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[dock]

Oh shit, I had forgotten quite how infuriating the controls were in this game. I used to spend ages with the level editor though, and similarly, it was one of the first games that got me into making games.

I now make games for a living, so that worked out pretty well. Thanks Kickstart II!

 

[Enk]

Really enjoyed this game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evGOSM0R8wg

Reminds me of another game I used to play.

Also I have added two other games to the second post. Treasure Island Dizzy seems to require more buttons than just space and CTR like using "enter/return" to gather treasure. The other is Hard n' Heavy which was mentioned earlier. The game seems like a fun action game but has a few graphical glitches when you walk.




When I get back from work I'll post more stuff, but it seems everyone is already doing a good job of it!

 

[dock]

I really enjoyed "CJ's Elephant Antics" back in the day, and it remains one of my favourite elephant games.
The sequel is playable here, although I never played it before:
http://c64s.com/game/100445/cj_in_the_usa/
I love the stereotypical 'american' contents of this game.

 

[bishoptl]

I'm very proud of my complete version of Transformers: Battle to Save the Earth, signed by its creator (and Activision legend), David Crane.

I
am
so
jealous.

Dunno if anyone's touched on Gridrunner, another great HES game. I wish I could find that old Retro Ball cart as well, my sister and I spent many, many hours playing that game. We also played a lot of Sea Wolf, but didn't have the paddles so our subs would just stay in the lower left corner and we'd whack the joystick back and forth to trigger missiles. :lol

 

[Ogni-XR21]

Oh man, how could I forget to mention S.E.U.C.K. (Shoot Em Up Construction Kit). It was an editor that let you make your own shmups. I spent hundreds of hours with this one on the C-64 and probably thousands of hours with the Amiga version. I made a whole series of games (Blobs Adventure I, II & III) and even made conversions of one game for both systems (a "Who Dare's Wins" clone).

There was also one game of which I can't remember the name, RDS or something as abbreviation, where you could make your own racing tracks, you could even set the gravity level. That was a great game too, too bad a friends disc drive broke the disc - my brother almost went berserk when that happened.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Holy crap this site is awesome!

http://c64s.com/

 

[Jumpman Jr.]

Weirdest was the Frankie Goes to Hollywood game:

The game put the player in Liverpool in search for the Pleasuredome. The player has to find and use various objects and play minigames to reach the goal. The player starts the game as a simple character, to reach the Pleasuredome one has to become a full person. To become a full person the four attributes sex, war, love and religion must be filled to 99%. The attributes are boosted by completing tasks in the game. Additional pleasure points can be scored by playing the minigames. The attributes sex, war, love and religion are part of the symbols used on the covers of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's albums.

During the game a murder takes place. All the rooms the player can visit contain clues in order to find the murderer. The clues are in pairs, helping eliminate suspects. For example, you may be told "The killer is an atheist" and "Mr Somebody is a regular church-goer" - so Mr Somebody would be innocent. In theory the game cannot be completed without making the correct accusation (by returning to the room with the body) - there is a large bonus of Pleasure Points for naming the killer.

So many memorable moments: During the mystery part, I remember one clue: "My son is in the RAF." If you used a bottle of "red herrings", you lost points. You had to fill up three meters: Z, T, T (named after their record label). You pour a bottle of milk into a dish, a cat laps it up, opens a board through the pet door where you collect falling flowers while FGTH music plays.

 

[bishoptl]

I've got roughly 40 billion old Compute!, Compute!'s Gazette, Commodore Magazine, Info, PET, Amiga Action and whatnot magazines that I've humped around through various moves over the decades. They're all in storage now, but I did scan a few pages for the hell of it.

For you, DMczaf!

I've got more, just need to find 'em.

 

[Project Midway]

wow, I just love those old computer game ads :lol

One more classic I played alot... Will Wright's first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay. Nice title screen, Will.

 

[jett]

zomg I remember this ad

 

[XiaNaphryz]

I posted this in the past, but for everyone who loved playing M.U.L.E. you'll want to check this out: M.U.L.E. online in WinXP with four players! It's not the C64 version, but it's playable online damnit. M.U.L.E., Ghostbusters, and Project: Space Station, and Raid Over Moscow were my most played C64 games.

