyeballKid]

I found a more-complete version!

Still doesn't seem like it's 100% complete, but it feels pretty close. I find this one waaay more fun to play than the previous one.

scumbotron.prg

(27.05 KiB) Downloaded 562 times

[EyeballKid]

Caveat: I've only tried this version in the emulator.
I'm pretty sure it'll be fine on real hardware, but you can never know for sure...
It'd be nice to hear it confirmed by someone who has a cx16 made of real atoms, rather than just the electrons!

[ahenry3068]

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[EyeballKid]

Cool - Thanks so much for that!
It's reallly good to see it running properly like that! Emulators are convenient, but there's nothing quite like seeing it on real hardware.

Also great to see the lack of explosions or big plumes of swirling dark smoke!

[voidstar]

I'm still on travel and can't try it on hardware yet - another day.

But -- how can a PRG that's 7KB smaller than the original be EVEN BETTER??!?

[EyeballKid]

But -- how can a PRG that's 7KB smaller than the original be EVEN BETTER??!?

By MAGIC!




and compression :- )

[EyeballKid]

New version (the 3rd one):

- high scores are saved to disk
- 42 levels of laser-blasting goodness
- assorted other tweaks

Try It Now!

I _think_ this is about it. It looks like the code is pushing right up against the BASIC RAM 38KB, and there are some hints that a few features had to be cut to conserve space... So if any newer roms show up, I can't imagine them doing anything other than minor tweaking.

So if no major problems crop up with this one, I'll probably just shift it to Downloads.

The thing I'm most worried about with this one is the high score saving/loading. Works fine on emulator, but it's just doing a blind write out to a file called "SCUMBOSCORES" on device 8. I don't know how robust this is on real hardware...

Either way, it's feeling like a pretty fun game.

Maybe cx16 gen-4 could be a JAMMA-compatible pinout? I'm _sure_ there's enough space left for an "INSERT COIN" string

[voidstar]

Made to around level 18 or so using gamepad, those Zombies got me! Too quick for me

I think this is one of the most perfect arcade games ever made.


ESC to a pause is very nice.

One time the stage said CLEAR so I relaxed, but then this star spawned and it said WATCH OUT and I Was ded OWWWWW

And you can shoot the power ups. Oh no But you can't friendly fire the green soldiers, hmm. So far I haven't seen a motivation to actually save the green soldiers - unless a certain amount of them gives a heart or something.

Great game!