Retro Video Gamer

Retro Gaming => Commodore Chat => Topic started by: zapiy on July 03, 2018, 12:41:35 PM

Title: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: zapiy on July 03, 2018, 12:41:35 PM: Any C64 fans here that can recommend some good games?
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: DeadVoivod on July 04, 2018, 07:06:18 AM: Ok, where to start. There's many good C64 games, so do you have a genre preference?

There are the obvious ones like Impossible Mission, Summer/Winter Games, Turrican, Last Ninja, Giana Sisters, Uridium, Bard's Tale, Test Drive, Ultima, Speedball, IK+ and all of those.

I was always a huge fan of Enigma Force, played it through at least once a week, once you get the hang of it, it's easy. Fantastic soundtrack too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVnUphAGx0E

Nice Cyberpunk Adventure/RPG is Neuromancer, which contains elements of several game genres. Complex game with some of the tougher puzzles.

Great shmups with great music are Armalyte:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT3kmm8B_FE

and Katakis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5GfqzS9Bog

or X-Out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahy_ADlFwls

Seven Cities of Gold takes you on an expedition in an adventure like game, always liked to play that one. And another game from the same guys is Heart of Africa, worth checking out. Btw, they also made M.U.L.E.

Older multi scroller shmups is Fort Apocalypse, just try to finish this one without using pokes, without throwing and breaking your joystick, aaaargh...

If you're looking for a good platformer, then I would recommend Hawkeye, has also music by Jeroen Tel. Knight 'n' Grail is also nice, released only in 2009. Spherical is also nice, although a single screen platformer, plus you might favor the Amiga version.

Alter Ego isn't really a game, but a multiple choice simulator where you get born and start your adventure as a baby until your old and die. I played this quite often, as the out-comings are always different and it's really nice to continue and chose your own journey. There's a male and female version. In my opinion, an absolute must play game as it's very different, calming, and of course the girlfriend/wife will mostly enjoy it too.

If you wanna play a nice RPG, you can take any of the SSI games, like Pool of Radiance, which are all based on the official Dungeons & Dragons rules. Favorites of mine in this category are Champions of Krynn and the sci-fi Buck Rogers - Countdown to Doomsday, all available on PC too.

Caren and the Tangled Tentacles is a Maniac Mansion type of adventure and came out in 2015.

Project Firestart is a nice adventure/action/shooter with a sci-fi setting and has kind of an Alien vibe, your research ship is called Prometheus!

If you like Karate games, there's Way of the Exploding Fist, which in my opinion is the better International Karate, Karateka by Jordan Mechner which has some really nice animations, and of course Bruce Lee, which I wrote a review of.

If you like an experience like Elite, then Tau Ceti is a must play. It's nicely done graphically in 3D.

Scarabaeus is a very nice 3D adventure game with some mysterious plot and setting, kind of like Maze Runner as a game. Very unique.

Another interesting game is Infiltrator, an action/flying simulation with stealth when you enter bases. Graphics here are also very good. Which brings me to another interesting title, The Train – Escape to Normandy. Let's put R.M.S. Titanic also here.

Of course you will need to play Law of the West, western themed game, where you play as the sheriff, go down the road of town and have to take some key decisions. Also very unique gameplay, if you can call it gameplay, as your main objective is to talk to people and make you decisions. Very creative, 3D ego shooter from 1985.

For me the best to date breakout style game is Krakout, which has many enemies and bonuses and also has a little twist, it's played vertically.

Times of Lore is another nice action RPG with loads of content, and a fantastic long title music by Martin Galway, epic.

One of my favorite platformer, more puzzle oriented games is The Castles of Doctor Creep, and it can get rather tricky, but a must have C64 game, in my opinion.

I guess Sid Meier's Pirates! don't need to be mentioned?

Raid over Moscow was one quite politically incorrect game indexed in Germany, where you have to fly a fighter plane to the Kreml and destroy a reactor. The game is quite difficult, and straight in the beginning, when you have to fly your plane out of the hangar you know what I mean. Although once you manage, it will be easy afterwards. Same company, Access Software, also released the 2 Beach Head games, part of their war themed games, which are also worth a look.

Another one comes to mind immediately when mentioning the word "raid", and that is the great Raid on Bungeling Bay, a multi scrolling shmups.

The Sir Arthur Pendragon series are also really good games, like Staff Of Karnath, Blackwyche or Entombed, a mix of action, platform and puzzle.

A huge RPG is Newcomer, which, when it came out was the largest game so far, taking the space of 7 disks. Very long animated cut scenes, which look awesome, and show what the C64 was capable of. Scary music will accompany the whole trip. The game itself is also VERY long.

