''Ant Attack'' is a ZX Spectrum computer game by Sandy White, published by Quicksilva in 1983. It was converted to the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

1984 Events January * January 1 – The Bornean Sultanate of Brunei gains full independence from the United Kingdom, having become a British protectorate in 1888. * January 7 – Brunei becomes the sixth member of the Association of Southeast A ...

. While '' Zaxxon'' and '' Q*bert'' previously used

isometric projection Isometric projection is a method for visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions in technical and engineering drawings. It is an axonometric projection in which the three coordinate axes appear equally foreshortened and ...

, ''Ant Attack'' added an extra degree of freedom (ability to go up and down instead of just north, south, east and west), and it may be the first isometric game for personal computers. The same type of isometric projection was used in Sandy White's later '' Zombie Zombie''. It was also one of the first games to allow players to choose their gender.

Gameplay

The player chooses whether to control the character of "Girl" or "Boy", who then enters the walled city of Antescher to rescue the other, who has been captured and tied up somewhere in the city. The city is inhabited by giant ants which chase and attempt to bite the player. The player can defend themselves by throwing grenades at the ants; however, these can also harm the humans. Once the hostage is rescued, the two must escape the city. The game then starts again with the hostage located in a different, harder-to-reach part of the city.

Development

Almost all of the game code was written by hand on paper using assembler mnemonics, then manually

assembled Assemble or Assembled may refer to: * ''Assemble'' (album), 2005 album by Grown at Home *Assemble (collective), collective of people based in London *'' Marvel Studios: Assembled'', American television series of documentary specials See also * * ...

, with the resulting

hexadecimal In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, hexa ...

digits typed sequentially into an external

EEPROM EEPROM (also called E2PROM) stands for electrically erasable programmable read-only memory and is a type of non-volatile memory used in computers, usually integrated in microcontrollers such as smart cards and remote keyless systems, or as a ...

emulator device (aka SoftROM or "softie") attached to a host Spectrum. Similarly, the character graphics and other custom sprites were all hand-drawn on squared paper and manually converted to strings of hex data. Additionally, some minor add-on routines such as high score registration were added on to the core game using regular

Sinclair BASIC Sinclair BASIC is a dialect of the programming language BASIC used in the 8-bit home computers from Sinclair Research and Timex Sinclair. The Sinclair BASIC interpreter was made by Nine Tiles Networks Ltd. History Sinclair BASIC was orig ...

. The game's setting of "Antescher" is a reference to the artist M. C. Escher.

Reception

''Ant Attack'' was well received by gaming press. The game was nominated in the 1983 Golden Joystick Awards for Best Original Game of the Year, eventually coming second to ''

Ah Diddums ''Ah Diddums'' is a computer game released by Imagine Software for the ZX Spectrum in 1983 and can be run on the 16KB/48KB versions of the machine and the Commodore 64 in 1984. Gameplay The player controls a teddy bear who is trying to escape a ...

''."The Golden Joystick Award"
C&VG, Issue 29. The ZX Spectrum version was rated number 14 in the '' Your Sinclairs Official Top 100 Games of All Time. In 2009, the staff of '' Edge'' wrote that it "marked the very beginnings of the survival horror genre".

References

External links

Sandy White's official Ant Attack nostalgia page (includes playable game)
* * * {{lemon64 game, name=Ant Attack, id=119 1983 video games Commodore 64 games Quicksilva games Single-player video games Video games about ants Video games developed in the United Kingdom Video games featuring protagonists of selectable gender Video games inspired by M. C. Escher Video games with isometric graphics ZX Spectrum games