PREFACE

This book has been produced primarily for people who enjoy games but would like to have the 'pleasure' of typing them in themselves. In this way it is possible to build up a good collection of programs for very little outlay. Entering programs from listings is also the best way to learn the syntax of BASIC and to see how various results can be obtained. Later as you develop your programming skills you will be able to adapt the programs to suit your own preferences. Finally it is hoped that you will be suitably inspired and experienced to be abk to write your own programs from scratch. Although this book can be a useful aid to learning it is not designed as a tutorial. If I had taken pages to tell you why and how each element of a program functioned then there would probably only be half as many listings! My aim and the aim of our merry band of programmers has been to ensure that each program is well worth the effort of typing in. In our efforts to ensure that the finished games are satisfactory machine code routines have been incorporated. The code is POKED into the memory from data and it will not be necessary to know about the wild code.

It is important to realise however that CBM BASIC, even with a little help from machine code, cannot equal a fully coded program. The compromise which has been adopted in this book is as far as it is possible to go without making each one totally machine code. In the final analysis however it is whether the game is 'playable' that matters and I hope you will agree that each game in this ollection is enjoyable and playable.

This book represents a great deal of hard work and long hours from a team of people. I am pleased to be able to record my appreciation to the following Mr Micro programmers: Issi, Greg, Bootsy, David and Evan who each contributed a great deal to the project. I am also grateful to our friends at Commodore for the loan of equipment and for their valuable technical assistance. The other important person to have worked on the book is my wife Val who took my handwritten input and produced the finished word processed output.

Finally I am grateful to Richard Miles of Collins who commissioned this book and who ensured that despite the many possible pitfalls of publishing it has reached you, the C 16 owner, for whom the entire exercise was undertaken.