Attack of the Mutant Cabbages

Attack of the Mutant Cabbages
A Reset 64 4kb Game Contest (2016) entry (and my first C64 assembly game)
Developed by Anthony Stiller
Music and Sound by Vanja Utne

Poor old Gertie! After spraying her prize cabbages with some experimental fertiliser (she knew she should have stayed organic!) Gertie now has to beat back the brutish brassica using only her handy spray backpack and good, old-fashioned gumption.

You guide Gertie (with a joystick in port 2) around her once beautiful garden. That backpack is pretty heavy but Gertie can move at a pace when it counts. None of this spinning around, though. That’s for the young folk.

Hold down fire to stand your ground and unleash a torrent of “special blend” at the marauding Cabbages as they march towards Gertie’s cabbage patch. Spray them long enough and they’ll slow down (though will always creep ever-onwards, wanting nothing more than to eat the flesh of their own leafy kind). Keep spraying and they’ll swell up (silly Cabbages can’t keep their mouths closed!). KEEP spraying and the Cabbage explodes! Yes! That’s showing ‘em, Gertie!

If a Mutant Cabbage gets to a cabbage in the cabbage patch it munches on one and then wanders off, content.

But even though these voracious vegetables only want to snack on other leafy greens doesn’t mean that they can’t give Gertie a good thumping. Get too close and Gertie will get knocked down, wasting precious seconds while she finds her lost false teeth.

Pop 50 Mutant Cabbages and the rest scarper, leaving Gertie to watch the lovely, errr … purple … sunset.

Have all 16 cabbages gobbled up and Gertie drops to the ground in despair, wondering how she’s going to make her award-winning cabbage chutney for the next village fair.

HINTS and TIPS
● Mutant Cabbages will only eat one cabbage
● Slow down fast Cabbages to give you time to pop other Cabbages
● Get a good blast right in the Cabbage’s mouth and they won’t be able to eat any cabbages
● If a Cabbage under fire gets too close to Gertie she panics a bit and her shot goes astray
● The screen border changes colour as the difficulty slowly increases
● It’s fairly easy to finish the game with one cabbage remaining. Try and see how many cabbages you have left in your patch and then try and beat that score 

Special thanks to Vanja Utne for her wonderful sound effects and music, and for her patience when I did a silly thing three times; and to Roy Fielding for his encouragement and help way back when.