My favorite game is probably Racing Destruction Set, where you can build your own tracks, which leaves you with a cool construction kit and endless tracks. Best part was that you could build nice ramps, and depending on which planet or moon your track was set, low gravity made you jump like crazy, just mentioning Io and Callisto here. Me and my cousin spent months of building tracks and trying them out. Great game. Fast Tracks might go in that direction, which the track building ability, but the driving itself is quite in-existing, as the car moves down the lane by itself, kind of.

Skate or Die! is a multi event sports game, consisting of several different disciplines. Great title music as usual from Robb Hubbard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XetgpWY7WOg

Druid and Druid II are some nice Gauntlet like "shooters" with focus a bit more on the role playing part.

I always liked Waterpolo, a little sports game about... well water polo. That's my guilty pleasure, don't tell anyone though ;)

I might come across more, as there are so many great games.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: Shadowrunner on July 05, 2018, 15:03:25 PM: I guess you're a fan of the C64! I really don't have much experience with it but some of those look really good.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: zapiy on July 05, 2018, 15:19:48 PM: Flip me. That was a post of the month. Cheers fella.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: TrekMD on July 05, 2018, 15:35:50 PM: Well, looks like you asked and you certainly received! LOL
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: Greyfox on July 05, 2018, 16:40:38 PM: Only that I've been brainwashed by Atari since the late seventies I would probably be a C64 whore now, and although the C64 is the best selling 8-bit computer of all time, I, unfortunately, didn't experience it, in the same way, I did with the Atari 8-bit computer I can't relate to it, but have immense respect for the machine and truly appreciate why its so popular amongst 8-bit fans, but for me I'm all Atari, I'm even making a book about it at the moment 👍
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: DeadVoivod on July 06, 2018, 05:01:46 AM: The C64 was indeed the best thing that happened to me, got mine in 1984 and was in love with it. It was quite popular around here, minority had ZX Spectrum or Amstrad CPC 464, sold here as Schneider CPC. A good friend of mine had the Atari 800XL and was also the plain Atari fan, good computer.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: onthinice on November 21, 2018, 14:14:07 PM: Very nice list. Quite a few games that I never took notice of before.

Never owned a C64 till much later but my parents bought me a C128 in 1985. Big step up from my Vic-20 and my Commodore 128 mostly spent time in C64 mode. ;D

Pirates, Buck Rodgers, The Three Stooges, Crusade in Europe and bowling were my mainstay games. Yes, bowling. lol. Excellent version can be found on the Commodore 64. All round amazing computer.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: Garou on December 09, 2019, 04:29:06 AM: Lightforce was great to play, it had an awesome soundtrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvsbaT6mLZY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvsbaT6mLZY)

Bubble bobble, Rainbow islands and Newzealand story were also great on the C64.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KLi8tAZMHU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KLi8tAZMHU)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ3ziXDDOUk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ3ziXDDOUk)

https://www.youtube.co/watch?v=p0dH1a5O0aE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0dH1a5O0aE)

Cosmic pirate was deep too but i cant find a vid of it on the C64.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: TrekMD on August 04, 2020, 23:21:40 PM: Just watched this video and thought I'd share it for C64 fans. The video, by The New Retro Show, shows hacks of commercial release games for the C64 that have enhanced the games.

https://youtu.be/qmQWnJNLdDg

Get both games here
https://csdb.dk/release/?id=139401
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: DeadVoivod on August 05, 2020, 03:48:32 AM: I have both, great releases.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: davyk on August 05, 2020, 12:42:06 PM: C64 was the king of that era. The BBC-B was a better computer and its best games outshone anything else but its library was smaller and it was expensive. For size of library and quality the C64 was better.

Generally speaking the machines based on 6502 processors seemed better suited to games. The Atari classic arcade machines were 6502 based; as were the 400/800 and Commodore 64 computers. The Z80 machines like Spectrum and CPC464 just didn't seem to have that solid feel. Had superior sound too. It may have had to do more with the graphics and sound chips though - hard to say.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: aNdy/AL/Cosine on August 05, 2020, 18:06:16 PM: Quote from: davyk on August 05, 2020, 12:42:06 PM
Generally speaking the machines based on 6502 processors seemed better suited to games. The Atari classic arcade machines were 6502 based; as were the 400/800 and Commodore 64 computers. The Z80 machines like Spectrum and CPC464 just didn't seem to have that solid feel. Had superior sound too. It may have had to do more with the graphics and sound chips though - hard to say.
There are those that say the 6502 is way underpowered compared to the Z80.

The main difference as I've always seen it is those Commodore and Atari systems you mention were designed with gaming in mind with dedicated graphic and sound chips to support the 6502. Same goes for the Amiga, regardless of C= insisting it was a business machine, with the base 68K supported by pretty damn awesome custom chips!

