Commodore 64 love

[Pasky]

I remember when my pops brought home a Commodore 64 he bought from the PX when I was a kid and he bought Double Dragon which was the first arcade game I had ever played and being amazed at the games.

I also remember playing Airborne Ranger so much and Space Taxi for hours trying to beat the game. My uncle had Maniac Mansion and that game used to scare the shit out of me when I was a kid, always thought Ed Edison or Edna would capture me in every room haha.

There was another game I used to play that my mom loved and it was a Snake type game but it was called PUKE. I cannot find the rom of this game or even any mention of it so I'm wondering if it was a bootleg or what.

So what were your favorite C64 games? I've been revisiting a lot of them using emulation and still find Airborne Ranger, Space Taxi, and Maniac Mansion just as fun as ever and the ability to fast forward loading times is great.

 

[Opethian]

Zork series?

 

[Dr Shroom]

Paradroid.
International Karate.

 

[MCF 76]

Ghosts n Goblins (love the music)
Bruce Lee
Arkanoid 2
Aliens
Double Dragon 2
Spy Hunter

 

[Takumaji]

I'm a huge Commie fan, my machine is still set up in my office upstairs. I also use it (together with the MSSIAH MIDI synth/interface) for making music.

There's a shit ton of games I love, like Alien Syndrome, Mega Apocalypse (sequel to Crazy Comets), Bruce Lee, Gauntlet - The Deeper Dungeons, Slap Fight, Montezuma's Revenge, Solomon's Key, Nebulus, Salamander, Space Taxi, Test Drive, Who Dares Wins II, Jumpman Jr., Gryzor, Into The Eagle's Nest, Arkanoid, Beach Head II, Beyond The Forbidden Forest, the Jeff Minter games (namely Voidrunner and Iridis Alpha), etc., etc...

I have a complete collection of digital scans of Zzap!64 on my harddrive and one of my fave pastimes is skimming through them and playing some of the games reviewed in them. If you do that with an open mind, it's amazing how much gameplay you can still get from a rotten old 80s micro with only 64k RAM and a 1 MHz CPU.

Got my C64 in 1984 as a christmas "present" (actually I had to give me parents 300 Deutschmarks that I had saved over the course of three years and they completed the bill), the first game I've played on it was Scramble, followed by Jumpman Jr. Played it nonstop for 14 or 15 hours until the wee hours of the morning, then went to bed but couldn't sleep so I went back to the Commie again to play some more. When I switched it on, the power light flickered for a second and then went off... panic!! The fuse of the friggin' PSU blew and since shops were closed for two days after christmas, I had to wait for two full days before I was able to continue playing... needless to say I hated it. I bought 20 fuses to be on the safe side but it never blew again for some reason.

Anyway, I'm still very fond of the Commie and the 8bit micro computer era. At the beginning, there still was lots of pioneering spirit and after playing a home Pong variant, the 2600 and some crappy tabletop Pac Man game for ages, the games the 64 had to offer felt like a whole new world to me. My friends and I kept playing our games to death but the machine had more to offer than just gaming, we also did lots of other things with it like printing letters/forms and even going online on CNET (Commodore networks) based in the UK. Thanks to blueboxing, the calls were for free but fiddling with an 300 baud acoustic coupler wasn't fun at all. Damn shaky connection, can't count how often I lost a connection just because someone opened the door to my room and started talking (or vacuum'ing... parents, eh...).

I still have fond memories of buying new games back in the day. Trying a new game before buying was obligatory, all shops had several computers and happily booted a game for you. The practise ended when companies released lots of shovelware in the late 80s which mostly consisted of movie tie-ins or soulless arcade conversions, from then on, magazine reviews became more and more important but finding a mag that had halfway unbiased reviews wasn't easy. That's why I was happy when I bought Zzap!64 for the first time at a local newsagent and consequently became a subscriber from issue 12 onwards. Computer & Video Games (CV&G) wasn't too shabby either.

Man... there was so much good shit happening back then that would fill a book... good old days.

 

[Atro]

Saboteur.

 

[ki_atsushi]

Miss my C64... The Bard's Tale series, The Magic Candle, Dragon Wars, Wasteland, Barbarian... tons of excellent stuff!

