Lost and Found: Manbiki Shounen (Shoplifting Boy) for the Commodore PET

Hello, its blogging time again and it's video game history time again, and its a very special blog today as i've managed to not only find a lost game, but hopefully made its existence more aware to video game historians everywhere. The game im talking about today is Manbiki Shounen, also known as Manbiki Syonen, which roughly translates into english as Shoplifting Boy. A game designed back in 1979 for the Commodore PET and is considered to be the first stealth game. 

A mocked up cassette of Manbiki Shounen

But in order to understand this game, we need to look backstory behind it. The game was created by Hiroshi Suzuki, Who created the game in college simply as a demo.

Hiroshi Suzuki in 2013

His career began in the late 70s while attending The University of Tokyo where he witnessed the Space Invaders boom as well as reading type-in programs for the NEC TK-80 in I/O magazine.

An article discussing BASIC for the NEC TK80 (1978)

Intrigued by the concepts of personal computers and coding, he joined the University of Tokyo computer club. Where members observed and discussed new hardware and software, but later became a gaming club, due to the leadership by Suzuki and his colleague Akira Takiguchi.

While at the club, Suzuki would design games on the PETs loaned to the club from Commodore Japan. He designed a few different games including a fortune telling game, and a flight simulator. But was trip to a 7 Eleven one day that inspiration struck. While in the store, noticed that the shelves were stacked high and the walkways were narrow, making it difficult to see. He thought it was the kind of layout that would entice a shoplifter. Thinking it would make a great concept for a game, he then took his idea to the PET and within a month, came up with Manbiki Shounen.

The game was shown off at the University of Tokyo Komaba Festival in November 1979, where it was a hit, running for a full 72 hours! It also caught the attention of a computer magazine called RAM, who  decided to publish the original BASIC listing in their February, 1980 issue.

However the problem was, no copy ever managed to get dumped, resulting in the game becoming lost from the gaming public for years, Until 2023, When I managed to find a copy of the game on a Japanese website.

I had learned about 4 or 5 years ago, back when i was in high school and learned about this game both though the usual Wikipedia entry as well as the hardcoregaming101 article about The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers: Volume 1 by John Szczepaniak (The first modern mention of the game in which Szczepaniak interviewed Suzuki), The Youtube Channel Stealth Docs coverage of the game and the PC 6001 version, and Jim Gerrie's coverage and conversion of the game to the MC-10 for his Type In Mania Blogs (The version of which I mentioned in my Septandy Post about the MC-10). and for the past few years that was the only version of the game known to be available anywhere (Including for me).

http://faculty.cbu.ca/jgerrie/MC10/JG_MC10_Recodings.html

To play the game, just choose "SHOPLIFT" from the cassette menu, type RUN, and hit Enter.

The main problem was is that RAM magazine is almost unknown in America and is confused with an Australian music magazine of the same name in Google Searches (In the case of that magazine, RAM stood for Rock Australia Magazine).

The Austrailian RAM Magazine cover (April 4, 1980)

But I was still desperate to find the original PET version or find a way to convert the MC-10 version to the pet as a reverse engineering type thing (simply because i'm not that skilled in BASIC). I even tried to ask Commodore enthusiast and YouTuber David Murray (AKA The 8bit Guy) if he could translate it for me, but he turned down the offer. Then I tried to use the obscure BASICODE system to translate it. Originally created in 1980 by the Dutch broadcasting company NOS, this was a computer project attempting to create a unified standard for the BASIC programming language. It worked by loading a translation program from cassette called a BASICODER, and then loading in the main program on either cassette or though radio transmissions.

A diagram explaining the process of using BAISCODE

BASICODERs were available for various computers including the Commodore PET and the closes compatible machine to the MC-10, The Dragon 32, and some where capable of translating the special BASICODE into native BASIC code for your machine. So my plan was to convert the MC-10 version to the CoCo through another converter, then use the BASICODER for the Dragon to convert the program to BASICODE, which would be picked up in the BASICODER for the Commodore 64, resulting in the program being translated into Commodore BASIC which could easily work in any Commodore 8 bit computer due to all of them sharing the same BASIC. However I was never able to gather the needed materials to make it possible.

Then on July 25, 2023,  I decided to look through the Japanese version of Google, And sure enough i found a webpage that not only contained a .PRG file of the game, But the original listing from RAM Magazine! 

The Website containing  .PRG file of the game and the original listing from RAM Magazine, What I consider a lucky find!

However I didn't want it to share it on Internet Archive or something, at least immediately, because A). It wouldn't have gotten much attention, and B). I didn't know if it would be compatible with all models of the PET.

