''Ant Attack'' is an action game written for the

ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer developed and marketed by Sinclair Research. One of the most influential computers ever made and one of the all-time bestselling British computers, over five million units were sold. ...

by Sandy White and published by

Quicksilva Quicksilva was a British games software publisher active during the early 1980s. Quicksilva was founded by Nick Lambert in 1980. The name Quicksilva was inspired by a particular guitar solo in a track on the album Happy Trails by Quicksilver Me ...

in 1983. A

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 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 ...

version was released in 1984. While ''

Zaxxon is a scrolling shooter game developed and released by Sega as an arcade video game. It had a limited release in December 1981, followed by a wide release in January 1982. In the game, the player pilots a ship through heavily defended space fortr ...

'' and ''

Q*bert ''Q*bert'' () is a 1982 Action game, action video game developed and published by Gottlieb for Arcade video game, arcades. It is a Video game graphics, 2D action game with Puzzle video game, puzzle elements that uses Isometric video game gr ...

'' 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 In many scientific fields, the degrees of freedom of a system is the number of parameters of the system that may vary independently. For example, a point in the plane has two degrees of freedom for translation: its two coordinates; a non-infinites ...

(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 A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

. 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 The following cities have, or historically had, defensive walls. Africa Algeria * Algiers * Ghardaïa * Timimoun Egypt See List of Egypt castles, forts, fortifications and city walls. * Al-Fustat * Cairo * Damietta Ethiopia * Harar Libya *Apo ...

of Antescher to rescue the other, who has been captured and immobilised 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, but 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, with the resulting

hexadecimal Hexadecimal (also known as base-16 or simply hex) is a Numeral system#Positional systems in detail, positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbo ...

digits typed sequentially into an external

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

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, Timex Sinclair and Amstrad. The Sinclair BASIC interpreter was written by Nine Tiles Networks Ltd. Designed to run in on ...

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

M. C. Escher Maurits Cornelis Escher (; ; 17 June 1898 – 27 March 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist who made woodcuts, lithography, lithographs, and mezzotints, many of which were Mathematics and art, inspired by mathematics. Despite wide popular int ...

Reception

''Ant Attack'' was well received by gaming press. The game was nominated in the 1983

Golden Joystick Award The Golden Joystick Awards, also known as the People's Gaming Awards, is a video game award ceremony; it awards the best video games of the year, as voted for originally by the British general public, but is now a global event that can be vote ...

s for Best Original Game of the Year, eventually coming second to '' Ah Diddums''."The Golden Joystick Award"
C&VG, Issue 29. The ZX Spectrum version was rated number 14 in the ''

Your Sinclair ''Your Sinclair'', originally ''Your Spectrum'' or ''YS'', is a discontinued British computer magazine for the Sinclair range of computers, mainly the ZX Spectrum. It was commercially published between 1984 and 1993. History The magazine was la ...

s Official Top 100 Games of All Time. In 2009, the staff of ''

Edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed by ...

'' wrote that it "marked the very beginnings of the

survival horror Survival horror is a Video game genre, subgenre of horror games. Although combat can be part of the gameplay, the player is made to feel less in control than in typical action games through limited ammunition or weapons, health, speed, and visio ...

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 inspired by M. C. Escher Video games with gender-selectable protagonists Video games with isometric graphics ZX Spectrum games Action games