Random 8-bit reminiscing

[Marc]

So, as I mentioned in another post, I'm in a really reminiscent mood today. Played a few emu's, revisited some classic titles, and thought I'd just create a thread for people to pop in and shoot the shit about the good old days. Doesn't have to be any sort of list, or even a point to your post, just join me and get misty eyed for a while. Been playing mainly C64 and Amiga stuff myself, but feel free to chime in about anything.

Been playing a little Impossible Mission. Still something about the game that holds up well today, although it's got to be played on the C64 - any other is a pale imitation. C64 version had the coolest speech and SFX on the robots. Follow up was nice enough, didn't have the same feel though.

Paradriod - what a game. More games should narrow down their premise, concentrate on one idea done right like this. Any games since had a similar thing going on? I know there have been a few titles that let you roam and possess other bodies or whatever, but I'm talking about one that made you play a cool little minigame in order to win. I know you can take over other robots in Metal Arms, but haven't played that far yet - anything similar in there?

Boulderdash..... still makes me break things. I used to spend more time playing with the construction kit than I did the game.

Wizball should get more love around these boards actually. A cool enough borderliner in it's own right, but the 'Filth Raid' bonus levels are pure twitch, and remind me of parts of Gradius where the enemies fade in before the boss now I think about it.

And for a giggle, I played the conversions of Out Run and Double Dragon on both machines. Damn, the shit they used to put in front of us. And people think we're being ripped off now

[adam76]

I was more of a 'Speccy' boy myself. The 128k+2 was my first foray into the gaming world and it still holds a special place in my heart today.

Favourite games, well there were loads. Off the top of my head: Target Renegade, Auf Wiedersehen Monty, Excolon, Cybernoid(in fact, most of the Hewson games were ace), Atic Atac, colin the cleaner(i think it came free with my machine...), i could go on all day!

There was nothing quite like that feeling you got when you'd accumilated enough money for a 'big-box' title. The ten pound games, basking in all their cardboard glory!

I was fortunate in the sense that one of my friends had a C64, another an Amstrad 464, and me the Speccy. We got the best of all three worlds, although a would'nt have swopped my lil' grey box o' tricks for any of them!

Top machine, great days and don't get me started on those loading sounds.

[Bydobasher]

Isn't the C64 just the greatest computer ever? There are so many games for C64 that really captured my imagination; I could just get lost in them and play them all night -- as I did with a good friend of mine on a number of occasions. I need to emulate the C64 on my new computer so I can revisit some of those games, most of whose names I forget unfortunately.

Impossible Mission was wild though. "Stay awhile... Stay FOREVER!! "

[Shatterhand]

And I was an MSX guy..

The MSX piss all over the C64... (YEAAAAH... oldschool computer wars RULEZ! Mine is always better than yours!)

I never understood what was the fuss about Impossible Mission, I always thought that it was boring as hell, and if it didint had the speech, it would have been long forgotten (Like Wizball was, which is a much better game). Impossible Mission 2025 is bigger, prettier, and more boring than ever !


Marc, have you ever played Wizkid, the sequel to Wizball? It's a completely new, different game, and it's one of the 6 gems that Sensible Software made for the Amiga (Everything they made on this machine was a gem). You should check it out.

[Bydobasher]

The MSX piss all over the C64

You don't want me to have to take you outside....

Seriously, MSX is awesome too, you're absolutely right.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

I went from Atari VCS to ColecoVision, to Commodore 64...I think that wasa pretty good upgrade.

As far as the C-64 goes, I'll never forget the likes of the following:
Racing Destruction Set
Blue Max
Beyond Forbidden Forest
Defenders of the Crown
Lords of Conquest
Bards Tale
Pitstop II
Winter/Califonia Games
Karate Champ
Karateka
Ultima IV Quest of the Avatar
Rock n' Wrestling
Gunship
Airborne Rangers
F-15 Strike Eagle
Jet
Flight Simulator
Test Drive


Man, I can hear those 80's tunes in the backround now...
Everything back then was cool...all except for Dexsies Mightnight Runners(or however you spell it)

[Accutron]

My first computer was an Atari 400, then a 800XL, then a 130XE. I still remember the day my mom brought our 400 home from Sears. It was a display model, which was in mostly perfect condition but the peripheral port was messed up...bunch of bent pins, like some retard tried to jam a controller plug into it really hard. She got a discount on it, only paid $50, and this was when they were still full price, before the XL line. My dad took it apart that same night, desoldered the peripheral socket and replaced it with a new one. I remember him soldering each of those pins, took a couple hours. After that it was like new. She also brought home Galaxian, Choplifter, Centipede and Qix, as well as a handful of educational titles published by Spinnaker, and a LOGO cart. My uncle owned an electronics company, and gave us an amber monochrome monitor so the 400 wouldn't be taking up precious real estate on the living room TV. Later when we had the 800XL, we got a few floppy games...EA's Worms? and Pinball Construction Set, and a turn-based tank strategy game called ATTANK!, which was programmed in AtariBASIC.