To explain the latter we need to take a look at the computer in question, The Commodore PET. Released in 1977, It was the first computer made by Commodore which both was part of the 1977 trinity of computers introducing consumers to computers for the first time and paved the way for the VIC 20 and the Commodore 64. 

The Commodore PET (1977)

The problem is, Not all PET's are compatible with the same software, because the PET went through multiple hardware revisions and models throughout its lifetime. For example the original units sold from 1977 to 1978 had a Black and White display driven by TTL logic circuits. 

The screen of an early blue label PET

They also came with the infamous chiclet keyboard, which was hard to type on, has symbols and keys in unusual places, and is quite small, mainly so it could have room for a built in cassette drive. 

The early PET chiclet keyboard

The drive is actually an off the shelf Sanyo M1540A tape recorder that Commodore got multiple of in bulk, slightly modified them, and attached them directly to the boards. 

The Sanyo M1540A tape recorder and the PET Tape drive

Also the early models had 2 different RAM configurations, 4k (2001-4) and 8k (2001-8). The game requires 8k So I know it doesn't work on the original PET's that sipped out since those were 4k.

Then in 1979, Commodore introduced the PET 2001N series. They came in 3 different RAM configurations, 8k, 16k, and 32k. They also swapped the Black and White display to a Green screen display, and swapped the chiclet keyboard to a full size mechanical keyboard with Mitsumi Hybrid switches. The N stands for "Normal", referring to the keyboard. There was also a PET 2001B series with the B standing for "Business", designed for the business market, that had no PETSCII symbols on the keyboard, had numbers on the number key row instead of symbols, and booted up into Upper/Lower case Mode by default (Normally the PET requires the POKE 59468,14 command to switch to Upper/ Lowercase Mode). As a result the Keyboard Matrix (The circuit grid that maps the key wiring to the computer), is slightly different to the N series which is more or less backwards compatible with the original chiclet keyboard.

Left to Right: The Commodore PET 2001N-16 and The Commodore PET 2001B-32 (1979)

Also in 1979, Commodore officially introduced the line to Europe, though they couldn't use the PET name due to an existing trademark for a terminal system by Philips, So they were called The CBM 3001 series (CBM stands for Commodore Business Machines). 

The Commodore CBM 3001N-8 (1979)

In 1980, The 4000 and 8000 series were introduced, Which had 40 columns of text and 80 columns of text respectively. The 40 column machines were designed for the home and educational markets, and the 80 column machines were designed for the business market. Commodore also switched the name from PET to CBM for the US.

Left to Right: The Commodore CBM 4016 and The Commodore CBM 8032 (1980)

The 8000 series upgraded the screen size from 9 inches to 12 inches, and in order to produce 80 columns, Commodore started to swap the TTL logic for the video display for a MOS 6545 CRTC chip, a clone of the Motorola 6845 CRTC, the same chip used in the BBC Micro, the Videx VideoTerm display cards for the Apple II, and the MDA, CGA, and Hercules graphics cards for the IBM PC. 

The MOS 6545 CRTC chip

Finally in 1981, Commodore swapped the main PCB for a Dynamic PCB that could be configured to be either a 4000 or 8000 by changing the amount of VRAM and changing some jumpers right on the board as well as use 12 inch monitors for both the 4000 and the 8000 series. 

A Commodore 12 inch screened CBM 4032, also nicknamed "The Fat-40" (1981)

The Introduction of the 6545 CRTC also brought some compatibility issues with software as software for the 40 column machines don't run run on the 80 columns and vice versa. These newer models were also prone to an infamous hardware flaw known as The Killer POKE, Where if a user were to type in POKE 59458,62, it would it would throw the CRT display out of sync, and after a short time could cause permanent damage to some of the circuits and burn out the display! This was due to the fact that originally was a speed up hack from the original PETs which targeted a VBLANK flag that was replaced by a CRT control register.

Theres also the MiniPET by Tynemouth Software, Which is a modern day recreation of the PET sold as both a replacment PCB for the original models, and a stand alone computer. The Mini PET has the option of using a microcontroller for displaying video and that does bring along some incompatibilities with certain software. there's also the Mini PET 40/80, that has the ability to switch between 40 and 80 columns.

