Avoid is a game from the past, taken from cassette tape by its original author, improved and released onto the Internet for Commodore VIC-20 fans old and new to enjoy. There's no storyline, as such, and it's written largely in Commodore's somewhat limited BASIC, but it's quick and unsophisticated enough for none of this to matter.

Starting with a choice of up to nine players in a turn-based fashion, the object, as the name suggests, is to avoid the attribute blocks that randomly appear and disappear from the play area, with your four-pixel-sized square moving continuously in one direction until it crashes or you change it. You may only move left, right, up or down, since no diagonals are allowed, and as you do, a trail is left behind you (which should also be avoided). The only object after that is to survive for a set amount of time and to beat your opponents or own highest score.

It plays like a twisted version of Snake, and without the colour would look like something that a Sinclair ZX81 might produce. There's no guide to how long you'll need to survive for each level on screen, which is a shame, but there is a gradual and natural increase per level. The obstacles appear (and disappear) randomly, with the screen cluttering up quite quickly, like a broken Etch-a-Sketch. Although you have to be quite precise with your movements, it can also be frustrating - as it's written in BASIC, the joystick routine can be slightly out on occasions due to it eating more processor time than it would do in machine language. But it is what it is, and the program itself is quite clever in the way it works.

The spot sound effects are reasonable enough, and there is a distinct lack of professional presentation. If you want a quick blast from the past, then this plays something equivalent to a magazine type-in, and as there's no software protection, you can list it and have a play around with the code should you want to.

There are two interesting releases recently for the Commodore 64, one being a fun static-screen arcade platform game, Minidon, inspired by the somewhat obscure Don Doko Don, a 1989 arcade machine by Taito. It sees mutant forest fruits, fungi and vegetables roaming around each level with the object of obliterating our hero, a local hammer-wielding dwarf. Luckily, his handheld blunt implement can do its own wrecking by squashing his mortal foe. In this form, they may be thrown and thus turning them into edible fruits, which can be collected for extra points.

There's little else to it at the moment, but the preview is already oozing quality. More information can be found at home.get.no/gstraume/c64/minidon.html

Moving onto horizontally scrolling shoot-'em ups, the C64 programming group Focus, with help from some other prominent coders, has released the latest playable preview of Scramble 2010 at https://csdb.dk/release/?id=86061. This is another title heavily based on an 80s arcade original, this one being released by Konami in 1981.

You pilot an armoured spacecraft through the Scramble system. There's some rugged terrain ahead, which isn't going to make your task an easy one, and with enemy rockets and missiles set to embark in your general direction, it's a case of quick wits deploying your ship's arsenal effectively. This is further complicated by needing to keep your ship's fuel levels healthy. Luckily, there are canisters, but they need to be blown up with your bombs, and this can be difficult to time.

As the old C64 never had a decent version of this game, Scramble 2010 is looking to right a wrong that has existed for far too many years, so have a play of the demo and send your comments and feedback via the above link. Right, that's me for the week. I'm off to play a new ZX81 game by Bob Smith. You can find out more next time.

Product: Avoid
Price: Free to download - robert.hurst-ri.us/files/avoid.prg
Developer: Darren Lee
Publisher: Self published
Platform: Unexpanded Commodore Vic-20