 

[Takumaji]

I also loved strategy/war/adventure games from SSI, Level 9 and Infocom. Most of them were very expensive over here, that specially goes for the SSI games, but the amount of stuff that came with them made up for it. Maps, books, audio tapes, quickstart/keymap reference cards, keyboard overlays, etc. Good stuff.

I find it kinda sad that the genre of turn-based war games is almost dead, save for some homebrew releases. Real-time stuff can be nice but it doesn't give me the same armchair general vibe than the old games.

 

[ki_atsushi]

I also loved strategy/war/adventure games from SSI, Level 9 and Infocom. Most of them were very expensive over here, that specially goes for the SSI games, but the amount of stuff that came with them made up for it. Maps, books, audio tapes, quickstart/keymap reference cards, keyboard overlays, etc. Good stuff.

I find it kinda sad that the genre of turn-based war games is almost dead, save for some homebrew releases. Real-time stuff can be nice but it doesn't give me the same armchair general vibe than the old games.

I agree, turn-based strategy has always been more fun for me than RTS.

 

[WoodyXP]

So what were your favorite C64 games?

Last Ninja
Last Ninja Remix
Bruce Lee
Forbidden Forest
Beyond Forbidden Forest
Wizball
Way of the Exploding Fist
Wizard
Gauntlet
Mission Impossible
Grog's Revenge
Any Gold Box D&D

I can go on and on. I still have my system set up in my man cave.

 

[NeoSneth]

i grew up with a Commodore 16, and then 128. It's where i learned BASIC.

The "puke" game is likely a PD game. THere were so many PD games, so it will be hard to track down.

The commodore hasn't aged that well for me, but the new game scene is alive and kicking. I prefer to go with Amiga as the AGA graphics are still awesome.

 

[Takumaji]

The 128 was a big disappointment for me. I bought one used for quite some money and had some fun with CP/M and the enhanced BASIC for a while but the real name of the system should have been GO 64 instead of Commodore 128... there were only a handful of dedicated 128 titles and most of them weren't that hot either, except for Kickstart 128. Some disc-based games also had compatibility issues with the 1571 floppy drive.

A friend of mine had the 128D that looked like a PC and I was quite jealous of it for a while but its cool features didn't help it to become obsolete after a year or two.

Commodore made some questionable decisions back then, the 128 was one and even more so the keyboard-less C64GS released in Europe. The basic idea of a cartridge-based console with a C64 chipset inside wasn't bad per se but it came way too late and you couldn't play many of the already existing carts on it because they required the user to press certain keys. It also was more expensive than a standard C64, let alone used ones that were readily available back then due to the fact that everyone and their uncle switched to Amiga and sold their old breadbox + games for less.

 

[Pasky]

Oh man, I forgot about The Last Ninja. For the longest time I couldn't get past that damn fire breathing tiger head or whatever it was. I don't think it was until I was a few years older that I did figure it out.

I also had some strange game, I don't remember the name but I think you were in some kind of cyber punk setting and I think you drove or walked around selling and buying 'drugs'. Man I wish I could remember the name of it.

 

[Takumaji]

I also had some strange game, I don't remember the name but I think you were in some kind of cyber punk setting and I think you drove or walked around selling and buying 'drugs'. Man I wish I could remember the name of it.

Neuromancer? Though I don't remember anything about drugs in it.

 

[Pasky]

Nah, don't believe that was it, it was a top down game, similar to grand theft auto 1. You drove around buying and selling drugs if I recall correctly.

 

[WoodyXP]

The commodore hasn't aged that well for me, but the new game scene is alive and kicking.

For sure. I can't wait until Ghost's & Goblins comes out. Nostalgia is doing an 'Arcade' touch up on it like they did with Commando. So far it's looking good.

 

[WoodyXP]

Oh man, I forgot about The Last Ninja.

That's my all-time favorite. It's the first game that made me say 'holy shit!' when I first saw it. The music was out of this world.

