Arcadia

Arcadia is a pure arcade experience wrapped up in a tiny 3.5K of Vic-20 machine code goodness.  Released on the Spectrum and Vic-20 (also later on the Commodore 64) the Vic version has always been my favourite.  It’s fast, colourful and employs a number of technical tricks that pushed the humble Vic beyond its usual safety zone.  For starters the screen was bigger (taller) and a multi-colour custom bitmap mode was used to create bold but smoothly moving sprites.

You begin by falling down the screen, your thrusters propel you upwards otherwise you descend to the base of the screen.  With left and right movement and independent twin blasters it takes all your skill and luck to survive the onslaught of level ones alien rockets that zoom across the top of the screen gradually descending towards you.  What makes it insanely hard is the rockets fire down at you very quickly and it is hard to avoid them.  But that’s not all, your twin blasters have a limited range, meaning you have to get very close to your enemy to have a chance of hitting them and the closer you get the hard it is to avoid their annoyingly lucky shots.

Yes, Arcadia is very hard and you’ll spend a lot of your time being blown up but it so addictive.  Partly to just beat it but also to see what aliens you will be pitted against next.  To complete a level you must destroy everything on screen within the time limit.  If you do this before the time is up you’ll get a very brief suicidal attack just so you’re not short changed.  Each level has a different set of aliens which behave differently.  Some are easier to handle than others.  Defeat all the alien waves and you loop around to the beginning - not something you’ll be doing that often!

You often hear gamers talking about being in “the zone” when playing insanely fast games and Arcadia is certainly fast.  It may seem like it is pure luck to get to level two when you first play the game, but with lots of practice you do get into the zone and find reacting to the aliens and their attacks almost intuitive.  Yes luck will still play a part in it, but it is a game that can be mastered and you’ll soon find yourself progressing through the levels.

Imagine released a number of pretty good games for the Vic initially, then it kind of dried up with pap and filler.  Not surprising really when you watch the Commercial Breaks TV programme that were following Imagine just as they collapsed!

Arcadia is a game worth checking out on the Vic-20 as it combines most things that makes a game good - fun, addictive and challenging to beat.

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One Response to “Arcadia”

1. TBCVIC says:

   Friday 20th November 2009 at 3:24 pm

   I agree it’s a challenging game, but I wouldn’t call that smoothly moving sprites.

   Reply