"Epic" games for the Commodore 64

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"Epic" games for the Commodore 64

Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

So, Wasteland was on the PC, sure. But it was also on the C64. And people say that's the best version.

Wasteland is a sort of "epic" game, in that it can take over your entire life. I know Wasteland isn't a C64 exclusive.... but are there C64 games out there that were done best on the C64? RPGs, I guess, but anything else jump out as "must-experience" C64 games?
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Post by AArdvark »

I'm gonna throw in either Pirates! or M.U.L.E Neither of them has the same level if immersion as Wasteland, but they kept me up waaaaay past my bedtime for a while.

How about Pool of Radiance? I never finished it. Well, hardly started would be a closer, more accurate statement.


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Post by Flack »

I agree with all the suggestions posted so far.

I would put at least the original Bard's Tale on the list. I think of Wizardry as being a bigger Apple title than for the C64, but it's good, too. I think players of modern dungeon crawlers might find some of its antiqueness frustrating.

I'd throw Legacy of the Ancients, Altered Reality, and Times of Lore in there for sure. Tass Times in Tonetown, too.

You've also got all the Ultima games, although again I tend to think of these as being more Apple than Commodore releases. Maybe it's because that's where I first played them. If you like those type of "tile" adventures, Questron and Faery Tale Adventure and Phantasie are also considered classics. Also, The Wrath of ... Denethagar? Something like that.

The Last Ninja (1, 2, and 3) were pretty C64-centric.

There were several point-and-click types of games for the Commodore, like Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken and Labyrinth and Neuromancer.

Then you've got all the Cinemaware games, like Defender of the Crown and Rocket Man and the like. Honestly, on a real Commodore, Cinemaware's loading times were downright brutal. They were borderline acceptable back then; today they're almost unplayable.

Pools of Radiance was great, and there are several other D&D games. Curse of the Axure Bonds was great. There are also a couple of Krynn games that were pretty good.
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Post by Roody_Yogurt »

Yeah, I think that intro to Maniac Mansion really is best on the C64, and I also agree with Times of Lore. Personally, at least as Pools of Radiance goes, I think loading times make the C64 version unplayable, but maybe I am just awful at CRPGs. As far as D&D goes, though, I thought Hillsfar on the C64 had a fair amount of charm.

Other suggested games-
The Movie Monster Game: It had a cute take on adding narrative to a repeatable experience.

Batman the Caped Crusader (not the game based on the movie): Kind of a cool action/adventure game. You picked up and used objects. The main downside is that your health continuously decreases- just because. The graphics were better on the Atari ST version, but the C64 still has the best music.

Mail Order Monsters: Just for being a cute game.

Murder on the Mississippi: A protagonist and characters straight out of an IF game, with music by Ed Bogas.

Law of the West: Everyone who knows it, loves it.

There are also the Impossible Mission games, in terms of sheer-C64-association.

Oh yeah, Mean Streets was pretty good for C64, too, even if it's a weird mess of a game (not many games aspire to be some sort of adventure game/flight simulator/side-scrolling shooter hybrid).

One Man and his Droid

The C64 version of X-Men: Magneto's Revenge probably was the best attempt at branded-superhero games at the time.

Actually, I was just reminiscing yesterday about a Zorro game which I found to be a pretty decent platformer, too.

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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

I'm also pumped to play Forbidden Forest again:

[youtube][/youtube]
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Post by Flack »

I know we've discussed the game here before, but Paradroid ... I'd say it's probably my #1 favorite game of all time.

I was mostly just running through RPGs but yeah, Roody nailed some classics. Impossible Mission 1 and 2, Nebulus, Toy Bizarre ... man, you guys are making me nostalgic. Sammy Lightfoot, Bruce Lee, Below the Root ...

Hey ICJ, when you come to Oklahoma, let's skip OVGE and just sit around playing Commodore games. :)
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Post by Roody_Yogurt »

Yeah, I probably misunderstood the original question. Of the ones that have been mentioned, the most addictive (for me) would be Neuromancer <s>and Mean Streets</s>. For Neuromancer, I've always meant to play it again on an Apple IIgs or Amiga emulator, just to see if they happen to be better ports, but I never actually play past the first screen with them, despite the better graphics. So you're probably just as safe with the C64 version.

