TrojanBlade
Member
Edit: Sorry got confused with another classic 'Driller'
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LOAD"*",8,1
- Thread starter Enk
- Start date
Not really similar, but it was a useful command. It rebooted the system (jumping to address 64738, which was the entry point to the bootstrap code in ROM).
Aztec Challenge had awesome music, but the best ever is still..
Masters of Magic
Fucking amazing. I used to watch my brother play this for hours just to hear the music. Rob Hubbard is a goddamn genius.
Nice looking book! Liking the cover and the color pallet bookmark. May need to add that to the coffee table collection.
The Last Ninja was always on the upper echelon of great game music. The sequels were no slouch in the music department either, but nothing got me more jazzed than the first game's main two tracks for The Wasteland and The Wilderness stages. The Wilderness was especially incredible.
If you all have gone through this whole thread and still haven't heard these pieces of glorious SID tunes then do yourself a favor and have a listen:
The Last Ninja: The Wilderness track
The Last Ninja: The Wastelands track
Also my favorite from the sequels:
The Last Ninja 3: Intro track
This reminded me about the brief clip I found a long time ago when I started this thread of an orchestra playing The Wasteland track from the first game. Decided to look that up again and found someone posted a longer version of it. Still wish I could get the whole thing and in better quality:
The Last Ninja Orchestra
Also a personal favorite C64 piece that's always worth bring up:
MYTH: History in the Making
Spectral Glider
Member
I was always partial to Last Ninja 2 simply because that was the only game I had of the series back then. However, many years later, thanks to the web, I discovered the 3 soundtrack and this has become one of my all time favorite C64 tunes:
Last Ninja 3 Water
Why do many C64 games (specially the earlier ones) have what appears to be an inconsistent resolution? Some games have artifacts as if their framebuffer was being unevenly scaled (some lines are thicker than others, for example). Some games even have onscreen elements which look like they are drawn in different resolutions (even Mayhem in Moster Land: the main character has a higher resolution than the enemies, for example).
magicalsoundshower
Member
That's because they are drawn at different resolutions. The C64 allowed you to mix and match monochrome hi-res mode (320x200 pixels) and multicolor mode (160x200) both when it came to tiles and sprites.
The Mayhem in Monsterland main player sprite is actually a multicolor sprite with a hi-res sprite on top of it which creates the outlines.
It actually looks like switching graphics modes for tiles doesn't even have to be on a per-scanline basis. As far as I know, in The Great Giana Sisters, the HUD and clouds are hi-res while most of the other graphics are multicolor, but the diamonds are hi-res, too, but aren't sprites. Can anyone shed more light on this?
I still think "Giana Sisters" is a damn fine-looking game, even though the gameplay is kind of -- debatable.
The Mayhem in Monsterland main player sprite is actually a multicolor sprite with a hi-res sprite on top of it which creates the outlines.
It actually looks like switching graphics modes for tiles doesn't even have to be on a per-scanline basis. As far as I know, in The Great Giana Sisters, the HUD and clouds are hi-res while most of the other graphics are multicolor, but the diamonds are hi-res, too, but aren't sprites. Can anyone shed more light on this?
I still think "Giana Sisters" is a damn fine-looking game, even though the gameplay is kind of -- debatable.
The C64 has two drawing modes for sprites, high resolution mode (i.e. normal resolution), and double mode, which had independent flags to double the width or height (or both, obviously, if both are set). Drawing double width or double height incurs no penalty, and the sprites occupy less space in memory and on the disk, so developers would use the effect accordingly to make things more efficient.
Each sprite independently has the double width/double height flags.
EDIT: Such flags actually were not uncommon in early 80's computers. The NES and SMS are sort of the odd-men-out in that they didn't have double width or double height mode.
magicalsoundshower
Member
I'm also kind of shocked no one is talking about Boulder Dash, still looks good and has nice, full-sounding sound effects, still controls well and it's still as fun as back in the day, it pretty much hasn't aged at all.
Here's a longplay of the first one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiEVfa1OK_o
Here's a longplay of the first one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiEVfa1OK_o
I'm also kind of shocked no one is talking about Boulder Dash, still looks good and has nice, full-sounding sound effects, still controls well and it's still as fun as back in the day, it pretty much hasn't aged at all.
Here's a longplay of the first one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiEVfa1OK_o
timeless classic IMHO, I loved making my own levels too
Rogue_element
Banned
I'm 44 - guess what my first ever computer was ? - subscribed
eso76
Member
I'm also kind of shocked no one is talking about Boulder Dash, still looks good and has nice, full-sounding sound effects, still controls well and it's still as fun as back in the day, it pretty much hasn't aged at all.
Here's a longplay of the first one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiEVfa1OK_o
Was watching the very same video last week.
Boulder Dash = absolutely brilliant game design. Some of the levels were just plain evil.
And this playthrough is a master class in beating the first game. Mesmerizing.
Holy shit. Too bad for sound quality, this is one of the greatest tracks ever.
