Sometimes, the artwork and title of a game really captures the imagination. Look at the box art. The title roughly translates to “Skeletons Reek of Death”. It sounds like an epic role-playing game, or at least a good action game with fantasy baddies to fight off.

nope.

It is a breakout clone with a dancing skeleton on top. And the dancing animation was probably done in BASIC, because the arms disappear briefly as they move. I mean, I’m not going so far as to say it’s a terrible game, just... one of those titles where they trick you by the box art. Hearkens back to my Atari 2600 days!

Update: Okay, let's revisit this a bit. I am selling this game, so I took it out to play it one more time and take some photos for the auction. I take back what I said, this is not a breakout clone. Nothing bounces back at you, you just keep shooting. In that respect it is closer to Space Invaders, but you're not really shooting at enemies, for the most part, at least. You're shooting at a wall of objects, so in that respect it *is* like breakout.

But there is the skeleton at top, which represents your target. It's not one hit and it's over, you have to eliminate him piece by piece. His legs, arms, body, and head. I thought it was just a simple matter of order, the first time you hit, it takes his legs, then his body, etc. But it's not, it removes the body part that you actually hit. That's kinda cool! And in addition, there is something that shoots back at you overhead. Let me tell you, taking photos of this game was hard, because there's no pause, and that overhead enemy attacks fast!

I also noticed as I compared my older pictures with my recent ones, the difference in color. It's hard to say which is better. The recent photos look closer to black and white with only some areas displaying clear color, but maybe that's okay for a game that displays a skeleton and a lot of skulls? The earlier photos are more colorful but I sort of think it's just over-saturated now.

In fact, this game is not actually programmed in color at all. If you play it over RGB, it displays in black and white only. Like the Apple II, this game achieves its color through rapid alternation of turning pixels off and on. Essentially a hack of the NTSC specification. So the monitor's focus and color settings have this considerable impact, whereas they're not even options when displaying over RGB.

I read in the manual that this game was programmed using the EXAS BASIC compiler. This is an expansion available for the ROM/RAM Cartridge expansion. I had this briefly but could never get it to work. It may have required a real PC-6001, not being able to function on a PC-6001mkII in 6001 mode. It's rare, but I've seen erratic behavior from one unusual PC-6001 cartridge before, so I think it's a plausible theory.