<s>Both</s> Neuromancer <s>and Mean Streets have</s> has a learning curve in that you need to make a little progress before the game really grabs you, but they are both of the play-for-hours variety. Plus, they are pretty fair, as far as games from that time go.

Both of these games are ones in which you need to write down a lot of information as you go, so I'd download and print the following from replacementdocs:
<s>Mean Streets-
http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.4335 (info sheet)
http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.4336 (PC manual... of course, C64 keys are different)
http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.4337 (map)

Oh, and as far as flying the speeder thing goes, just use the autopilot every time and do something else while you're flying (definitely the worst part of the game). Be sure to save before you talk to characters and enter locations, too, as there are plenty of ways to die.</s>

Whatever version of Neuromancer you have should be already cracked. I don't think there's any necessary starting information you'll need, but some of the keyboard shortcuts are useful later on, if you can find a manual or something listing them.

Hillsfar is another game where making progress is a lot of fun, but the difficulty ramps up enough that when I did eventually give up on it, I put it down for good and don't think I'd ever pick it up again.

Times of Lore does some, IMO, awesome things, but you have to be very forgiving of the fact that locations are spread out pretty far from eachother and getting from one place to another means walking in a direction for like 10-20 minutes. Still, it's one of those games where you know the big twist like two minutes in but still enjoy the way in which it is slowly revealed.

There's also Bad Blood, the post-apocalyptic version of Times of Lore, but I've only played that one on pc.

EDIT: After starting up Mean Streets on a C64 emulator last night, I retract my support for that version! I actually put in the pc version afterwards, and I don't know if the GOG.com people (where this version is from) tweaked the settings or if it's just the magic of DOSbox but the sound is a lot better than I remembered. The graphics are a lot better, and hey, it's even a lot easier to find the pc documentation on the net than the C64 manual. So yeah, go pc with that one (if someone is into adventure games, that is).
Last edited by Roody_Yogurt on Sat Mar 10, 2012 1:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

Flack wrote:I'd throw Legacy of the Ancients, Altered Reality, and Times of Lore in there for sure. Tass Times in Tonetown, too.
I've never heard of any of those except Tass Times. They are ON MY LIST.
You've also got all the Ultima games, although again I tend to think of these as being more Apple than Commodore releases.
Oh, I got that really cool Ultima IV flash cart for my Atari 800 a couple years ago. It does nothing but play Ultima IV and handles disk spanning. The problem is that my Atari 800 is hooked up to my LCD TV and I ... well, the keyboard is necessary for Ultima IV. I don't have any way to play it where I wouldn't go blind.

Pools of Radiance was great, and there are several other D&D games. Curse of the Axure Bonds was great. There are also a couple of Krynn games that were pretty good.
I got into that series late, on the PC, but yeah, they're great. The Dark Queen of Krynn was basically my ideal woman from age 17 to... er.... well, I'm 37 now.

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Post by Flack »

Legacy of the Ancients
[youtube][/youtube]

Times of Lore
[youtube][/youtube]

Alternate Reality
[youtube][/youtube]

Curse of the Azure Bonds
[youtube][/youtube]

Death Knights of Krynn
[youtube][/youtube]

Come to think of it, these may have all been the same game ...
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Post by AArdvark »

So as an ongoing Sunday project, I've been trying all the frontends for the C64. What I'm looking for is ease of use, functionality and overall PC feng shui.

So far I've tried :
C64 Forever

It's good. Not awesome but good. It's billed as the mp3 player for Commodore games. Pretty accurate description. My biggest drawback is that it has an annoying tendency to put all the games under the apps tab whenever I rescan the folders for file changes. It should be noted that I have the worst listing of games. Most of them are named something like 'T000000000a. d64'
This means I would have to spend hours renaming disc files.
Probably not happening. Also, the front-end wants to change all the files to .rp9 format. This is both good and bad. Bad because I would then have duplicates of everything, unless I want to delete the original D64 files, which I do not. Add another four gigs of space taken up.


