[vcf-midatlantic] New Commodore PET games

[Ethan Dicks]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2021 at 9:06 PM Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic
<vcf-midatlantic at lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
> By the way can someone point me to some 8K PET games that I can load into
> the museum's Original Chiclet PET computer?

The trick with them is not so much the size but that they know about
the reversed character set (compared to every Commodore computer that
came after).

There is a version of Space Invaders for the original PET.  It does
run in 8K and plays sound, just like it does on all the other models.

I would not recommend letting people play on the original keyboard
(game use wears the printing off the letter and does wear out the 3
keys - I had to replace the keyboard PCB on my 2001N because we
literally wore the gold off the pads).  I built an "arcade interface"
with 3 buttons that tapped into the row and column lines

I have original tapes from 1979 from Instant Software with several
games.  The label does say "PET 8K" but I don't remember if the games
are smart enough to know about the char set differences.

"Chimera" contains  Reflex, Dragon, Dungeon, Dragon Hunt, Dropoff,
Reflex 8K, and Batter-up
"Hooptedoodle" contains Maze Chase, Missile, Bombs Away, Worm Turns,
31/Klinker, Land Mine, Deflection, and Slot Machine

I also have an original tape from Creative Computing of
"Conversational Games".  No indication of what's on there, but I do
remember playing Eliza from it.

It's also possible to connect an Atari joystick to the User Port.
Some games did support that.

-ethan