Game Idea: Quantum 2600

[postamessage2]

I want someone to steal this idea and make it into a homebrew. The only thing I want is a copy if you are going to make cartridges of this game. I'm no programmer so I can't do it myself.

 

The game is more or less a port of the old arcade game Quantum. In the middle of the screen is the angler fish. (It would be cool if you could animate him, such as make his eyes move or his mouth open and close but due to rom size limitations it's not important.) You control the lure (bait) of the angler fish and you can move it all around the screen. The lure leaves a small trail that you use to enclose small fish in order to catch them. You will die if a fish eats (makes contact) with the lure. The goal is eat as many fish as you can before you run out of lives. The graphic show how the game may look like. The lines explain movement, they should not visible in the game.

 

Goal

Your lure leaves a small trail behind as it moves. Trap your meal by surrounding it with this trail. Do not let your lure come in contact with any of the living creatures or it will surely be eaten. Without a lure to catch prey you will starve in this lonely inhospitable environment.

 

Control

This game is compatible with both the standard joystick and trak-ball. The lure moves in the direction the controller is pressed. The button is only used to start the game. To use the trak-ball make sure it is plugged into the left controller slot and set the switch to joystick.

 

Scoring - Trap and catch

Plankton = 5 points

Fish = 10 points

Jellyfish = 15 points

 

Character Movement

Lure (square) - controlled by player and has complete freedom of movement

 

Angler fish - Sits in the center of the screen, has no collision detection.

 

Fish - move back and forth randomly across the screen. They may go past the screen and appear on the other side.

 

Plankton - Bounces against the sides of the screen.

 

Jellyfish - Move up and down across the screen. The jellyfish can appear from both the right or left side. It cannot move backward.

[Nukey Shay]

A problem would be creating the "trail" that your lure draws. The VCS has no high-rez graphics, so the trail would either need to be made of the wide playfield pixels (which means that the screen area would need to be mapped in Ram), or be made of bits turned on in a "player" object (which is only 8 pixels wide).