Petaxian (2021)
Petaxian is a Galaga-inspired space shooter for the Commodore 64 by Borgar Olsen, built entirely from PETSCII characters instead of hardware sprites. Formations of alien ships swoop and drop bombs while you slide your fighter along the bottom of the screen and shoot back, stage after stage. It was written in Prog8, a high-level language for 6502 machines, and tuned to run smoothly on a standard C64. Free software under the GPL-3.0 license; source code: github.com/cyborgar/Petaxian.
Objective Shoot down each alien formation and survive their bombs to advance through the stages. Controls • Joystick (port 2): left / right to move • Fire: shoot • Joystick up: start the game (title screen) Tips • The title screen's "press start or space" prompt and NES / SNES / keyboard table come from the Commander X16 version — on the C64, push the joystick up to begin • Keep moving: standing still under a diving formation is the quickest way to lose a life • Pick off divers as they break from the formation • Watch the panel on the right for your lives and current stage Modes • 1 Player