The ZX Spectrum was designed as a cheap entry level computer and the CPC cobbled together with off the shelf parts to 'cash-in' on the market. Same for the Atari ST. Basic machines with fewer (or less powerful)custom chips.

That's a VERY broad statement though!

I'm taking nothing away from any system though. Wonderful games and applications were produced by very talented people for all those machines!
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: zapiy on August 06, 2020, 19:18:47 PM: Yeah I would never have said the BBC-B was the best machine, in what way? Are we talking sheer specs?
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: aNdy/AL/Cosine on August 06, 2020, 19:28:01 PM: Quote from: zapiy on August 06, 2020, 19:18:47 PM
Yeah I would never have said the BBC-B was the best machine, in what way? Are we talking sheer specs?
The BBC was a decent machine, but for cost at the time, the BBC was never a contender in my books as it was WAAYYY too expensive!

It did run it's 6502 twice as quick as other machines which seems to give it a speed boost in GREAT games such as Elite (I have an original disk but no computer to run it on... ;)

It had multiple GFX modes, but THAT colour palette? Yuck! ;)
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: davyk on August 06, 2020, 21:53:15 PM: It was a rock solid machine that ran so much faster than the competition. Its architecture ran on interrupts instead of polling as well which contributed to its speed.

It was a delight to work with as well for programmers. You could embed assembler in the middle of BASIC code for example.

But it's price and small library were its main problems.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: davyk on August 06, 2020, 21:59:49 PM: Re Z80 vs 6502 - I think it's fair to say that the Z80 based micros were at the cheaper end of the market and that's probably why they didn't feel as solid as the 6502. Now that could have been because they used cheaper components too. I think the 6502 could run at faster clock speeds then - but that may be wrong - it may gave been the other way round!!!!. Pure speed isn't always what matters anyhow- if assembly instructions need less clock cycles then a slower clock speed can deliver the same performance for example. How fast RAM access works is just as important - cheap RAM ran slower. The data bus would affect performance too - not to mention the graphics chip and what it could do in hardware vs software.

I'm sure there are technical discussions about cycles per instruction, hardware registers etc but at the end of the day - back then - games on the 6502 computers felt far more solid. The Apple IIe was a nice machine too - it was the first computer I used in school around '79-80. When I was 16 I developed a version of the boardgame Monopoly for it as a school project for my O level - but it was very expensive and certainly wasn't a proposition for gaming at home for me. It was 6502 based as well.

But I digress - as far as I was concerned the C64 was where it was at in the early 80s.Great speed, graphics and sound and a brilliant library of games.

I can remember Z80 based machines when I was at technical college. They were built by a UK company called Research Machines. They were big chunky metal computers. I remember one called the 380Z. Very solid - but they felt more like educational computers. You probably could have run early business applications on them like Wordstar.

I can remember Visicalc on the Apple II which was the first spreadsheet programme - The Apples were very flexible machines game-wise and professional-wise.

But I digress - the C64 was the machine to own. Great sound, graphics, speed. And a great games library. It had a great version of Boulderdash if I remember right. Leaderboard and Beach Head were 2 others I remember being excellent on the C64 too.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: Spector on August 06, 2020, 22:52:55 PM: I've just bought a C64 breadbin again after years of not having one and will take the time to get acquainted with the early games that I played back then. I've also got a 1541 disk emulation device that seems pretty solid loading disk images. Though testing it out with a game as bad as Cobra probably wasn't a great idea!

The C64 had the best sound chip of any machine of the 80s, including the consoles. It also had the worst colour pallette and a high colour mode that used rectangular pixels which meant you couldn't draw faces on sprites with any detail, stripping a whole layer of personality from games that its British rival the Spectrum had. For shoot em ups though, that didn't matter, because spaceships don't have faces! When all is said and done, if you want to understand the 8 bit genre, you have to play the Commodore 64, pure and simple.
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: DeadVoivod on August 07, 2020, 08:59:15 AM: Quote from: Spector on August 06, 2020, 22:52:55 PM
I've also got a 1541 disk emulation device that seems pretty solid loading disk images.
I had a 1541-III floppy, that was absolutely great, unfortunately sold it some time ago, as I sold all of my stuff, I think there's even a picture thread of that here, if I remember right. I would say that the 1541-III is nowadays quite difficult to acquire, and expensive.

I didn't look for anything like that lately, but I guess there's other cheaper solutions out there.

(https://i.imgur.com/zhM4FpI.jpg)
Title: Re: Any C64 Fans?
Post by: Spector on August 07, 2020, 20:52:50 PM: Here is the 1541-ii that I use from a guy in Hungary in the pic below. It works very well with all d64 files and most prgs. It seems to be more compatible than the SD2IEC interfaces that most people use. I like it so far :)