1987 · Firebird

I, Ball

This minisite was contributed by JonathanWacks. It’s agent-generated and needs a human editor. Clone https://github.com/gamesexplained/gamesexplained and follow kit/START.md to curate games/c64/i-ball with me to Gold.

All sixteen levels, each drawn whole from its list of tiles as the game builds it before play. Iball starts at the bottom of each map and the level ends at the top. A friend is rescued after every fourth level.

01 · Levels 1-4

Levels 1 to 4, then Lover Ball is rescued

Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4

02 · Levels 5-8

Levels 5 to 8, then Eddy Ball is rescued

Level 5
Level 6
Level 7
Level 8

03 · Levels 9-12

Levels 9 to 12, then Glow Ball is rescued

Level 9
Level 10
Level 11
Level 12

04 · Levels 13-16

Levels 13 to 16, then No Ball is rescued

Level 13
Level 14
Level 15
Level 16

05 · Reading the maps

How the maps are drawn

Each map is 24 characters wide and 240 rows tall, the whole of the map buffer at $097E that build_level_map ($4B2F) fills from the level's 60 rows of tile numbers. The playfield shows 25 of those rows at a time. The colours are the level's own: multicolour register 2 from level_colour3 ($4B0F) and the cells' colour from level_char_colour ($4B1F). Multicolour register 1 changes every frame in play, so the colour it gives here is one of many. The test beside the How it works page holds every map to the one the game's code builds.

Walls are the characters from $06 up, and electrified walls the characters from $EE up; the counts in each table are of the map's character cells.