Hydrocarbon Emergency - Vic20

Title: Hydrocarbon Emergency
Platform: Unexpanded Commodore VIC-20
Video: PAL/NTSC
Interface: Joystick only
Game type: Derivative of the LCD game Oil Panic
Written by: W E de Villiers
Copyright: 2021 eXimietas Software

You are a petrochemical technician and the local oil pipeline has sprung some serious leaks. Your solution to this conundrum? Catch the oil in a bucket and dump it in some drums. A job well done! Well not so fast. The bucket can only hold four caught drops before it has to be emptied into some drums. There's a curious spider which can be chased away by using the fire button when it comes near. The droplets coming down may seem slow at first but there's trouble from the beginning. The trick is to empty the bucket as often as possible even if it isn’t full. An extra is awarded at the score of 99.

In the early nineteen eighties LCD handheld games were extremely popular. One of the more difficult games was called Oil Panic. It came in a white casing and was attractive enough but never became as popular as the other dual screen games such as Greenhouse or Donkey Kong. This is due to it being more frustrating. The difficulty stemmed from the bucket empty mechanism which made the PANIC element apparent from the very first droplets. This VIC-20 version is by no means a carbon copy or a direct facsimile. This is because of screen restrictions and the limits of writing for the unexpanded VIC. Hopefully one can still enjoy this version on its own merit.

Nintendo was the undoubted master in early LCD game technology. The company however quickly realized that a general game or computer system had a much greater potential than dedicated systems that could only execute a single piece of hardwired software. Hence their big gamble was made with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) which was engineered to be a television based cartridge system and which became the company's runaway success. The NES propelled the company to become a truly global player. Now which processor was at the core of the NES you may or may not wonder? Well a knock off of the MOS 6502, just with the superfluous decimal instruction set redacted (Has anyone ever used the assembler decimal mode for a program on a 6502 processor anyway?). Nintendo later used their experience with LCD handhelds and general television gaming consoles to produce a succession of handheld models with fantastic commercial success.

Greetings

Huffelduff (User handle on the VIC-20 Denial forum)

Notice: This software is distributed as is without any warranty given or implied. You can copy the software for personal use. The source code remains the copyright of E W de Villiers and eXimietas software and all rights are reserved.