Crackpots – A new game for the Commodore 64, ported from the original Atari 2600

Crackpots, a game originally released for the Atari 2600 in 1983, has been ported for the Commodore 64 by Antonio Savona, with graphics by STE’86 and music by Saul Cross.

Very similar to Kaboom!, in the game, you control Potsy, a gardener. Your task is to throw potted petunias at the bugs that are crawling up the building to devour his beloved garden.

Just out of curiosity, below you can see the Atari version on the left and the Commodore 64 on the right. As expected the C64 version has more details and vivid colours. However, when I got these images, what impressed me the most was how well made is the Atari version considering how limited is that hardware!

The bugs come in waves and you have to keep up in order to kill them. At first, they come in a straight line but soon enough they will crawl up in diagonal, so you really have to plan well how to throw the pots. The gameplay is pretty basic but it gets very hard before you expect. Good arcade fun to test your reflexes!

The game is available on CSDB for free (link below). In the comments, Antonio mentioned that the source code will be published soon for those developers that want to see how a good game is made!

Link: CSDb

Author: Paulo Garcia

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