Skramble

The Good
When a popular arcade game such as Scramble gets released, various small companies that only develop for a specific computer scramble to get their own clones out, just in case an official port isn’t made available for the system. One such company was Rabbit Software who released Skramble for the VIC-20.

For those of you who don’t know about this game – especially if you weren’t born in the Eighties – you control a spacecraft that must make its way through a series of caverns that vary in size, shooting or dropping bombs on enemies approaching you while making sure you don’t run out of fuel.

The game is basically a carbon copy of the version created by Terminal Software, ranging from the “Yankee Doodle” rendition to the sound effects used. That’s because both versions were created by R. W. Stevens. The only difference here is that the terrain is yellow and there is no support for keyboard. It’s easier to just play with the joystick anyway, since most people tend to press the wrong key by accident, myself included.

The Bad
The game suffers from choppy scrolling. After making Terminal’s version, Stephens could not be bothered to give the player more than one life, or add an actual fuel gauge to the game, rather than just a bunch of numbers to represent it.

The Bottom Line
As an official port of Scramble wasn’t released for the VIC-20, a number of small companies scrambled to release their own clones. Rabbit Software was one of them. Their version is nothing special. Regardless of the choppy scrolling, the game should be entertaining until you lose your only life. Having said that, I feel for people who brought this version of the game, only to throw it across the room in a fit of rage because of this.