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Commodore 64 turns 30: What do today's kids make of it? [BBC : VIDEO]

Yuripaw

Banned
I still got the C64 in my closet actually. Tried booting it up last year, but it didn't work anymore =/ couldn't bring myself to throw it away. Not sure if the 5 inch floppy drive still works or not.

I remember playing these games the most:

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Ultimate Wizard.

People say that Wizard, and Ultimate Wizard was just a rip off of another C64 game called Jumpman. I never played that game, but the version Ultimate Wizard that I had was a cool fun platformer. It had a level creator that was really involved too. To this day, my family still quotes the loading screen message to each other. "Prepare thyself Player #1" lol

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images

Bruce Lee
duh

This game was silly beat em up with really hard platforms you had to navigate. You had to collect gems to unlock parts of the stage to continue, while being attacked by sumo guys, and ninjas.

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Impossible Mission

"Stay a while, STAAAAYY FOREVER!" This game was fun to play and look at as a kid, but it did just annoying when I could never figure out the fucking puzzles, and never beat the game. It still had great sound effects though, and the animation was really cool for the system.

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Spy vs Spy 2

We had a copy of Spy vs Spy 1 and 3 for the C64 in our drawer of floppy discs, but I could never get them to work :( So I always would play Spy vs Spy 2. It was alright, but I think it would've been more fun if I had a second player to play with as a kid...

The only part of Spy vs Spy 1 I could ever get to load up was the title screen.
spyvsspyamiga.gif

Whenever I saw this pop up during loading, it would drive me nuts I could never play the game!

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Boulder Dash series

Omg, these games were so fun. I loved playing Boulder Dash 2 the most as a kid. I was actually so excited when they announced Boulder Dash XL for Xbox live arcade...but I tried the demo, and I couldn't play it. While they did have the cool looking retro style look for some of the gameplay, the sound effects were all wrong!

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forgotten-ghostbusters-game.jpg

Ghostbusters

Most people probably know of the AVGN's review of the NES version of this game. As a kid, I played the C64 version the most. The game was a LITTLE bit better on the C64, but it still sucked. I never could beat it, and I felt like I could never earn enough money. What a piece of shit. lol

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Pipeline 2.

Pipeline 2 was part of a combo disc we had that included a game called Pecos Pete. Couldn't find any screen shots of :( but it was a fun western themed game, with a series of mini games. One of the games I enjoyed the most involved having the catch beers that the barkeep would throw down the bar that you'd have to catch. If you missed too many, some guy in the saloon got pissed at you, and you would have to arm wrestle him. Could NEVER beat that guy >_<

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The Witness

You're probably looking at this and saying "WTF is with all the text?" This is a game I played for hours trying to solve. I didn't have the original, but I had a copy of the game without the book or manual which made it even more difficult. It was a text based adventure where you play as a Detective, and as a kid, I enjoyed using my imagination like that.

giana3.jpg

Great Giana Sisters

It wasn't til recently that I knew what this game was even called. This game was a C64 rip off of Super Mario Brothers basically. So much so in fact, that the version I had as a kid was actually a hacked version that replaced the sprites of Giana with a knock off of Mario. The version I had was hacked to be called Super Mario Bros, and I played as Mario in it, lol. I always knew something was off, because while the version I had had Mario, all the enemies were different, and the music wasn't the same. I still had fun playing it as a kid though, and the music does make me very nostalgic.

Have so many memories playing these games. There's probably more games I could think of to share, but those are some of the most memorable to me. The C64 was probably just as big a part of my childhood as the NES. More so in fact, because we had more games for it. Most of them were bootlegs that we got at rummages, but as a kid, I didn't know they were bootlegs.
 
Grew up on the C64 in the 80s and have so many fond memories, the nostalgia makes my tummy feel fuzzy!

Loved everything about the machine, the games and the incredible SID chip. Such a large part of my youth, it's incredible.

But my fondest memories are spending my evenings and weekends typing in programs from programming books. To say I was addicted was an understatement. When you actually type in the code for a game from scratch, and then get to play the final thing (after hours of checking where your typos were), it's really very satisfying. I'll never forget all the POKEs, PEEKs and SYS commands.

My favourite C64 game of all time though is in my avatar :)

EDIT: Not forgetting having to endlessly adjust the azymuth on the tape deck just to get things to load. Wouldn't be the same without it though :D
 
Everyone in my small town in canada had a floppy drive, even the poor kids. I think people in the UK used the tape deck more for whatever reason.