I remember my mom, a schoolteacher, petitioning the local school board to adopt Atari systems instead of Apple systems, for all the obvious reasons. They went with Apple anyway, much to my disappointment. Apple systems were such clunkers compared to what I had at home.

In 1994, after I had moved out, my mom bought a Mac (first-gen Performa with a 68030 and 5 megs of RAM), and gave most of our Atari stuff to one of my younger brother's friends, who destroyed it all in short order. A 400, 800XL, 130XE, 1050 disk drive, printer, and almost all of the games, all complete in boxes with manuals

I still have an 800XL, along with an 810 floppy drive and my childhood copies of Worms? and Pinball Construction Set, which are still complete and play perfectly. I've replaced my Galaxian and Qix, and have a few other games that I never had back in the 80's, like Pac Man and Super Breakout. I still play the system quite often.

[it290]

I think my C64 favorites are different from most people's, but damn did I play a lot of games for that machine. One great borderliner/hybrid is Cauldron... hard as hell, but ultimately satisfying when you manage to win. Cauldron II isn't bad either (kind of plays like Wizball actually). My favorite C64 game, however, would have to be Mail Order Monsters. How come Archon gets all the love and this extremely innovative game (the much cooler forerunner of all of today's 'raise a monster' titles) gets no appreciation?

Speaking of crappy ports, one C64 title I never ever want to play again is the port of Rush 'n' Attack. That shit was freakin' impossible, even more so than the arcade or NES versions.

[theevilfunkster]

My first games machine was a C64 when I was about 5-6. I used to love Impossible Mission, though I could never get very far on it. And Pitstop 2 and Batman were awesome. Zaxxon was a bastard. Could never get much further than the start of the first level.

Shame Mine doesnt work any more. I've still got an ass load of cassetes and cartidges somewhere.

[landshark]

Beyond Forbidden Forest

YES!!!! YES!!! Finally!!! Somebody else that knows about this game. I used to looooove plaything this game. The scorpion, the worm, monkey thing, the dragon fly, the bats, the hydra, and the demon.

Oh how I loved the hydra. Never did finish it myself, but I did watch my friend finish it once. Made it to the demon with enough arrows to die a few times and figure it out. But the load times sucked.

Gunship was pretty good, but a little too complex for me.

I used to like playing Crystal Castles and Arkanoid II. And of course as everyone else has stated, way too much Impossible Mission. It used to piss my friend off because it was his computer and he hated that game.

[TWITCHDOCTOR]

I've played alot more games than I mentioned in my post...those were just the ones that stood out.
I never did like Impossible Mission.

Back then I was pretty heavily into RPG's and fligh simulators.

What was that pinball game by Sublogic? Night Mission? It was a WWII theme, with emphisis on dropping bombs. Man, I played the crap outa that one.

Also, the C-64 was the first time I got a chance to play Gradius!!!
Come to think of it, Space Harrier had a decent port...well it was pretty buggy too!

[zaphod]

c64 ruels over all other 8 bit cpus. period.

Forbidden FOrest was truly awesome. There's actualyl very little to the game, but it's more than the sum of it's parts. it jus has this AMAZING atmosphere that really sucks you in.

Impossible missions was great, although i must admit the "AAAAaaAAAAAAAaaAAAAHHH!" when you fell off the bottom was truly awesome.

Zaxxon was actually EASY. played much slower than the arcade did.

btw, the other game sort of similar to paradroid was callled Magnetron. you "grappled" with rbots and took over their bodys to get extra lives. it was a weird sliding puzzle game in this one.

[gameoverDude]

Power Drift on the C64 had been amazing. One game you'd least expect to be converted well to C64 actually turned out better than many other arcade games making it to 8-bit. Only the Extra stages, the tilt effect, some BGM, and of course the usual amount of graphic detail are missing.

C64 Rush'N Attack is a decent conversion IMO, but I have to agree on it being too hard. Why so? The soldiers carrying assault rifles seem to be on crack, shooting a whole lot more than they do in the arcade.

[BrianC]

I grew up with the Atari 800 and Forbidden Forest. I remember playing the crappy gauntlet conversion on that thing. I also played CGA computer games a lot (don't ask me why). I loved Jumpman. I also played games on the Atari 2600 like Defender.

