GYPSY

GYPSY is a video game in the action genre developed by Microcomputer Games, Inc. and published by Avalon Hill Game Company, The originally released in 1983. It is currently playable on Atari 8-bit.

'A bug has to eat'. These words of wisdom set the premise for the unlikely elevation of the moth GYPSY to video game protagonist. Indeed, Avalon Hill GYPSY puts you at the feet of a smiling, carefree GYPSY moth caterpillar who has arrived in a backyard with the rare and delicious Qok tree. Our hero could spend all day in an idyllic feast, eating leaves and drinking the nectar of the flowers. Unfortunately, such a delicious tree is a contested resource. There are Tasmanian flying ants crawling through the bark, the Locknest spider and, worst of all, the truly painful Fandango bee on the backside.

The Qok tree, your playground, stretches abundantly in height across eight screens, and you direct the grinning, fat caterpillar around it through the branches and trunk. Leaves are everywhere, continually regrowing, and are easy to chew on, but the real points lie in the flowers, which appear and disappear in a matter of seconds, making it a race to get the voracious little mouth to chew in the right place. Little ants will pull you off the branch, so they are to be avoided. The Fandango Bee at first just flits around randomly, but after enough time watching the caterpillar chew on its beloved tree, this fury from lower Sumatra will chase it down and sting. Each sting-and each ant and spider bite-subtracts points, but by the third, the little caterpillar turns a sickly shade of blue and moves slowly. The fourth sting turns it into a crumpled heap in the grass, another lesson from nature.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.