Dork’s Dilemma by C64Glen

Years ago, before sites like Commodore is Awesome or Vitno existed, I wrote a blog post about my favorite Commodore C16 and Plus/4 games. Much later, I realized I might have left out a great game, though my memory of it was fuzzy. I just remembered it was a maze game where you played as a creature inside an egg that sometimes poked its head out to look around.

A few more months passed without any further details about the game coming back to me until I stumbled upon this video on YouTube.

There was the very game I had been searching for, and it was called Dork’s Dilemma, released in 1985 by Gremlin Graphics.

My first thought was that it reminded me a lot of Bomberman. That’s probably just a coincidence, since Bomberman didn’t come out outside Japan until 1987, except for a not-so-great ZX Spectrum version.

The story goes that Dork crash-landed on a strange planet, and his spaceship broke apart and scattered across the surface. Your job is to go out, find all the pieces, and put his silver spaceship back together.

The planet is divided into 25 screens, and at the start, you pick where to begin by pressing the space bar as each screen flashes by. On every screen, you need to get rid of a set number of aliens by trapping them in the blast from a well-placed bomb. The number of aliens you need to defeat changes from screen to screen.

After you collect all the ship pieces, you have to put them in the right order in a final jigsaw puzzle to finish the game.

This game is a great, almost forgotten classic. It has colorful graphics, fast-paced action, and puzzle elements that make it a lot of fun. My only complaint is that the difficulty can be a bit much, especially if you start on one of the harder levels.

Overall, I’d give Dork’s Dilemma a solid 8 out of 10. It’s a really good game and deserves a spot in any Commodore 16 or Plus/4 collection.