Gators N Snakes (James Sanders)

Title – Gators N Snakes
System – Commodore 64
Author – James Sanders
Publication – Ahoy! Magazine, Issue 20, August 1985
Page Scans – 1 2 3 4
Preserved by – eboy71
Recommended Emulator – VICE

Download ROM

Loading the Game –

Mount the disk image (Gators N Snakes – 1985-08 Ahoy.d64) in your emulator. In VICE, this is done by selecting File → Attach Disk Image
Load the app by typing LOAD”GATORS N SNAKES”,8
Once loaded, type RUN to start

Instructions:

Gators N Snakes is a Frogger variant
Plug joystick in port 1
You start with four men (hunters) on the left side of the screen, and your goal is to move them to their hunting shacks on the right by avoiding the snakes and gators.

Article Text:

Gators N Snakes is an arcade style game that utilizes a number of the great features of the C-64. What gives the program its great movement is a machine language routine that moves eight sprites at random speeds. The same routine also detects sprite to background collisions which are then handled in the BASIC portion of the program.

Gators N Snakes has as its setting the murky waters of a Louisiana swamp. The hunting party is on the last leg of the long journey. The gator and snake infested swamp is the final obstacle that separates them from the security of home. Your job is to help the hunters reach their homes by carefully crossing that dreaded swamp. After the game is loaded and run, the playscreen becomes visible with gators and snakes swimming up and down the swamp waters. There are four returning hunters on the left side of the screen, and their destination on the right side. Sounds simple enough, right? The problem (and the object of the game) is to get the hunters home in one piece.

You have four opportunities to get them home. The gators and snakes must be avoided at all costs. Contact with them means certain death. If you are successful in getting a man to his home, you are rewarded with an additional man. If you are able to get all four men home, you advance to the next level and may try again. There are ten levels of difficulty; the increase is accomplished in two ways, the more noticeable is the increased size of the reptiles. The less noticeable but more dangerous is the gradual increase in the speed at which the reptiles swim. This speed creeps up on you, so be careful.

The program utilizes another ML routine that quickly moves the character set in order to generate a few custom characters.

When all four men have met their doom, the game is over. At this point the current score is compared to the existing high score and replaces it if it’s higher. The high score is maintained for the next game (which is begun by pressing the fire button).

I have inserted two checks to insure (sic) that the ML routines are typed in correctly. Both will signal the lines in which the mistake is made in order that the mistake may be easily found and corrected.

Carefully type in the program, and save it to tape or disk before you run it. After it is saved plug a joystick into port #1 and get ready to cross the Gator N Snake infested swamp.

Editor’s Note:

Definitely an enjoyable Frogger clone! The variable speeds and sizes of the enemies makes it particularly interesting.
This appears to be the only game credit by the author
If you are interested in typing in the program, you may want to use Bug Repellent, Ahoy! magazine’s proofreading program. This one requires V2, which was the version used by Ahoy! from June, 1984 to April, 1987.