Attack of the Mutant Camels

Publisher: Llamasoft

Designer: Jeff Minter

Type: Shoot-em Up

Platform: C64

Rating:

This is one of the classic games of the Commodore 64 and I have to admit that it is absolutely awesome. Oh, and it is pretty hard as well, not impossible, just pretty hard. Basically, you are flying a space ship (and honestly, what else would you be flying in a shoot-em-up) and there are these massively gigantic camels heading towards you that shoot bombs out of their eyes. Oh, and occasionally they also fire smart bombs, which means that they home in on you.

You have energy levels, which does actually make it somewhat easier (otherwise it would be massively impossible because avoiding those bombs, and those smart-bombs, is a challenge in and of itself). You also have three lives, which really helps as well, but the problem is that first of all, these camels aren’t easy to kill – by no means. You simply have to bombard them with bullets, and as they get weaker they change colours until you finally kill one. Yet, there is more than just one.

The other catch is that these camels are moving slowly across the screen, and when they reach the edge of the screen it is basically ‘game over man, game over’. Yeah, when that happens, it does not matter how many lives you have left, your base has been destroyed and you might as well start over again.

This game is full-on fast-paced and is honestly one of those amazing games that I remember from my youth. Oh, it also has a two-player mode, though I don’t believe you attack them at the same time (which would have been much, much easier mind you). Yeah, this game rocks.

Oh, it also appears that this game has made it into the Smithsonian as a museum piece, at least according to the games Wikipedia article. Another thing I discovered from this same article is that you can find the source code for the game up on Github, which is also pretty awesome (though it was written in assembly). In fact, the popularity of the game has warranted it an article all of its own in the Old School Gamer Magazine. Oh, and in case I forget, you call also find out more about it on Lemon 64.