Trashman

The Good
Trashman is a 1982 game released for Commodore’s early 8-bit computers. Not to be confused with the game released by New Generation Software where the player controls a garbage man collecting trash on both sides of the street, Creative’s game is a Pac-Man clone where the aim is to collect the trash scattered around the maze while avoiding birds. Finish your job and you’ll proceed to the next maze.

The title screen doesn’t appear immediately; you actually see the garbage truck pulling down information that tells you how to control the game. Moving the joystick or pressing a key takes you to another screen where you set the bonus level. The higher the bonus level, the more items appear in the bottom-right corner. I assume it’s the same as the difficulty level considering setting the bonus level to its highest causes everything in the game to speed up.

The maze has a nice layout, complete with four warp tunnels and a long passageway reserved for the bonus items that you can get for extra points. The black passages have a white border, and the whole maze has a lime-green backdrop. All the sprites are well designed; I like how the garbage truck moves along as you push the joystick in that direction. The power pellets are replaced with light blue trashcans, and when you collect them, you will be able to attack the birds. Once a bird is attacked, they turn into what look like deflated balloons and rush back to their hideout.

The sound is very good. I have no idea what each piece of music represents, but different pieces are played as the information on the title screen appears and also when you finish collecting trash and return to the maze center. There is actually one piece I am familiar with: a snippet of the French national anthem whenever you are awarded a bonus life for getting 10,000 points. The only sound effect I like is the siren that plays when you attack a bird, and the number of sirens played depends on how many birds you dealt with.

The Bad
Nothing is bad about this game.

The Bottom Line
Trashman is an excellent game, where you must collect all the trash in the maze to proceed to the next one. You must also avoid the birds who go out of their way to trap you. The game boasts a nice color scheme and the sound is great. Like many of Creative’s games, Trashman deserves to be in your VIC-20 collection.