Commodore VIC20: Omega Race sequel using modern 6502 assembler

This past winter I envisioned making a sequel to the Bally-Midway arcade hit, Omega Race, and a favorite among many VIC 20 users when Commodore bought the licensing rights to make its home computer versions. Three months later, I released a beta version of the fully playable game. At the time, I did not think I would spend much more time with it, because it was so close to the game I thought it could be.

But there lies the problem — it was close. Again, that feeling of an incomplete job, so after a nice break with the Summer days, I came back to this personal gaming project and began looking for ways to get it done. Here is a list of changes made that brings the game to a new milestone:

• some core software sprite library optimizations for speed;
• energy bolts fired from the Fury’s ship travel faster;
• energy replenishment was increased to keep the pace of the action intense;
• all Thargoid ships round their turns, rather than jerky N-S-E-W moves;
• animations for Fury’s death and game over has been re-sequenced to incite the user to play again;
• a new firing solution AI for Thargoid scouts and space carrier.
• and of course, many bug fixes!

I am pretty excited how these improvements and finishing touches have made the game more playable and more appealing. It has a nice arcade feel to it with the progressive, intense action.