LamerDeluxe
Member
I thought this would be a topic about the VIC-20 :^(
Tho I have a C64 + 1541 in the loft for nostagic reasons, this is the one reason I can't sell the GP Wiz, it's awsome for emulating C64, some are just timeless Bruce Lee, Bolder Dash & Paradroid are just a few I never get tired of.
There's just so many great games...I lost days to Elite and The Double, I complain about my son, but it's funny that he's also playing Elite endlessly!!
There's just so many great games...I lost days to Elite and The Double, I complain about my son, but it's funny that he's also playing Elite endlessly!!
I loved Elite on the C64. Such a great game for its time.
I played Karateka so many times that I had all of the encounters and patterns memorized.
I also remember playing a lot of Microprose Gunship. It was ahead of its time giving players the option to select which Army unit they wanted to fly for, and then earning promotions, commendations, and service theater ribbons. You could also select mission difficulty on the fly with increased rewards for the extra risk.
Autoduel used to kick my ass, but I spent countless hours trying to earn more cash to deck out my vehicular death machine with weapons and armor. I loved the game's motto, Drive Offensively.
I could go on and on. So many good games.
Spectral Glider
Member
I never did beat Karateka, always got my ass kicked by the final boss. My biggest time waster was probably Pirates! God I loved that game.
Elvin Atombender
Member
I probably owe my great patience to playing the cassette-version of Gunship (and Airborne Ranger).
The furball things were fun lol, no internet to give you the answer those days!
Loved the whole presentation of Karateka, very cinematic.
I'm also kind of shocked no one is talking about Boulder Dash, still looks good and has nice, full-sounding sound effects, still controls well and it's still as fun as back in the day, it pretty much hasn't aged at all.
And that's available on Wii Virtual Console
MonkeyClaw
Neo Member
I have some fond memories of my c64. It was actually my second computer, after the Vic20. Here's a photo of me, taken about 23 years ago, showing off my latest high score on my beloved c64.
As you can see I was the cool kid on the block (yes, even from that young age) as I had the floppy disk drive for it. I can't remember what game I was playing at the time. I do remember that my favourite game on the c64 ever was The Last Ninja 2 but this would come much later.
Do you have a higher quality version of that photo? The game looks very familiar, I use to use a Commodore 64 as well as an Atari 800 back in the day as well and I think I have seen that game before...
Mengy
wishes it were bannable to say mean things about Marvel
I have some fond memories of my c64. It was actually my second computer, after the Vic20. Here's a photo of me, taken about 23 years ago, showing off my latest high score on my beloved c64.
As you can see I was the cool kid on the block (yes, even from that young age) as I had the floppy disk drive for it. I can't remember what game I was playing at the time. I do remember that my favourite game on the c64 ever was The Last Ninja 2 but this would come much later.
Cool picture. I have many similar pics of me and my C64 too, I'll have to look for some this weekend.
The process of getting my C64 wasn't entirely a smooth one however. One of the kids in our neighborhood got a C64 for the Christmas of 1984, and we all wanted one very quickly. So the following summer I worked my ass off mowing grass to earn money. I even worked with the local cemetery grounds keeper to earn money. I had found a Popular Mechanics magazine ad where you could order a C64 with monitor and a 1541 drive for a good price,so that was my goal. By the end of the summer of 1983 I had enough money (my grandparents gave me a little bit towards it) and I ordered the whole package just as soon as I could.
One month later and my computer had not arrived yet. So we made some calls trying to see where it was, only to find out that my brand new C64 had been on a UPS truck that (no kidding) exploded in fire on Route 422 outside of Philadelphia. It was a big controversy, investigations had to be made, and in the end I didn't get my C64 until several months later in December of 1985. From that point on the ColecoVision and Atari 2600 pretty much sat idle, lol. The first game I ever bought for my C64 was H.E.R.O., a remake of an Atari 2600 game:
Today my C64 sits in the closet in the back of my house, only to come out from time to time when I'm feeling nostalgic. It still works fine, although many of my discs give errors and such. Many of them still work though too, I was just playing Red Storm Rising a few months ago. Honestly I play more C64 games on an emulator on my PC rather than the real thing, it's just so much more convenient (faster loading, no setting the hardware up hassle, don't need to let the monitor warm up, no disc errors, etc.).
BigWeather
Member
GAF, looking for some guidance on a decent C64 coffee table book. Must include a good overview of the C64, its history, and tons of color photos of game screens, packaging, what-have-you. I was interested in "Ready: A Commodore 64 Retrospective" by Roberto Dillon but it is $98 for just over 100 pages -- not sure it is worth it. Any better one out there? Thanks!
Edit: Would love to get that Andrew Fisher book up-thread but Amazon has for $2k+ -- yeah, no. Maybe eBay will have.
Edit: Would love to get that Andrew Fisher book up-thread but Amazon has for $2k+ -- yeah, no. Maybe eBay will have.
Off the top of my head are Generation 64 and Commodore 64: A Visual Compendium that Bitmap Books released a while back. They're the ones that release those nice looking visual compendium series including the recent NES one that had some kickstarter trouble.