When I have a fit of nostalgia I often resort to breaking out the Commodore emulator and tooling around with some games from my childhood. When I was a kid (or really, I was in my pre-teen years I guess) I had both a VIC-20 and then later a C64. The C64 I got after I nagged my dad to buy it from a friend of mine that had gotten sick of it and his mom wanted to sell it (along with the thousand or so pirated games). It was basically third-hand when I got it.

Anyway, the VIC-20 I got from an uncle of mine years before that, and it came with one or two cartridges – and that was it. No disks (or tapes) of any kind. The one cartridge that I remember that came with it was called “Pirates Cove“. Unfortunately, the cartridge came with no instructions, and it didn’t seem to work when I plugged it in. I thought it was worthless.

My first programming experiences came with this computer after I visited a computer repair shop (I think one of the “F” keys broke off or something). They handed me a whole bunch of Ahoy! and Commodore Gazette magazines – which gave me the keys to unlock the world of programming.

There were some drawbacks to my first “type-in” programs. They took me hours to type in. (I don’t even know how I realized that those magazines had programs printed in them that could be typed in and run – it seems kind of unusual that I just “figured it out”. Well, that’s how it happened) Not only did they take forever to do, they only lasted as long as I left the computer on. So after typing in a game for a day, I’d leave it on for a few days (or before it locked up) to play my new creation.

So this “Pirates Cove” cartridge didn’t seem to do anything. I had learned about the SYS command from programming with the VIC-20, and one day – for some unknown reason (perhaps I had read about something similar in one of those magazines) – I was experimenting with SYS command with the Pirate’s Cove cartridge in. Lo and behold, something “piratey” came up on the screen, and I was inexplicably in the middle of a pirate-themed text adventure!

It took some experimenting to get the right (as I know it to be called now) start address of the machine language program on the cartridge. I played that silly game for a long time, but I never beat it. If you want to download the game yourself and go through the same torture I did as a kid, you can get it here : Pirates Cove. You will need an emulator like the VICE emulator to get it going (and it’s a tricky one at that).
Another game that I have fond (but vague) memories of was a game called “Cave-in“.

I think I found it in a pile of reduced price junk at our local department store. I wasn’t really sure what it was (or if it would work in my computer), but after sticking it in the back of the VIC-20 I was happy as hell to finally have an actual, playable arcade game! And it was even fun! Later I also begged my parents to get a tape player and a bunch of VIC-20 cassette tapes with games on ‘em: Super Slither, Blue Meanies From Outer Space, Car Chase, and probably a couple more I can’t remember. Ahh, those were the days.

Since I had such a hard time locating these ROMS, I’m posting them here : Cave-in ROM and Pirate’s Cove ROM. Good luck beating Pirates Cove!