Unfortunately pretty much nobody in the UK had 1541 disk drives. The main reason being home computers like the C64 and Spectrum were generally bought by parents as (relatively) cheap things for kids (see "hey hey 16k!") and the drives were insanely expensive. Towards the end of the C64's life I think they actually cost more than the computer and a shitload of games did. I remember begging my Dad for one for ages when I was about 10, and him eventually taking me to a computer shop in Tottenham Court Road on my birthday to buy one.

The euphoria quickly faded when I realised that no one actually sold games on disks in the UK (at least not in any retail shop) and had to order everything from mail order shops. Even then disk games were anything up to twice as expensive as tape ones, and crucially the pocket money friendly budget games were often not avaiable in any form on disks. When I got into the C64 it was already old hat and dying off to the Amiga, and I used to go round car boot sales spending my pocket money on any old games I could grab. I once lucked out on some guy selling a shitload of C64 disks, and walked away with a near complete set of Infocom adventures in mint condition. Felt like I'd found Montezuma's gold or something.
 
Kids will probably think what I thought growing up with one, namely:

"This is shit!"

You were a shit kid.

Unfortunately pretty much nobody in the UK had 1541 disk drives. The main reason being home computers like the C64 and Spectrum were generally bought by parents as (relatively) cheap things for kids (see "hey hey 16k!") and the drives were insanely expensive. Towards the end of the C64's life I think they actually cost more than the computer and a shitload of games did. I remember begging my Dad for one for ages when I was about 10, and him eventually taking me to a computer shop in Tottenham Court Road on my birthday to buy one.

The euphoria quickly faded when I realised that no one actually sold games on disks in the UK (at least not in any retail shop) and had to order everything from mail order shops. Even then disk games were anything up to twice as expensive as tape ones, and crucially the pocket money friendly budget games were often not avaiable in any form on disks. When I got into the C64 it was already old hat and dying off to the Amiga, and I used to go round car boot sales spending my pocket money on any old games I could grab. I once lucked out on some guy selling a shitload of C64 disks, and walked away with a near complete set of Infocom adventures in mint condition. Felt like I'd found Montezuma's gold or something.
Yep everyone I knew just used the cassette deck. £1.99 budget games FTW. I remember when I was pushing the boat out when I convinced my parents to get me a £3.99 game. Although iOS has brought us right back to square one, unfortunately C64 games had more depth than today's 69p wonders.
 

Yuripaw

Banned
In retrospect, I really regret never having the chance to grow up with some RPGs like the Ultima games on the C64 also. Not sure if we ever had copies of those, but I feel like the adult me would have liked games like that growing up. I just never knew they existed because none of my brothers played games like that, and didn't have any friends til the SNES/PSOne era that played RPGs.
 
In retrospect, I really regret never having the chance to grow up with some RPGs like the Ultima games on the C64 also. Not sure if we ever had copies of those, but I feel like the adult me would have liked games like that growing up. I just never knew they existed because none of my brothers played games like that, and didn't have any friends til the SNES/PSOne era that played RPGs.
I do wonder what Ultima was like but it's one of those games that would have been way over my head as a kid. I just think the C64 in general would have been way too complex for me back then. My first system was the Atari 5200. Slap the brick in the boat, power it on and wrestle with that busted ass controller. lol I also never figured out if I wanted to hold it with my left hand or right and would always switch (I'm right handed).
 

charsace

Member
Was that a cassette tape? I had no idea you could play a game off of a cassette tape.

Last Ninja II looked amazing.
Core made a homage to Last Ninja on the PS1 that got terrible reviews. It was the other game that people were hyping along with Fighting Force.
 

charsace

Member
Holy shit mind blown! Yes I remember that game on PS1. They were both horrible games.

Core would have been huge if those two games had the same success that Tomb Raider had. They had the hype. I still remember beating Fighting Force with the big dude because he had one attack that the CPU couldn't handle.
 

Yuripaw

Banned
I don't own a C64 nor ever played any of its games and even I think this post is ridiculous!

Haters gonna hate, what can ya do?

I'll admit, I don't think the C64 was some marvel of gaming by any means. It did have some awesome audio, and music on it had a unique sound to it. As you can see from lengthy post above, I'm heavily nostalgic for the C64. However, even I admit that if we only had the C64 during the 80s, and there was no NES around...I don't think many of us would be celebrating gaming the way we still do today. I don't expect people who didn't grow up with one in their house to have any appreciation for it like I can.
 