More general M.U.L.E. info and strategy at the World of M.U.L.E. website.

 

[Chichikov]

I don't think anyone has listed Neuromancer yet. It was fairly faithful to the book, and a lot of the text was lifted straight from the novel--

Yes!
This game had male enhancement spam that contained viruses!
That fact alone made it more prophetic than the

Spoiler

shitty

book.
Plus it had motherfucking Devo in the soundtrack!
In game Devo!

And while it was the same "world", the plot was hardly related to the book.
In fact, one of the first missions you could take was from that shady military guy from the book.
But he (and you) were immediately captured by the police.

 

[Christine]

Reconfigurable FPGA computer designed to duplicate the hardware function of the C-64 and other machines. IIRC, Jeri Ellsworth designed the C-64 core firmware.

http://c64upgra.de/c-one/

Click Here Software:

http://cmdrkey.com/

Sells a replacement disk drive firmware called JiffyDOS that easily outperforms fast-load cartridges in speed and software compatability.

 

[Endymion]

So many memories. For those of you fond of C64 games' music, watch this site for some great remixes: http://remix.kwed.org/.

 

[Operations]

Good picks all around. My personal favorites:

Donald Duck's Playground:

In this game, you had to work on different stores/venues to collect money and buy playground games for the nephews.

Forbidden Forest:
Oh man, the atmosphere was stunning. A short but incredible experience.

 

[Gazunta]

There was also one game of which I can't remember the name, RDS or something as abbreviation, where you could make your own racing tracks, you could even set the gravity level. That was a great game too, too bad a friends disc drive broke the disc - my brother almost went berserk when that happened.

Racing Destruction Set, the precursor to Rock 'n' Roll Racing. A very, very cool game. Driving on the moon was insanely fun.

 

[Squeak]

Forbidden Forest:
Oh man, the atmosphere was stunning. A short but incredible experience.

That game and its sequel really has to be seen in motion and be played to be fully appreciated. Amazing games.
Remember doing the graphics this way (with character blocks) was the only way to cram it all into 64Kb. I find that it lends a certain rustic charm to the game.

BTW a Forbidden Forest remake on Wii would be absolutely fantastic (with the wiimote for shooting and all).

 

[Lord Error]

Nice thread, but for the love of Commodore, please guys don't disgrace this machine with those ugly-ass direct feed screens (with wrong color palette at that!) that you've been posting so far:

^ Screens like this just completely fail to capture the true majesty of the hardware where the clever artists used dithering and pixel-blending to exploit the color bleeding and scanline darkening of those good old RF connections. This way they could express the graphics far more pleasing to the eye than any other 8-bit hardware ever made, as C64 allowed for some very clever and flexible color combinations.

This is what C64 games really looked like when you played them on your TVs. Authors of VICE emulator knew it when they added the PAL color bleeding emulation, just as your hearts will know it to be true when you see this:

Creatures 2:

^ This screen is a good example of what I was talking about earlier. Look at the snow below the fire at the bottom of this screen. You can almost feel the fuzzy warmth of that fluffy snow. If there was an 8bit hardware that could produce graphics that looked organic like this, I've never seen it. This stage in particular needs to be seen in motion though - the falling snow here is perhaps the best animated snow I've ever seen in *any* 2D game, can't remember any better snow even on Amiga! Hell, everything in Creatures was so incredibly animated.

Cybernoid 2:

Last Ninja 3:

Mayhem in Monsterland:

 

[AirBrian]

Haha, great thread.

SMURFS!

 

[Enk]

I'm very proud of my complete version of Transformers: Battle to Save the Earth, signed by its creator (and Activision legend), David Crane.

*Amazingly awesome signed cover*

Wow, that is very sexy.

I could never figure out how to beat the stage with the giant hippo (at least I think it was a hippo). I always kept wanting to finish it but would end up frustrated and put in GI Joe instead.