Left to Right: The Mini PET (2020) and The Mini PET 40/80 (2022)

So with all this in mind, I decided to contact Robin Harbon (AKA 8-Bit Show And Tell), A Commodore enthusiast and Youtuber from Canada, who not only had personal experience with Commodore computers as a kid back in the 80's, but also helped design the software Commodore DTV plug and play console back in the 2000's

The Commodore DTV Plug and Play system (2004)

So a couple months later, I contacted him via email and gave him the website link as a Christmas present to the community so to speak and I sent him the email on Christmas Day 2023. Sure enough the next day he said that would try to make a video on it, and a full 2 months later on February 25, 2023 he made that video! Ill let his video take over for the rest.

Overall Im proud and honored that I was able to get this game the attention and availability it deserves, and while i dont expected to get much recognition from this, I am at least happy I was able to save this piece of gaming history. Anyway, Thanks for reading! see you next time!

Update! You can play Robin's compliation for free online! the D64 image was made as one of the classic games on the Masswerk emulator. Ill leave a dirrect link to the opitimazed modern version so you can play it yourself.

https://www.masswerk.at/pet/?run=manbiki.d64/shopliftingboy-c&repeat=off&sound=true

Scratchenstein creations: Score

Hello, its blogging time again and its Valentines Day again. For the celebratory blog today, I decided to revisit Scratch to attempt to recreate a game I've mentioned before that was the basis for lost game I discussed previously, Exidy's Score. 

The Score arcade cabinet

Released in 1977, It was the first video game you could play as a female character. A

Now ive mentioned the game before but for refreshers, a quick recap. In 1974, a former Engineer for Monitor and arcade game company RamTek named Pete Kaufmann left the company to form Excellence In Dynamics, or Exidy. Their first games started shipping out at the end of 1974 and in 1975, their games TV Pinball, Table Pinball (the cocktail version of TV Pinball), Table Foosballer, and Destruction Derby were demonstrated at the 1975 MOA Show in Chicago, with Destruction Derby being the popular winner.

Flyer for Exidy's newest titles in 1975

The demand for Destruction Derby was so great that since Exidy was so small, they had to devote their entire production line just to make Destruction Derby. To free up production, they licensed the game to another company called Chicago Coin who produced the game as Demolition Derby.

A flyer for Chicago Coin's Demolition Derby

The only problem was that Chicago Coin was going out of business. So to recoup their investment and to provide a filler game til their next game Car Polo was released, Designer Howell Ivy redesigned the game adding operator-adjustable maximum time-limit of 99 seconds and changed the cars to people and hitting these stick figures the machine would emit a scream sound. 

Death Race Gameplay

The game shipped in January 1976, and 7 months later,  Seattle Associated Press reporter Wendy Walker noticed the game at a local shopping mall arcade. She wrote an article in the paper discussing the games graphic content and pretty soon news outlets in the US, Canada and the UK were covering the game. Even Exidy's assertion that you weren't running over people but rather "gremlins" didn't stop the controversy.

The first article discussing Death Race from the July 3, 1976 of the Daily Oregonian

However, the controversy actually had a complete opposite effect on the game as Exidy went from selling only 200 units to around 3000 units. What was meant to be a filler game sparked the very first controversy involving video games and Exidy became the first video game company to use shock value as a selling point. 

In 1977, Exidy rereleased the game as Score, instead of smashing cars or running over "gremlins", In this game you and or a second player controlled a male or female bar patron with the goal being to hook up with (or "score") with as many singles as you can.

The cabinet was changed too, as they replaced the steering wheels, gear shifts, and gas petals for joysticks and a small switch above to allow you to select between male and female genders. It also had a an optional dispenser that could be attached to the game and reward players with tokens for their high “score”s.

The flyer for Score (1977) 

It can be assumed that Exidy made the game to lighten their image a little bit after the publicity of Death Race, but this is unconfirmed. However despite it's innovations, the game sold poorly, Likely because since many arcade games like Score ended up going into places like bars and bowling alleys (places were people would try to date anyway), most people would prefer to try and hook up for real. As a result the game sold very few units and are extremely rare to find today.

So what I thought id do today was attempt to recreate it in Scratch. In a previous entry, I attempted to recreate Death Race, and since both games are essentially the same, It would be easy to recreate.  

Unfortunately time and work got in the way, and I still didn't get most of the bugs out but what I've got so far is still playable enough

It's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE! (Err...Sort of!)

So there it is, Not perfect but playable. In some ways I did better than with Batari Basic which i made a game recreation out of previously, But it's still not quite up to par with a full port. Though its still not far off, all I need to do is:

1. Add gender switch
2. Get Player 2's sprite correct
3. Add the animations
4.  sort out the AI
5.  Refine the Controls
6.  Add sounds

I am by no means done with this yet, I will continue to mess around with it and get a proper version of the game by next Valentines Day. But until then, Happy Valentines Day, and ill see you next time!