Wow. I had a Commodore 64. The tape deck, the big ass floppy's, the screaming modems, BBS's, the waiting, and more waiting, and me screaming "mom hang up the phone!"

Hov says 30's the new 20. lol. Ok.

In terms of games I remember playing Qbert and California Games on it. HA
 

Yuripaw

Banned
Man...so I watched that BBC video finally. I feel so old. Those kids are looking at that thing like it's a piece of junk. :(

Must be a UK thing, but I never saw a tape deck for the C64. We had one for the Vic-20, but we had multiple floppy disc drives for the C64.
 

Fusebox

Banned
30 years goddamn, the C64 was amazing, especially as an upgrade to my VZ-200. Fuck I have amazing memories of the C64. Impossible Mission, Elite, Paradroid, Barbarian, Beach Head. That was the true golden era of gaming.

Yuripaw, in Australia the disc drive wasnt released until later, at launch it was only tapes and cartridges.
 

DeVeAn

Member
I had one of those but mine were the big floppy disks. I had pole position, batman, robocop, and sesame street lol.
 

boingball

Member
International Soccer on cartridge with Kempston Competition Pro joysticks is where it's at. Mine was blue with white buttons and still is at home somewhere.

Had that too (the cartridge Soccer game). And we bought a floppy drive after half a year or so, the tape loading was a killer.

The kids were quite respectful. Would like to see the same video with american kids:)
 

Gazunta

Member
The C64 is the greatest gaming system of all time and I will fight anyone to the death who says otherwise.

ELITE. Paradroid. Wizball. Great Giana Sisters. The Sentinel. Stunt Car Racer. Creatures. Mayhem in Monsterland. The only decent home version of Turbo Out Run. International Karate +. Barbarian. Target Renegade. Rick Dangerous. I could and often do go on forever...

I spent a week painting houses as a 14 year old to save up for a (what I suspect was a stolen) disk drive. WORTH IT.
 

Neff

Member
I'm older than some of you. I spent most of my preteens/early teens shut in my bedroom playing C64 games. I was very much pro-C64 in the Spectrum vs C64 war, and have some very fond memories of the machine and its games.

But I've got to be honest. Even as an arch-defender of retro gaming at its best, 99% of C64 games were paper-thin, unwieldy, dog-chewed homework from the amateur school of game design, with the one saving grace that lots of them had absolutely fantastic music (starting the vid with Last Ninja 2 really got me). Sorry if this seems like a betrayal of sorts, but aside from a lingering admiration of Wizball, Elite, Bruce Lee and Paradroid, from a gameplay perspective at least, I closed the door permanently on the embarrassing chapter of my life that was C64 long ago. Even so, I'll always have a soft spot for SID heroes Matt Gray, Tim Follin, Martin Galway, Jeroen Tel, Rob Hubbard, Jonathan Dunn, Martin Walker etc. Great tunes and good times.

And I went through about 3 C2Ns (tape decks to you) over five years or so. Never had a floppy drive. Loading from tape was a ritual, something to hype yourself up during as you drank in the title screen and the loading music and flipped through the manual. Thanks to game installs, we kind of have that again, which gladdens me.
 

Fusebox

Banned
That moment when you realise after 5 minutes of staring at a screen of coloured lines that the game has failed to load and you need to rewind and try again...
 

Aku-Audi

Member
C64 defined my youth. Played it every day, discovering new games by the hour and lifelong memories.

Absolutely loved Usagi Yojimbo
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other games that occupied my time were Donald Duck's Playground, Last Ninja 2, Arkanoid and Space Taxi
 

Pimpbaa

Member
Unfortunately pretty much nobody in the UK had 1541 disk drives. The main reason being home computers like the C64 and Spectrum were generally bought by parents as (relatively) cheap things for kids (see "hey hey 16k!") and the drives were insanely expensive. Towards the end of the C64's life I think they actually cost more than the computer and a shitload of games did. I remember begging my Dad for one for ages when I was about 10, and him eventually taking me to a computer shop in Tottenham Court Road on my birthday to buy one.

I don't see how that is any different than north america. I mean, everything in NA for the c64 was on floppies, even the budget games. Their must have been a huge price difference for the disk drive in the UK compared to NA or a long delay in it's release.
 

Fredrik

Member
C64 defined my youth. Played it every day, discovering new games by the hour and lifelong memories.

