Ant Attack

The same type of isometric projection was used in Sandy White's later Zombie Zombie. It was also one of the first games to allow players to choose their gender.

• Title — Ant Attack • Developer — Sandy White • Publisher — Quicksilva • Engine — Softsolid 3D • Platforms — ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 • Released — (Spectrum) 1984 (C64) • Genre — Action • Modes — Single-player

• Illustration — ZX Spectrum in-game screenshot The player chooses whether to control the character of "Girl" or "Boy", who then enters the walled city of Antescher to rescue the other, who has been captured and immobilised somewhere in the city. The city is inhabited by giant ants which chase and attempt to bite the player. The player can defend themselves by throwing grenades at the ants, but these can also harm the humans. Once the hostage is rescued, the two must escape the city. The game then starts again with the hostage located in a different, harder-to-reach part of the city.

Almost all of the game code was written by hand on paper using assembler mnemonics, then manually assembled, with the resulting hexadecimal digits typed sequentially into an external EEPROM emulator device (SoftROM or "softie") attached to a host Spectrum. Similarly, the character graphics and other custom sprites were all hand-drawn on squared paper and manually converted to strings of hex data. Additionally, some minor add-on routines such as high score registration were added on to the core game using regular Sinclair BASIC. The game's setting of "Antescher" is a reference to the artist M. C. Escher.