I don't think anyone has listed Neuromancer yet. It was fairly faithful to the book, and a lot of the text was lifted straight from the novel--

Didn’t know this existed, will definitely have to try it out. The idea of it being faithful to the book sounds mind bendingly intriguing.

Nice thread, but for the love of Commodore, please guys don't disgrace this machine with those ugly-ass direct feed screens (with wrong color palette at that!) that you've been posting so far:

While I agree that having the scanlines and dithering adds greatly to the nostalgic experience, it takes too much time to play through each game and take snapshots with all the right filters on. I appreciate your effort though and those screens really make me want to play Creatures.

Holy crap this site is awesome!

http://c64s.com/

Yep, I’ve been going through this site trying to find the games that are actually playable (wish Evil Dead worked). Speaking of which I also added another game to the second post, Drangon’s Kingdom. It’s a rather cool looking Ghosts n’ Goblins clone.



Whenever I get more time I will go through all the videos people have been posting and add what I can to the 2nd post. Anyways here some more good memories of mine. Barbarian was a particularly cool point and click action/adventure. Karnov was just plain old badass (how the f' did I beat this game?!?). Vampire's Empire was one of the last few games I got for the system. It involved trying to set up mirrors to direct light beams to the vampire's coffin.

 

[Whimsical Phil]

Good picks all around. My personal favorites:

Donald Duck's Playground:

In this game, you had to work on different stores/venues to collect money and buy playground games for the nephews.

Programmed by Al Lowe, the creator of Leisure Suit Larry.

Also, it was a great game. Tons of fun.

 

[bluemax]

Did anyone else have that Muppet game with the big board peripheral? I can't remember what it was called but we had that board thing for years despite our C64 long since giving up the ghost.

 

[Enk]

Here is some cover art for C64 centric Zzap! 64 magazine. Note how the covers are so lovingly hand drawn. Unfortunately the cover arts' quality of coolness, like many other things, degraded during its journey into the 90's.

 

[The_Dude]

Man, I wish I hadn't sold all my C64 mags

OMG, I had totally forgotten about this game, I loved it even though I did not get very far (2 or 3 towers max). I need to try this one again!

One of my early gaming accomplishments was beating Nebulus without losing a life!

And one more, which I can't believe I forgot

Hero of the Lost Talisman

Sort of similar to Super Metroid. Awesome stuff!

 

[Fusebox]

Oh wait! One of my other big ones alongside Elite was Nemesis The Warlock.

I mostly enjoyed it because I loved the 2000AD comic strip, but it ruled because you could stack dead bodies to access new areas.

 

[Enk]

Ok, I went through the posts and added what I could to the front page. First the new game link is CJ in the US based on dock UK’s recommendation.




I also added links to the two C64 music remix sites mentioned, Remix.kwed.org and The High Voltage SID Collection. Thanks to Endymion and neopokekum for providing those.

Then I added a misc vids sections for Squeak’s Jeri Elisworth lecture video.

And lastly I added a game videos section for the all the gameplay vids posted. Thanks to everybody for those!

 

[The_Dude]

Time Machine! Did that come out on C64? I played it on the Amiga and loved it, I wish someone would make a modern update.

 

[Squeak]

Here is some cover art for C64 centric Zzap! 64 magazine. Note how the covers are so lovingly hand drawn. Unfortunately the cover arts' quality of coolness, like many other things, degraded during its journey into the 90's.

So you mean they got worse in the 90s? If so, then yes. But it all depended on whether the Frey-meister had time for the job.
These are some of the best covers ever, and you even missed some of the best ones! Zzap!64s sister mag CRASH (for the speccy) also had Oliver Frey do the covers, and some of those are equally cool.
This one is a particular favourite of mine: ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazines/Crash/Issue07/CRCover07.jpg

Also, his complete covers:
CRASH
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/misc/covers.htm
Zzap!64
http://www.zzap64.co.uk/coverszzap.html
Amtix (boo! hiss!)
http://users.durge.org/~nich/cpcmags/amtix/index.html

 

[Enk]

Time Machine! Did that come out on C64? I played it on the Amiga and loved it, I wish someone would make a modern update.

Yep! Never played it but it looks very pretty for a C64 game.

