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enGEOyable Entertainment - Playing Games with GEOS
by Bruce Thomas

It is something that I am sure almost everyone does with their computer. It happens to be one of the things the Commodore 64 is very good at. It is also the reason home computers keep developing into such powerful machines. In case you haven't guessed, the 'It' I am talking about is games.

While the Commodore 64 came loaded with features that allowed it to run fantastic game programs, it is, as any serious user knows, capable of doing amazing productivity work. Inexplicable as it may be, the superior (at the time) game features of the C-64 caused many people to dismiss it as not really being a serious computer.

Have you ever heard anyone say a 200 MHz computer with 3.0 GB Hard Drive, 64 MB RAM, 12X CD-ROM, 3-D video card and 16-bit sound card powering 60 Watt stereo speakers is not a serious computer? Of course not! That would be absurd.

While all of those little 'extras' may enhance the charts, graphs and color DTP the new machines can do, is it only coincidental that they also allow users to play some mind-blowing games? I think not! Games are a major driving force in the computer industry.

Recent issues of Commodore World have looked at productivity with GeoCalc, GeoFile and GEOS Disk Organization. In case you didn't know it, GEOS has some great games too! So sit back in your favorite chair with this article as we are going to forget productivity for a while and look at some very enGEOyable programs.

Pick a card, any card

The first game for GEOS was Berkeley's BlackJack Desk Accessory (D.A.) on the DeskPack Plus disk. I don't know if this set a trend or not but there are a lot of card games around. Solo Poker (Ken Turner), Draw Poker (Gary Reynolds) and Poker Machine (D.J. Sherren) are three very different versions of 5 card draw for GEOS. All of them make good use of the GEOS interface and graphics with the player going for a high score in 10 hands at once in the former, and betting on one hand at a time in the latter two.

GeoSolitaire (Paul Murdaugh) is a great version of this old-time favorite and can be found on the Landmark Series II disk from Parsec, Inc. Also on this disk is Geo Drop (previously geoTet) which is another familiar game. Both of these come in 40 and 80 column color versions.

Action Games

RUN Magazine produced 3 quality GEOS disks that are still available from Creative Micro Designs (CMD). The Power Pak I and II disks, plus GEOS Companion, feature 6 games between them including my sons' favorite on Power Pak II. In ShootOut (Wayne Dempsey) your objective is to shoot the bad guys (and not the good guys) in 3 different scenarios before they shoot you (easier with a mouse than a joystick!).

Compute!'s Gazette magazine couldn't let RUN grab all of the GEOS game fun and their arcade style D.A. SKEET (Roger Pingleton Jr.) appeared in the May '88 issue. This game is a fun way to shoot clay pigeons without the need for earplugs and shoulder rubdowns.

Sneaky Snake (John Chrisman) stars a bug eating, growing snake and is one of those games that appears deceptively simple at first. You will find yourself coming back to this one again and again though as you can customize it however you want. Options let you choose from 4 levels (a blank playfield to a complex maze), set the number of snakes (lives) you get and the speed (29 settings). The animation at the end of the game is well done also.

You must manuever 63 tiles on an 8*8 grid to maintain a path for your ship to travel on in Lightship. This 'moving maze' game is one of seven games written by Kent Smotherman and distributed by Parsec, Inc on their GEOS Games Disk. This collection of action/strategy games includes some very good adaptations of old favorites plus many with new twists (geoStorm is like Tetris but with tiles falling from 4 directions!).

While most of these games run under GEOS 128 in 40 column mode the first color game for the 80 column side of GEOS 128 was geoInvaders (William Coleman). This Space Invaders replica appeared in the October 1989 issue of RUN magazine as a type-in.

Brain Games

You can even learn with educational GEOS games. StatesNCaps (David Hall) is a D.A. that helps you improve your knowledge of State Capitals while geoMath (Richard Rardin) lets you work on the four basic math skills at 3 levels.

A popular game in the Windows world is Minesweeper and a fantastic C-64 PD version is available on the Internet. There is also a very good D.A. version for GEOS called Hazard! (Sean Huxter) that appeared on Loadstar #93. While only one level of play is available it is still challenging enough to be interesting and fun enough to make it the only game stuffed into my REU during bootup.

Another 'hidden object' game that I recently got off the Internet is Parallax (Red Storm - aka Joe Buckley). After clicking on the title screen you are presented with a 10*19 grid on which can be hidden from 3 to 9 'probes'. Using triangulation it is up to you to locate the probes in as few tries as possible. A high score list is maintained by the program.

Supermind (Sean Huxter) challenges players to find the hidden color pattern and is another game from the tower at Loadstar. This D.A. appeared on #96 and is similar in play, but graphically superior, to Decode! (Francis G. Kostella - FGK) from the RUN GEOS Companion Disk (Decode! has a cool soundtrack though).

Strategy Games

GeoWar (Lysle Shields) is a GEOS version of the board game RISK where up to 6 players (human or computer) take turns trying to conquer the world. The color display of the 'board' is very nicely done, as is the easy to use game interface.

Two other similar games, Circe V1.3 and Circe V2.0 (complete with Rotating Globe playing surface), appeared on Storm Disk 1 from Red Storm. I am trying to find a current source for this disk as I'm sure many users would like to get it (and not just for the games). In the meantime you can enjoy the PD Circe V1.0 (all 3 by FGK).

Mah-Jong is a terrific version of the ancient Chinese tile game. Irv Cobb made his tiles from GEOS program Icons for a very appealling, and geoSpecific, look to this game (an 80 column color 128 version has recently been written that uses the 64K VDC). Gameplay is different, and requires fewer mouse presses, than geoTile (FGK) from Power Pak II which gives you the option of removing the tiles after choosing a pair.

Describing itself as 'another bloody control-the-universe strategy game' Cluster Wars (when did FGK sleep?) is very well done for the GEOS environment. All input is done with your chosen device as you guide your fleets of fighters, cruisers, destroyers and even Death Stars in a battle with the evil MECHS for control of planets and the universe. Since taking over the universe can be a time-consuming process you have the option of saving games in progress.

Orbs and Ends

GeoComix is a very interesting concept developed by Sean Huxter. This interactive comic book came with one 'story', called The Orb, that the user could control to determine the outcome. Whether more were ever made by Sean, or anyone else, I don't know but this one is a unique GEOS experience.

These next two aren't games but, by making them the last auto-execs on your boot disk, they will put a little enGEOyment into booting GEOS. First off is AutoRAW (William Jaeger Jr) which plays digitized .RAW format sound clips. My favorite is the voice of HAL, the computer, from 2001: A Space Odyssey ("I'm completely operational and all my circuits are functioning perfectly"). The second file is called Fancy Start (Anthony Sommers) and pops up a nicely colored, GEOS 2.0 title screen as a 3 second intro.

GEOS was designed to increase the productivity of the C-64 while providing a common, easy to use, interface. The designers obviously knew about 'all work and no play' so they wrote Blackjack. As with most things in the Commodore universe, the GEOS game component has developed far beyond anything originally foreseen, I'm sure.

What this all comes down to is a lot of mousing around! I now have over 50 games for GEOS that make use of the 64's great graphics and sound capabilities. Unfortunately, all of this enGEOyment could cause some people to, once again, doubt the serious computing power of our trusty C-64's.