The Count

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Peer Johannsen

Weird Science - Tales from the Vectrex Academy Lab

Vectrex Game Project Title

This is an old project which has been stopped and has been continued as a new improved and much advanced version, called:

COUNT VECULA

This was sent to me by a talented and lovely young artist, who has an interest in Game Design, and who felt inspired by the Vectrex system to create some arcade-cabinet artwork for this game.
Many thanks, Marinka, keep up your awsome work!
Click on image to enlarge and see full-size version

"Greetings Visitor, and welcome to my castle. Come in and enter at your own risk! I am the Count. And I love to count. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Easy, isn’t it? It’s as simple as that. Let us play a little game. We will play for a price. Nothing much, just your soul. All you have to do, is count. Make no mistakes, and you will live. Miscount, and your days are numbered. If you can count all the rooms in my castle, then I will let you go. There are numerous rooms in my castle, and they are not all accounted for. You might encounter strange things on your way, and you must count them all. Don't be afraid. I am your counterpart, and I will always be close. I only want your best. I have played this game countless times before, and I have never lost count. Now, get ready, and take a bow. After all, I am the Count, and you can always count on me…"

Objective: vist all rooms of the castle.
Count (shoot and eliminate) all objects of each room from 1 to 9 before the clock strikes midnight.
Always shoot the lowest number which is active and visible next.
Hitting the wrong number results in various penalties...

Joystick left-right: move sideways
Joystick up-down: accurately draw bow and use button 4 to release (alternative to using button 4 only)

Player selection allows for a single player mode, or for a two players-taking-alternating-terms mode.
Game selection the initial level of difficulty.
There are various ways to traverse the rooms of the castle. Some ways might be less or more difficult than others.

Up to four arrows can be shot simultaniously.
Arrows can be shot with different speeds, depending on how much the bow is drawn.
The fastest arrow is not always the best choice.
There are levels in which accurate timing and slow arrows are essential.

This project originally started as an educational example for the students of my Vectrex Academy class back in 2017. It somehow grew out of hand and evolved into a fully fledged Vectrex game.
But then at some point, for various reasons, I grew tired of it and simply could not bring myself to finishing the last 2% of the project (which was basically "just" the definition of the levels and their sequence). So I buried the whole thing in the crypt, locked the basement door, and did not think of it for a long time.
After years of silence, now every once in a while there was noise coming from the basements again. The creature seemed to be about to weak up.
So I have to finally readied myself for a last confrontation and went down and opened up the crypt...
The coffin was wide open, and the creature was alive. Beware the rise of The Count!

The code of the game was mainly written 5 years ago when I was still learning about Vectrex programming. I have not changed or optimized it according to what I know today about writing games for the Vectrex. There are most likely still bugs in the code, and the 50Hz framerate barrier might be exceeded during gameplay. Please report if you find any issues while playing.
Feedback is very welcome on which room is easier or more difficult than another, and on which rooms should probably come early or later in a sequence with stricly increasing difficulty.