Skramble!

This is an unofficial but commercially released arcade conversion of “Scramble”, the arcade game. Most games on the Vic 20 which were rather outstanding required 3k, 8k, 16 and even 32k RAM expansions, but Skramble! passed on this and ran purely on an unexpanded Vic 20. Looking at the game, it is quite an amazing feat to see this conversion pulled off in 3.5k of memory.

For those unfamiliar with the Scramble arcade game, the game involves you flying a ship over various terrain, avoiding rockets, fireballs and cave monsters. All you have to defend yourself is the ability to drop bombs and use laser cannons to fend off enemy attack. You have a limited fuel load, so you must pick up fuel pods on the ground by destroying them (rather bizzarely) to keep your levels up. You get several lifes, compared to just one in this Vic 20 conversion. In Skramble, because you only have one fire button to use, both the bombs and laser cannon fire is done together.