 

[Enk]

So you mean they got worse in the 90s? If so, then yes. But it all depended on whether the Frey-meister had time for the job.
These are some of the best covers ever, and you even missed some of the best ones! Zzap!64s sister mag CRASH (for the speccy) also had Oliver Frey do the covers, and some of those are equally cool.
This one is a particular favourite of mine: ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazines/Crash/Issue07/CRCover07.jpg

Also, his complete covers:
CRASH
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/misc/covers.htm
Zzap!64
http://www.zzap64.co.uk/coverszzap.html
Amtix (boo! hiss!)
http://users.durge.org/~nich/cpcmags/amtix/index.html

I went over to check out the Crash site and I have to say I'm pretty impressed by this guy's work. But yeah, when I was scanning through the covers of Zzap!64 it seemed that the detailed imagination which went into the earlier issues almost completely disappeared in the later years.

Not to derail the thread but I wanted to post these particular covers that stood out to me (maybe someone should make a thread dealing with these magazines and Oliver Frey).

There's many more great ones at both the Zzap!64 and Crash sites. This also reminds me that I used to play Rampage on the C64.

 

[neopokekun]

Yeah, Oliver Frey did some great covers, I recommend picking up the book The Fantasy Art of Oliver Frey.

It features art and covers Oli did for games, Zzap64, Crash, Amtix, Nintendo Force, etc along with comments about them. You can read som sample pages here.
The book is published by

which should have a familiar name and logo.

 

[The_Dude]

Yep! Never played it but it looks very pretty for a C64 game.

Well, there you go! And here I was thinking the C64 couldn't get any better!

 

[Gazunta]

Time Machine! Did that come out on C64? I played it on the Amiga and loved it, I wish someone would make a modern update.

Fun fact: The original design for Spyro: The Eternal Night was a thinly veiled remake of this

 

[Cosmonaut X]

Just did a quick scan of the thread, but I didn't see this mentioned:

C64 Orchestra

Just got the CD of this a couple of weeks back, and it's absolutely fantastic.

 

[Gazunta]

HOLY SHIT!!!

C64 Orchestra is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for pointing it out to us!

The C64 orchestra performs their music, with scoring done by Rob Hubbard himself.

:O

 

[Enk]

Just did a quick scan of the thread, but I didn't see this mentioned:

C64 Orchestra

Just got the CD of this a couple of weeks back, and it's absolutely fantastic.

I should be asleep right now but this is quite the nice find and had to point out the sheer amount of class that went into the CD packaging:

Even though I'm not familiar with the original tunes I like what I hear. The International Karate is particularly soothing.

Yeah, Oliver Frey did some great covers, I recommend picking up the book The Fantasy Art of Oliver Frey.
It features art and covers Oli did for games, Zzap64, Crash, Amtix, Nintendo Force, etc along with comments about them. You can read som sample pages here.

Looking through all his stuff only reminds me that I now live in a cold world where photoshops rule the day. Thanks for the link to the book. I'm actually considering on picking it up. Love these two works of art:

 

[Cosmonaut X]

HOLY SHIT!!!

C64 Orchestra is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Thank you so much for pointing it out to us!

No worries. When I get home, I'll see if I can sort out some pics/scans of the set & maybe even a couple of sample tracks for people to listen to (the MySpace player doesn't do them justice, IMO).

 

[Snowball]

2 games I will never forget.

 

[Bearillusion]

I was wondering if anyone had mentioned Head Over Heels. Great game.

 

[Gazunta]

I was wondering if anyone had mentioned Head Over Heels. Great game.

Man, I spent weeks - weeks - playing that game, learning all the rooms, figuring out the puzzles, and just reveling in the tricky world of Head and his little pal, Heels. It was a hell of a lot of work but was totally worth it. Then I finally got them to escape the palace! Rejoice! I beat the game!

...

Wait, there's 7 other levels after this?

*Switches C64 off, puts disk back ints box and never plays it again*

 

[Totalriot]

Great Thread! Thank you, Enk!

Will contribute more, when I get home from work.

 

[ziran]

Great system!

