The 10 best Commodore VIC-20 games

Ranked by the scores that magazines gave these games when they came out. The list draws on 545 review scores of 270 Commodore VIC-20 games; 76 of them have enough reviews to be ranked.

Only 2 Commodore VIC-20 games with 3 reviews or more have reached 90: here are the best 10.

#	Game	Platform	Year	Score
1	Rockman	VIC-20	1985	96.7
2	Matrix	VIC-20	1983	95.2
3	Chariot Race	VIC-20	1983	88.8
4	Countdown UXB	VIC-20	1983	85
5	Bongo	VIC-20	1984	84
6	Rest In Peace	VIC-20	1984	83.3
7	Omega Race	VIC-20	1982	82.5
8	Radar Rat Race	VIC-20	1981	81
9	River Rescue	VIC-20	1982	80.3
10	Galactic Abductors	VIC-20	1983	80

Highly rated, with fewer than 3 reviews

18 Commodore VIC-20 games have a score of 90 or more, but from only one or two reviews, and no Metacritic score.

Game	Platform	Year	Score
Adventureland	VIC-20	1981	100
Alphoids	VIC-20	1983	100
Death Race	VIC-20	1985	100
Duck Shoot	VIC-20	1984	100
Falcon Fighter	VIC-20	1983	100
Gridrunner	VIC-20	1982	100
Lunar Leeper	VIC-20	1981	100
Mosquito	VIC-20	1984	100
Ricochet	VIC-20	1982	100
Video Vermin	VIC-20	1982	100
Jupiter Lander	VIC-20	1981	91.5
Arcadia	VIC-20	1982	90
Brain Pain: The Memory Game!	VIC-20	1984	90
Myriad	VIC-20	1982	90
Sword of Hrakel	VIC-20	1983	90
Frogger	VIC-20	1983	90
Subspace Striker	VIC-20	1982	90
Teddy	VIC-20	1984	90

How the ranking works

The scores are the ones magazines gave when the games came out, all converted to a 0–100 scale. Only one review per magazine counts for a game: the most recent.
A game's score is half the average, half the median of its magazine reviews. A title opens the game's page on uvlist.net; a score opens the report with every review behind it.
A game needs at least 3 magazine reviews to be ranked. With equal scores, the game with more reviews comes first.
Metacritic already sums up many reviews, so it is never mixed with the magazines: it is used only for games with fewer than 3 magazine reviews, as their only score.
Each list shows every game with a score of 90 or more. Games with fewer than 3 reviews and no Metacritic score are shown apart: their score is promising, but rests on one or two opinions.

The lists are rebuilt each time reviews are added. To filter by genre, year, magazine or publisher, explore all the scores in the report.

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