Among the favourite calculator games I made in secondary school were Zoma and Duck Hunt (Famicom). Zoma takes on my earlier popular Eights Invaders forumla and expands on it. The most fun aspect I feel, is the addition of combos.
Zoma is a calculator adaptation of the game Zuma, the former of which I programmed initially for the Casio 50FH calculator, which I later ported to the less advanced 3650P calculator as well.
In the original Zuma, you control a frog and shot balls to an advancing chain, trying to make a row of 3 or more balls. If the chain of balls reaches the skull, you lose.
I don’t quite remember whether I have lives in Zoma, but the idea is quite similar. The first level starts you off with 2 balls, if I recall correctly, and the starting number of balls increases as you move through the levels. There is a Zoma meter (that gets higher as you progress through levels) which you need to fill by removing balls from the chain. The main input is an integer from 0 to 5. The ball number (0 or 1) is generated afterwards. If your input matches the ball number, you have successfully removed a ball from the chain, and another ball number is generated. If that matches too, you get a combo and another ball gets removed. This repeats until the ball number generated no longer matches your input. Then, the bonus item number (any integer from 2 to 5) is generated. If your input matches this number, you score big points based on your current round number. Since the bonus item number and the ball number would no overlap, you would be sacrificing a turn (thereby letting the chain of balls advance towards you) to try to get the bonus item, presenting a risk/reward factor. After the Zoma meter fills up, you only need to remove the remaining balls in play and you would complete the level. There are no bosses and the game ends when you lose.