[howmuchkeefe]

Ahh... the memories! I must have played hundreds of C64 games, but my favorites by far were Montezuma's Revenge, Jumpman, Bruce Lee and The Bard's Tale trilogy (well... I only ever played the first two BTs in glorious four color PC CGA- two of those colors being among the ugliest in the entire spectrum).

[Accutron]

Everybody involved in this thread should watch this, courtesy of Jack Tramiel...

http://reklamyftp.gry-online.pl/a/atari01so.mov

[it290]

C64 Rush'N Attack is a decent conversion IMO, but I have to agree on it being too hard. Why so? The soldiers carrying assault rifles seem to be on crack, shooting a whole lot more than they do in the arcade.

The problem I have with it, aside from the usual Rush 'n' Attack difficulty and the traditional problem with C64 action platformers (pressing up to jump), is the fact that you have to hit the space bar to activate your special weapons. You just don't have time to do that in Rush 'n' Attack. Inevitably, whenever I would try to use a special I would end up dead.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

It doesn't get much better than the very first version of Turrican on the C64. I always loved the C64 R-Type too.

[Marc]

I was more of a 'Speccy' boy myself. The 128k+2 was my first foray into the gaming world and it still holds a special place in my heart today.

Well the speccy was my second machine ever, the first my parents ever bought for me. We started with an Intellivision given to us by my Uncle, then for my birthday one year my olds came back form town with a 48k+ (£150.00!), which must've been some struggle 'cause money was tight in those days. My mate had the C64 though, and I was always a bit jealous.

I never understood what was the fuss about Impossible Mission, I always thought that it was boring as hell, and if it didint had the speech, it would have been long forgotten (Like Wizball was, which is a much better game). Impossible Mission 2025 is bigger, prettier, and more boring than ever !

Play it again man, it still has some of the most meticulously designed screens featured in any platform game, ever.

Racing Destruction Set

So good and ahead of it's time, they released nearly the same game, what, 10 years later on the SNES (Rock n Roll Racing)?

I think my C64 favorites are different from most people's, but damn did I play a lot of games for that machine. One great borderliner/hybrid is Cauldron... hard as hell, but ultimately satisfying when you manage to win. Cauldron II isn't bad either (kind of plays like Wizball actually).

2 joystick-smashing bastards of games.

Power Drift on the C64 had been amazing. One game you'd least expect to be converted well to C64 actually turned out better than many other arcade games making it to 8-bit. Only the Extra stages, the tilt effect, some BGM, and of course the usual amount of graphic detail are missing.

A superb conversion. Chris Butler if I remember rightly, his tradeemark were the chunky black-outline visuals first seen in Space Harrier, Power Drift and later, Turbo Charge. Thunder Blade may be one of his conversions also?

Marc, have you ever played Wizkid, the sequel to Wizball? It's a completely new, different game, and it's one of the 6 gems that Sensible Software made for the Amiga (Everything they made on this machine was a gem). You should check it out.

One of the most utterly surreal games I've ever played. The puzzle sections were just..... anyone that thinks Euro devs can't do odd needs to check this out.

[Palmer Eldritch]

Hunters Moon (C64) is just about one of the most polished and pure games I´ve ever played.
Paradroid and Citadel both used little details to create an intense and believable atmosphere.

Oh, and then there was Elite. Probably logged more than 2.000 hours on this sucker.


On the Spectrum my most played games were Fat Worm blows a Sparky, 3D Starstrike and Starstrike II. Head over Heels was pretty good also.

There was a strategy game on the Spectrum which was called something like Formula One Manager. Used to set players to 0(zero) and just watch the cars go by for hours.

[D]

Well here's something I heard the other day.
It seems that back in the day, before internet was even thought of there was another way of downloading, yes that's right, more like recording....from the radio....

That's right an old friend told me this there were these special radio program that broadcasted programs and games.

Press record:....NOW

I bet most of you mf-ers didn't even know about this, well now you do
I didn't know about it


BTW did I forgot to mention that the ZX Speccy bombed on the C64 and the MSX. yeah right

But it is an underrated system. And the games are not that bad at all.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

Well here's something I heard the other day.
It seems that back in the day, before internet was even thought of there was another way of downloading, yes that's right, more like recording....from the radio....

That's right an old friend told me this there were these special radio program that broadcasted programs and games.

Press record:....NOW

I bet most of you mf-ers didn't even know about this, well now you do
I didn't know about it

Wow! I can't imagine that working with just the slightest bit of static or interference during transmission though.