Absolutely loved Usagi Yojimbo
usagi-4.png

usagi-6.png


other games that occupied my time were Donald Duck's Playground, Last Ninja 2, Arkanoid and Space Taxi
Great game, still holds up in some ways. The karma score system is awesome, made you play nice. Should be available in modern games too, GTA with karma score would be a completely different game.
 

jett

D-Member
Just watched the video...eh, 90% of it was people waiting for the games to load. :lol

I never suffered cassettes, I only had floppies drives. And I got a Cinemaware Warp Drive soon after my C64 too, so I didn't suffer loading times either ahuahuahau!
 

Fredrik

Member
I don't see how that is any different than north america. I mean, everything in NA for the c64 was on floppies, even the budget games. Their must have been a huge price difference for the disk drive in the UK compared to NA or a long delay in it's release.
Don't know the price in the US but I think I payed 2000 SEK for the 1541-II in Sweden, usually converted to $200 in video gaming. I wouldn't say that almost nobody had a disc drive in Sweden but I bought it a few years after the computer and was the first among my friends. Still have it btw :) and it's still working perfectly, discs too, quite amazing when you think about it. Quality hardware.
 
Haters gonna hate, what can ya do?

I'll admit, I don't think the C64 was some marvel of gaming by any means. It did have some awesome audio, and music on it had a unique sound to it. As you can see from lengthy post above, I'm heavily nostalgic for the C64. However, even I admit that if we only had the C64 during the 80s, and there was no NES around...I don't think many of us would be celebrating gaming the way we still do today. I don't expect people who didn't grow up with one in their house to have any appreciation for it like I can.

Console gaming in the 80s was almost non-existent in the UK, including the NES. Almost everyone had either a Speccy or a C64 and then an Amiga or Atari ST in the late 80s. It wasn't until the Sega Megadrive that console gaming took off in the big way in the UK. And yet we all still celebrate gaming as much as the rest of the world :)

The C64 is the greatest gaming system of all time and I will fight anyone to the death who says otherwise.

ELITE. Paradroid. Wizball. Great Giana Sisters. The Sentinel. Stunt Car Racer. Creatures. Mayhem in Monsterland. The only decent home version of Turbo Out Run. International Karate +. Barbarian. Target Renegade. Rick Dangerous. I could and often do go on forever...

I spent a week painting houses as a 14 year old to save up for a (what I suspect was a stolen) disk drive. WORTH IT.
This. While the Japanese and Americans were getting excited over Mario, in the UK we were all playing games like Dizzy, Monty on the Run and Paradroid. Unless you're from the UK it's probably difficult to understand just how huge the Speccy and C64 were over here and how it was those machines - and not Nintendo consoles - that made our 80s.
 

vaelic

Banned
I am surprised more kids are not into this kind of stuff. Modern games just do not give me those sounds I am looking for. I love that low bit rate sound, the graphics, the look and atmosphere of those games. Maybe it just plays for me because I came out of the 1980's and 1990's.

it's just nostalgia
 

Apenheul

Member
I had very few games for the C64 and was more interested in BASIC, but these were the ones I enjoyed the most:

International Karate+
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I'd still play this game if I could, especially after something fast and over the top like UMvC3 I'd like to play a slow fighter again like IK+ with more defensive mechanics.

Maniac Mansion
40746-maniac-mansion-commodore-64-screenshot-hello-green-tentacle.gif

At the time I didn't have the patience for point & click adventures but I did like exploring the mansion and figure out which scenery objects were interactive. Many years later I found that Maniac Mansion was on the Day of the Tentacle cd-rom and that's when I really set down to finish the game.

Spy vs Spy
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I loved this game, still would and I'll try to find the NES version and play it in splitscreen mode.

Loderunner
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This level layout I'll never forget. For me it's just pattern-memorization since this game got really difficult after 15 levels or so.
 

microtubule

Member
Early to mid 80's, lots of good times with the VIC, C64/128. The Amiga was the holy grail that I never reached. I was always bummed grabbing a new game because the in-game screenshots looked so good and then reading the small fine print (taken on Amiga).

1670 modem; amazed I was "texting" my friend from my Commodore to his. Also had the magic voice peripheral which was interesting. Programming in BASIC was really fun as well.

I went through two 1541 disk drives which were really expensive at the time. The last one I was setting up after moving and dropped OJ in the drive, dead and buried. I never used the C64 again and regretted that more than anything.
 
