| Snack Attack II | |
|---|---|
 Box for Snack Attack II | |
| Developer(s) | Dan Illowsky Michael Abrash |
| Publisher(s) | Funtastic |
| Platform(s) | IBM PC |
| Release | 1982 |
| Genre(s) | Arcade |
Snack Attack II is a Pac-Man -inspired maze game released as a self-booting disk for IBM PC compatibles. It was written by Dan Illowsky and Michael Abrash and published by Funtastic in 1982. [1] The game is a sequel to the Apple II game Snack Attack published by Datamost.
Richard Cook for PC World said "Snack Attack II is a simple but polished program; no problems interfere with serious gumdrop gobbling. This game's improvements over Pac Man – the speedup of the mouth after it gobbles an apple, the safety boxes, the skill levels, and the different mazes – give it an edge over its famous predecessor." [2]
Will Fastie for Creative Computing said "as far as I'm concerned, it's the best arcade-style game currently available for the IBM PC. The game is Snack Attack II. It's a Pac-Man clone. It's addictive and tough. It's well-built. It's fun." [3]
Corey Sandler for PC Magazine said "Snack Attack II looks like, sounds like, plays like – and if you really want to anthropomorphize its hero – tastes like old friend Pac-Man. Only it's been subtly improved." [4]
VisiCalc is the first spreadsheet computer program for personal computers, originally released for Apple II by VisiCorp on 17 October 1979. It is often considered the application that turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool, prompting IBM to introduce the IBM PC two years later. VisiCalc is considered to be Apple II's killer app. It sold over 700,000 copies in six years, and as many as 1 million copies over its history.
Pac-Man, originally called Puck Man in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. The player controls Pac-Man, who must eat all the dots inside an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating large flashing dots called "Power Pellets" causes the ghosts to temporarily turn blue, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points.
Michael Abrash is a programmer and technical writer specializing in code optimization and 80x86 assembly language. He wrote the 1990 book Zen of Assembly Language Volume 1: Knowledge and a monthly column in Dr. Dobb's Journal in the early 1990s. A later book, Zen of Graphics Programming, applied these ideas to 2D and 3D graphics prior to the advent of hardware accelerators for the PC. Though not strictly a game programmer, Abrash has worked on the underlying technology for games, such as Quake, for much of his career. Since 2014, he has been the chief scientist of Oculus VR, a subsidiary of Meta Platforms
Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade game developed and published by Atari, Inc. Designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, it was one of the most commercially successful games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of the first with a significant female player base. The primary objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede that winds down the playing field. An arcade sequel, Millipede, followed in 1982.
Ms. Pac-Man is a 1982 maze arcade game developed by General Computer Corporation and published by Midway. It is the first sequel to Pac-Man (1980) and the first entry in the series to not be made by Namco. Controlling the title character, Pac-Man's wife, the player is tasked with eating all of the pellets in an enclosed maze while avoiding four colored ghosts. Eating the larger "power pellets" lets the player eat the ghosts, who turn blue and flee.
Fueled by the previous year's release of the colorful and appealing Pac-Man, the audience for arcade games in 1981 became much wider. Pac-Man influenced maze games began appearing in arcades and on home systems. Pac-Man was again the year's highest-grossing video game for the second year in a row. Nintendo released the arcade game Donkey Kong, which defined the platformer genre. Other arcade hits released in 1981 include Defender, Scramble, Frogger, and Galaga. The year's best-selling home system was Nintendo's Game & Watch, for the second year in a row.
Shamus is a flip-screen shooter with light action-adventure game elements written by Cathryn Mataga and published by Synapse Software. The original Atari 8-bit family version is 16K in size and was released on disk and tape in 1982. The game was ported to the Apple II, VIC-20, Commodore 64, TRS-80 Color Computer, TI-99/4A, and IBM PC. Several of these were published by Atarisoft. It was later sold on cartridge by Atari Corporation following the launch of the Atari XEGS in 1987. "Funeral March of a Marionette", the theme song from Alfred Hitchcock Presents, plays on the title screen.
Hungry Horace is a video game developed by Psion Software Ltd. and published by Sinclair Research in 1982 for Commodore 64, Dragon 32/64, Timex Sinclair 2068, ZX Spectrum, and later for Microsoft Windows and Android. It is the first game in the Horace series. The gameplay is noted to be very similar to Pac-Man, involving the collection of food pellets in a maze while avoiding enemies. Despite this, critical reception of the game was generally positive upon release.
Dung Beetles is an Apple II maze game by Bob Bishop published in 1982 by Datasoft. The gameplay is similar to Pac-Man, but a portion of the maze around the player-controlled character is enlarged as if being viewed through a square magnifying lens.
Atarisoft was a brand name used by Atari, Inc. in 1983 and 1984 to market video games the company published for home systems made by competitors. Each platform had a specific color attributed by Atarisoft for its game packages. For example, video games sold for the Commodore 64 came up in green packages, games for the TI-99/4A in yellow, games for the IBM PC in blue, and so on.
The Sharp PC-5000 was a pioneering laptop computer, announced by Sharp Corporation of Japan in November 1983. It employed a clamshell design in which the display closes over the keyboard, like the earlier GRiD Compass and contemporary Gavilan SC.
Pac-Man is a 1982 maze video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. under official license by Namco, and an adaptation of the 1980 hit arcade game of the same name. The player controls the title character, who attempts to consume all of the wafers while avoiding four ghosts that pursue him. Eating flashing wafers at the corners of the screen will cause the ghosts to turn temporarily blue and flee, allowing Pac-Man to eat them for bonus points.
The Prisoner 2 1982 computer game by Edu-Ware is a remake of the 1980 game The Prisoner.
Jawbreaker is a Pac-Man clone programmed by John Harris for the Atari 8-bit family and published by On-Line Systems. Released in 1981 before an official version of Pac-Man was available, it was widely lauded by reviewers, and became a major seller. The story of its creation and Harris's Atari 8-bit implementation of Frogger form a portion of Steven Levy's 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.
Snack Attack is a maze action video game developed by Dan Illowsky for the Apple II family of computers. It was published by Datamost in 1981.
Following the introduction of the IBM Personal Computer, or IBM PC, many other personal computer architectures became extinct within just a few years. It led to a wave of IBM PC compatible systems being released.
Microsoft Flight Simulator, commonly known as Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0, is a flight simulator video game, released in November 1982 for the IBM PC. It is the first release in the Microsoft Flight Simulator series.
World's Biggest Pac-Man is a browser game created by Australian website designer Soap Creative along with Microsoft and Namco Bandai Games. It is a Pac-Man game which differed from the original by having multiple players play together in a series of user-created, customizable and interlocking mazes. The game was announced at the Microsoft MIX Developer Conference on 13 April 2011.