Galactic Abductors - Anirog - VIC-20 - Emulated, Pantheon - 16,410 points.

Galactic Abductors is an arcade shooter released by Anirog in 1983 for the Commodore VIC-20. It is based on the arcade game Stratovox. It requires 16K of RAM expansion. The author is credited only as 'Jeff'.

The VIC was quite good at the fixed shooter genre, and this is another good example. Your tank has to protect humanoids on the right side of the screen from being kidnapped by alien bird creatures. You can shoot them, but they require more than one hit to destroy. If they capture all your humans, you lose a life, but you can rescue them by shooting at the bird and making it lose its grip. I love the warning 'Got Me!' that appears when a humanoid is picked up by a bird. The birds also drop eggs which hatch into creatures that make straight for your tank, so you have to shoot sideways to take those out as well.

The birds attack in waves and you don't have to shoot them all for the attack to end - in fact I doubt that is possible due to the number of hits needed and how short each wave is. There are some great sound effects as the birds enter and leave the screen with the volume increasing as they arrive and decreasing as they leave. This really adds to the atmosphere. Although the graphics are not ultra smooth or flicker free, they are good enough and very colourful.

So, this is another good, if a little dated, shooter game for the VIC. I enjoyed it and recommend giving it a try.

This run was played on the 18th August 2024. The emulator is Pantheon, running on PC. The score reached was 16,410 points.

Time stamps:
00:30 High Score table.
00:34 Game start.
01:11 First life lost.
03:36 Extra life awarded for reaching 10,000 points.
04:39 Second life lost.
04:48 Third life lost.
05:03 Fourth life lost.
05:13 Fifth life lost.
05:20 Sixth life lost. Game Over! Final score 16,410 points.
05:29 Initials entry and High Score table.



Intro Music:
Music by: Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
Title: Legend
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