Ant Attack

16K ZX81 - 2013

Writing One Little Ghost proved that the ZX81 was indeed capable of doing justice to an isometric game, and so I started to think about pushing further to a game which had layers of blocks - a proper 3D isometric game. Ant Attack quickly became an obvious choice for that game, but if I was to do it justice I had to somehow get a 48K Spectrum game into the humble 16K of the ZX81, and I already knew that the map data alone consumed 16K of the original. Initially I wrote a map viewer to show a compressed version of the map on the ZX81 as a proof-of-concept, and posted a picture of it into the guest book on Sandy White's website, along with an brief explanation of what I was planing to do, and asked if he was OK with the idea...

Luckily he was, and more than that we started to work together on the idea of using some of the code from the original in order that this not just be a remake but as close to the original as possible. Over six months later, and numerous redesigns of my code as I repeatedly ran out of memory, and the game is finished. I'm really pleased with the result, not just from a coding stance but also in my appreciation of the original game, how it was coded, and just what an amazing game it still is.

For more information on the original game, visit the Ant Attack page on Sandy White's website.


Sandy White - "Awesome! You've really pulled off a Miracle! I'm grinning ear to ear!"
Philip Oliver - "Taking it to the ZX81 - you're going the wrong way!"