If I ever call gamers or devs lazy, remembering this will probably the reason why. Forget tape or the 1541, my father wouldn't let me use them (called it the lazy way of doing things,lol), if I wanted to play a game I had to type in all the code myself. Sometimes spending hours just typing in code before I could play, and don't even mention a typo.

C64 is/was for the hardcore.
I wonder how many modern day devs would shit themselves if they had to program a game for it. 64k baby.
 

Fredrik

Member
Console gaming in the 80s was almost non-existent in the UK, including the NES. Almost everyone had either a Speccy or a C64 and then an Amiga or Atari ST in the late 80s. It wasn't until the Sega Megadrive that console gaming took off in the big way in the UK. And yet we all still celebrate gaming as much as the rest of the world :)


This. While the Japanese and Americans were getting excited over Mario, in the UK we were all playing games like Dizzy, Monty on the Run and Paradroid. Unless you're from the UK it's probably difficult to understand just how huge the Speccy and C64 were over here and how it was those machines - and not Nintendo consoles - that made our 80s.
Not just UK, probably the whole Europe. Sweden was the same anyway, kids didn't talk about Zelda and Mario on the school yards, they talked about Last Ninja and Summer Games and exchanged copied games with each other like it was music tapes and fully legal. Same with the Amiga, until the SNES and Megadrive came along.

Personally I played NES for the first time long after Playstation launched, in an attempt to escape 30fps and go back to 60fps. Completed Zelda 1 for the first time a few months ago on Wii VC. Still haven't completed Super Mario Bros 1. But I've probably played through Last Ninja 30 times. :/
 
I don't see how that is any different than north america. I mean, everything in NA for the c64 was on floppies, even the budget games. Their must have been a huge price difference for the disk drive in the UK compared to NA or a long delay in it's release.

Actually, looking it up here in old magazine adverts, A C64 cost £120 in the UK in 1991. At the same time, a 1541-II disk drive cost a whopping £150. We're talking a peripheral that cost more than the actual machine itself (and to put in perspective I'm fairly sure it was still selling for about that the next year when the SNES was released for the exact same price). Not many parents were going to shell out for that, especially when you then had to pay more for the exceedingly rare disk games for it. Anyone know how much the drive cost in comparison to the computer itself in the US?

Neff said:
Even as an arch-defender of retro gaming at its best, 99% of C64 games were paper-thin, unwieldy, dog-chewed homework from the amateur school of game design

Unfortunately I'd probably have to agree. I loved the hell out of the thing (I've still got around five of them stashed in my parent's loft), but in retrospect most of the software just doesn't stack up. Especially in sheer quality, the titles the Japanese were making on the NES just wiped the floor with similar C64 stuff. Where it really comes alive is with odd technically ambitious stuff like Tau Ceti or Mercenary, but even then they're mostly interesting games rather than fun ones.

It's like the minor Great Giana Sisters controversy elsewhere - there's just no reason at all to play that game now as it's just a bad port of Super Mario Bros. In this day and age you can play many many superb Mario Bros games, so why even bother? At least people have the sense not to pretend Katakis was ever better than R-Type.
 
Console gaming in the 80s was almost non-existent in the UK, including the NES. Almost everyone had either a Speccy or a C64 and then an Amiga or Atari ST in the late 80s. It wasn't until the Sega Megadrive that console gaming took off in the big way in the UK. And yet we all still celebrate gaming as much as the rest of the world :)


This. While the Japanese and Americans were getting excited over Mario, in the UK we were all playing games like Dizzy, Monty on the Run and Paradroid. Unless you're from the UK it's probably difficult to understand just how huge the Speccy and C64 were over here and how it was those machines - and not Nintendo consoles - that made our 80s.
It was pretty much same around the whole Europe. Consoles came mainstream in Europe with PS1. Luckily although I am only 21 years old my first gaming experiences before my parents bought me PS1 came from my big brothers Amiga 500. Absolutely loved the games on it. Moonstone and Parasol Stars...memories. We also had C64 but I have only very foggy memory print of playing some kind of Pack Man on it. Then I broke it by stomping on it and my brother was ready to kill me lol.
 

EDarkness

Member
I was always an Atari fan and owned an Atari 800XL. My friend owned a C64 and I would go over to his house to play games that never came out for my Atari. It was fun learning a new system for playing and loading games. I used to be envious of all the games the C64 got, but luckily a lot of the big name games had Atari versions. Good to see many people remember it fondly. Those were good days.
 
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