 

[Takumaji]

The original C64 conversion of Ghosts 'n Goblins was excellent, I adored the arcade game (and still do) but it sucked my pockets dry so I was glad that the C64 version turned out to be a real sizzler (as the Zzap! lads put it). Apart from some missing hidden stuff and of course some graphical compromises, the conversion was spot on and gave me loads of fun for months on end.

The Last Ninja series was a turbulent but short love affair for me. I played the first game to death and loved it a lot but somehow lost interest afterwards and never really bothered to spend serious time with the sequels which IMO didn't bring anything new to the table, just updated graphics and more levels.

My fave martial arts-themed game on the Commie apart from the obvious IK+ and Exploding Fist is Samurai Warrior - The Battles Of Usagi Yojimbo with a rabbit ronin, ace graphics and cool gameplay.

I also love Kung Fu Master a lot. The C64 conversion didn't age too well but back then it was your best bet outside of the arcade, as a fan of the original it was a day-one purchase for me, just like Wonderboy. Man... Wonderboy is one of my deepest vg-related obsessions, pumped tons of coins into the cab. We had a nice cocktail cab version of the game in a bowling center and whenever I had the time, I went there to play the game for an hour or two. When the game was announced for the Commie, I jumped of joy and was the first at my fave vg store on the morning of release day to purchase the tape version, luckily it was a Saturday so I had all the time in the world to play the game to hell and back. The game turned out quite different to the arcade original but somehow the basics were there so my friends and I went nuts about it and played it for hours every day for weeks.

Today I'm a proud owner of an 80s-style Dynamo cab with an original Wonderboy pcb, a dream came true... 26 years later (that was when I got my cab).

Another game I played to death was Salamander. Bought the disc version that stopped working after two days of almost constant play, interrupted by nervous sleep, eating sandwiches and drinking lots of Coke. Went back to the shop, got a replacement and it went kaput after less than an hour so it was back to the shop for another copy. The shop owner wasn't too happy about it but handed me another copy... which thankfully worked like a charm.

 

[GutsDozer]

I played a lot of Pitfall II on C64. I loved that damn thing. I have a plug and play C64 Controller TV game. I'd love to have a real one but finding vintage computing stuff complete and all in working order is rough these days.

 

[Takumaji]

I played a lot of Pitfall II on C64. I loved that damn thing. I have a plug and play C64 Controller TV game. I'd love to have a real one but finding vintage computing stuff complete and all in working order is rough these days.

C64 hardware went up in price over here as well but you can still get a complete setup with Commie + 1541 drive + monitor for about 80 Euros or less. Basically that's quite a lot for rotten old 8bit hardware but if you are patient and check out local flea market sales, you can also get one + floppy drive for a tenner or so.

The games are another matter... some are incredibly expensive, specially the big multi-disc games like the later MicroProse releases.

Emulation is a viable alternative. My fave emu is Vice, I also have a Competition Pro USB version that makes me feel right at home. They had a sellout-offer at Vesalia, a local micro games and accessories dealer where the Comp Pro USB sticks were offered for 15 Euros a pop so I bought three of them, one as a replacement and two for playing the Commie version of Smash TV the way it was meant to be played...

 

[ebinsugewa]

Paradroid and Wizard of Wor I played a ton. The SID could do a great job of playing the 'music' in WoW. Played a lot of Lemans as well.

I have 4 non-working 1541s. If anyone has experience with these, let me know.

 

[Taiso]

I agree, turn-based strategy has always been more fun for me than RTS.

+1 Gajillion

 

[WoodyXP]

Emulation is a viable alternative.

Or a 1541 Ultimate. Well worth the money, IMO.

 

[Pasky]

i grew up with a Commodore 16, and then 128. It's where i learned BASIC.

The "puke" game is likely a PD game. THere were so many PD games, so it will be hard to track down.

The commodore hasn't aged that well for me, but the new game scene is alive and kicking. I prefer to go with Amiga as the AGA graphics are still awesome.

I missed this post, what exactly is a PD game?

 

[Lagduf]

I find it kinda sad that the genre of turn-based war games is almost dead, save for some homebrew releases. Real-time stuff can be nice but it doesn't give me the same armchair general vibe than the old games.

It's alive and well...if you play boardgames.