Three out of five joysticks


64 Memories (review later)

Gamebase 64 (review later)

And the perennial favorite: Microsoft icon view folders with Vise file association.

This is just me double clicking on the file icon and having it open in Vise. Good because it just works, bad because there's no eye candy and other front-end related stuff. What's the point of having a shitload of games if you can't scroll through them like Scrooge McDuck in his vault. Plus it's a collector thing, being able to see screenshots and other added info (like the instructions, maybe)


Two out of five joysticks



rest of the reviews in a couple little whiles, got real life stuff to do first.


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Post by Ice Cream Jonsey »

But Vark, playing games on a 30-year old system via an emulator IS real life.

At the conclusion of this project, I shall install whatever emulator gets the most joysticks. My fate is in your hands.
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Post by Flack »

I think the GameBase front end is pretty good, although I haven't tried too many of the others so I can't really compare them.
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Post by AArdvark »

64 Memories:

Slightly more of a learning curve than 64Forever. You have to manually install the screenshots of the games. The newest collection of C64 games (oxymoron) I grabbed was all in .TAP format which will play just fine but can't be manipulated with DirMaster. Am working on a comprehensive collection that's in D64 format and properly labelled.
This front-end felt like a homebrew application. Like it's not quite done yet.

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Post by Flack »

Hey Vark, where do you download stuff? Newsgroups, p2p, or ... ?

If you have newsgroup access, you want the Gamebase v8 game package listed here.

Link

What you want is that 670 meg collection, which should be every game in d64 format. If you don't have a way to grab it, I'll snag it and put it somewhere.
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Post by AArdvark »

I will give it a try. Never tried newsbin as a source of content. Always used torrents.

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Post by Flack »

Then you should try this link.

NOTE: I had to rename the file extension from .7z to .zip to get it to download for some reason. Once you get it, you'll most likely need to rename it back to .7z and then extract it using 7zip.
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Post by AArdvark »

Review continued...

Gamebase 64 gave me a headache trying to configure all the folders and settings. It worked for me eventually, but I feel that software should work for you not against you, especially when it's something as important as Commodore games. this frontend was definitely trying to keep me from playing ACE and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.

two out of five joysticks
----

Update on C64 Forever

I grabbed the 2012 version and they have fixed some of the issues I had with the earlier version. Still have to convert the games to RP9, but now they have an improved RP9 editor which is nice.

I have to give 64 Forever the winning vote. Now that I seem to own every 64 game known to man (thanks Flack!) I'll burn them all onto a DVD and then convert em so I can start having some 8 bit fun in earnest.


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Post by Flack »

Awesome, glad you were able to get them and get them working! I expect a review of each one of them by the end of the weekend.

There are typically two "GB64" packages that get shared. The first is "all the games," which is what most people are interested in. The other is "all the everything," which includes not only all the games, but all the apps, all the utilities, all the graphics, all the music, etc. I think the last time I saw that one floating around it filled two DVDs.

The goal of GameBase is to gather every C64 program ever released. A couple of years ago I picked up a big lot of Commodore stuff from a guy that was a member of a local Commodore User's Group. Long story short, I converted all the disks to D64 format, made them available on Lemon 64, and found out that a few of them were previously unknown apps. Sure, they sucked, but they were unique and they ended up being added to GameBase 64. Knowing that I found something on a 25 year old floppy disk, rescued it, and added it to "the collective" ... awesome feeling.

So anyway, Vark, about those game reviews ... chop chop.
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Post by AArdvark »

All 7000+ titles, eh? Maybe I'll just review the games in my favorites folder and call it a job well done. Now I have everything I need, I actually have to, you know, play the games first. Setting aside time for that is really the most difficult part of the whole endeavor.


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Post by Flack »

If at all possible, I plan on taking a couple of days off of work in the near future and finishing my C64 game review book.

I still need a good name for it. It's going to contain 64 game reviews -- 32 great ones and 32 terrible ones.

The obvious choice was "Heaven and Hell," but I don't love it. The other day I came up with "Wons and Zeros," but I don't know if it's great or either.
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