RGB Invaders for the C64

RGB
INVADERS

A NEW GAME FOR THE COMMODORE 64

Colours are your weapons

Invaders in seven colours are coming down on your launcher. You have three keys: J fires a red ring, K a green one and L a blue one. A ring only destroys invaders of its own colour.

Press keys together to mix colours:

• J + K → yellow
• K + L → cyan
• J + L → purple
• J + K + L → white

Only one ring can be out at a time, so every shot counts. If a single invader reaches the bottom, the game is over.

Scoring

• Red, green or blue invader: 1 point
• Yellow, cyan or purple: 2 points
• White: 3 points

⚡ Turbo mode

Hit 4 invaders of one colour in a row and TURBO lights up. Chain 4 more in any one colour and the whole screen blows up for a 25-point bonus.  A miss or a different colour starts the streak again.

Bosses

After every 25 groups of invaders, a striped boss comes down. You can only hit its lowest band, and each band needs its own colour. Fire the wrong colour and the boss drops a row closer. Boss fights are played to Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, arranged for the SID chip.

Later waves bring the invaders in pairs, threes and fours.

Features

• Written from scratch in 6502 assembly for the Commodore 64; runs on PAL and NTSC machines at the same speed and pitch
• Up to 32 moving sprites, made from the C64's 8 by reusing them down the screen
• The ring expands without flicker, using two screen buffers
• Original blues soundtrack, and SID arrangements of Mussorgsky for the bosses
• An attract mode where the game plays itself: press D on the title screen, or wait a minute

Controls

Key	Action
J / K / L	Fire red / green / blue (hold together to mix)
SPACE	Start a game
M	Music on / off
N	Sound effects on / off
D	Watch the demo
Q	Back to the title screen; from the title, quit to BASIC

Download

• rgb_invaders.zip: the game as a disk image (.d64), a cartridge image (.crt) and a program file (.prg), with a README. Runs on PAL and NTSC machines; see the install instructions for how to start it.

📱 Mobile versions

The game is coming to Android and iOS soon. Check wanagram.net/get_rgbinvaders.

Credits

Code, graphics and the blues soundtrack by Miklos Merenyi.

The boss music is excerpted from Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition (Gnomus; The Hut on Hen's Legs), from the edition typeset by Knute Snortum for the Mutopia Project. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: reduced to two voices and converted to SID note data.