With an amazing sound ship and two of the greatest game music composers ever imo, Rob Hubbard (Monty on the Run probably my favourite) and Martin Galway, along with may other great musicians. And, there was of course L shift O shortcut, many happy hours spent gaming on the C64

Some of my favourite games that come to mind are:

Thing on a Spring
Bounder
Way of the Exploding Fist
IK+
Ghosts & Goblins
Alien Syndrome
Staff of Karnath
Entombed
Scarabaeus
Rescue of Fractalus
The Eidolon
Archon
LCP
Summer Games
Winter Games
World Games
Paradroid
Uridium
Bruce Lee
The Goonies
Sanxion
Spy vs Spy
Pogo Joe
Boulderdash
Raid Over Moscow
Beach Head
Ghostbusters
Karateka
Pitstop II
Leaderboard Golf

I know there's great stuff I'm forgetting...

Also had a great demo scene, with many great composers like The Mighty Bogg (loved Shoe). Future Shock was excellent so was Metal Bar.

 

[Mar]

Man, I spent weeks - weeks - playing that game, learning all the rooms, figuring out the puzzles, and just reveling in the tricky world of Head and his little pal, Heels. It was a hell of a lot of work but was totally worth it. Then I finally got them to escape the palace! Rejoice! I beat the game!

Yeah it was a tough game. I remember a friend and I one day decided we'd finally beat it. Played two player swapping the joystick around between characters. We finally got to the last room and, I can't remember what happened exactly, but I think we both needed to make a really hard jump. I fell and died, but my friend made it and finished it. I was very disappointed and have remained so to this day .

 

[Lord Error]

While I agree that having the scanlines and dithering adds greatly to the nostalgic experience, it takes too much time to play through each game and take snapshots with all the right filters on. I appreciate your effort though and those screens really make me want to play Creatures.

There's not much to set up - in VICE you just enable the PAL emulation and then tweak color saturation a bit. Once you set it up, that one setting is used for all games. I can send you the CFG file if you want to use it

 

[borghe]

completely missed out on the C64 in lieu of the TRS-80 CoCo2 and CoCo3. While I don't doubt I would have had much better games on the C64, it was having no games that forced me to type the stupid basic games every month from the system's official magazine and those hardcover books you would check out from the library that had the games in them with customizations for like 5 different systems. When you're doing that shit at 8 and 9, it's no wonder you eventually become a programmer in your 20's.

grats guys, it was a great system though. always wish I had owned one. I did manage to hop on the C bandwagon though with an Amiga 500 around 1990 and a 1200 around 1992.

 

[neopokekun]

Cant just reminisce about old games, have to mention some of the newer ones as well.

Metal Warrior IV

The Metal Warrior series is great and the fourth game the best of them. Action game with rpg elements (find surgical units and install upgrades to improve stats), good story with multiple endings, 21 different weapons (standard guns, dart guns, katanas, different kinds of ammo, etc), conversation trees, you can save the game anywhere, etc. You can definitely see influences of pc games like Deus Ex in this game. The soundtrack is excellent as well.
Download the game
Download the manual


Joe Gunn

Platformer where you explore a large pyramid and solve puzzles.
Download the game

 

[Pezking]

 

[Squeak]

completely missed out on the C64 in lieu of the TRS-80 CoCo2 and CoCo3.

The CoCo3 gets my vote for technically best and most underrated 8bit of all time. With the BBC Master and the Enterprise 128 close second and third.
It was just awesome for it's time. Looking at the raw specs it doesn't look that impressive. But in many ways it was the Atari 16 bits equal and in some ways its superior (sound for instance) at a much lower price.

 

[f3niks]

GI Joe

-Best game based on the series (screw you arcade and NES counterparts)
-Choose to be an all American douchebag or one of the more likable Cobras
-One on one fighting with tank and helicopter battles!

Wow, seeing this brought back some memories. I absolutely loved this game as a kid. The only thing missing is the wrestling game and the Epyx, Summer and Winder games. Don't forget about Breaking street as well.

 

[fallengorn]

No Psi-5 Trading Company love?