Games That Weren't^®

1983 Imagic

Platform: Commodore Vic-20

A neat space shooter that was released by Imagic on the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision platforms. However, the game was also seemingly due for release on the Commodore Vic-20 too.

In 2019, an AtariAge forum poster called “gorfulator” posted that he had come across a Vic-20 cartridge from a friend who worked at Imagic. His friend mentioned he had worked on a Moonsweeper game for the Commodore. By the looks of things, it was actually completed too. There was talk of backing up and preserving the game, but nothing further happened.

Then something quite fantastic happened, archivist Ken Van Mersbergen responded on the AtariAge thread with a link to a post titled “Summer Project” in May 2025. Where an amazing recovery of the game was about to begin. I’ll hand over to Ken at this point who tells the story:

“At a previous VCF Midwest, I had the opportunity to give a presentation on the history of Imagic, one of the most creative and influential game publishers of the early 1980s. Not long after that talk appeared on YouTube, I was contacted by Fred Crimi, who had worked at Imagic during its prime. Fred shared that he had been directly involved in two projects: Moonsweeper for the Commodore VIC-20 and Grand Slam Baseball for the IBM PCjr.

Unfortunately, no cartridge copy of the VIC-20 version of Moonsweeper seemed to exist – or at least none had ever surfaced. However, Fred still had something incredible: the complete, final source code, printed out in its entirety. This was a remarkable find, as many games from that era have been lost to time, surviving only in fading memories or incomplete prototypes.

Fred sent me the printout, and I set out on the monumental task of carefully entering the entire program by hand so it could be reassembled into a working game. As you might imagine, typing in pages of code line by line inevitably introduced errors and typos. That’s where collaboration came in. Simon Rowe and Torsten Kracke generously joined the effort, meticulously checking and debugging the entered code until it matched the printed source perfectly. Their dedication and expertise were essential to making the project a success.

Once complete, we had something truly special: the long-lost VIC-20 version of Moonsweeper, finally brought back to life after decades of obscurity. The game made its public debut at VCF Midwest 20, where attendees had the chance to play it for the very first time. Seeing people enjoy the game—nearly 40 years after it was written—was both surreal and deeply rewarding.

Projects like this highlight not only the ingenuity of the original developers but also the importance of preservation, collaboration, and community in keeping computing history alive. What began as a simple presentation on Imagic’s history has now led to the recovery of a lost piece of gaming heritage—one that fans and historians alike can experience once again.”

And so here we are, a game that has been missing for a staggering 42 years has now been saved thanks to the phenomenal efforts of Ken, Fred, Simon and Torsten. Ken has very kindly allowed Games That Weren’t to host the game, so that you can now too check out and enjoy the game as once intended. NOTE: The game needs to be ran in NTSC mode!

It is a great conversion too, and extremely sad that it never quite made it out, perhaps due to the Video Game Crash of 1983? What matters is that it is here now, so what are you waiting for? Get playing and please let Ken, Fred, Simon and Torsten know in the comments your thoughts.

With a huge thank you to Ken Van Mersbergen for his amazing work at reconstructing the game from printed source code and arranging its release, Fred Crimi for allowing Ken to preserve his lost work, Simon Rowe and Torsten Kracke for their collaboration and help with the preservation and error checking and to Fabrizio Bartoloni for the heads up.

Download

• Game_Moonsweeper (1983)(Imagic)[A000] (NTSC ONLY)

Video

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxpJC-4MU_4

Gallery