C64 mate

[madhair60]

Having grown up with a Speccy, I just hopped online looking for a "ZX Spectrum Classic Mini" but all the machines I found seem crap. Spectrum Vega doesn't even have HDMI! There is, however, a "C64 Mini" that DOES have HDMI and apparently lets me add games via SD card, which is ace. So I figure now's the time to investigate the C64 library.

Can anyone recommend anything for the C64, preferably joystick-friendly but keyboard is fine too. Anything, no matter how obvious. I like creaky, archaic old games so I don't mind if they don't hold up that well either. Thanks

[biggytitbo]

C64 games don't hold up so well due to their puke graphics, but Last Ninja 1/2? Head Over Heels feels more a speccy game but the C64 version is good. Auf Wiedersehen Monty.

[madhair60]

Music on Auf Wiedersehen Monty mate. Yummmm.

[biggytitbo]

Music on Last Ninja, I use to put that on just to listen to the tune on the loading screen.

[Twed]

Just play Speccy games but imagine everything is brown.

[BeardFaceMan]

Bruce Lee, best C64 game ever. The C64 version of Bubble Bobble is pretty sweet too.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Bruce Lee, best C64 game ever. The C64 version of Bubble Bobble is pretty sweet too.

I'd echo that, I won a copy of Bruce Lee from Zzap 64 and loved it to pieces, it was a bit easy (in that it was a rare game I managed to complete) but still fun. And Bubble Bobble was amazing stuff too, one of my all time favourites.

[BeardFaceMan]

I'd echo that, I won a copy of Bruce Lee from Zzap 64 and loved it to pieces, it was a bit easy (in that it was a rare game I managed to complete) but still fun. And Bubble Bobble was amazing stuff too, one of my all time favourites.

Yeah I can count on 2 hands the number of console games ive played and not comleted, its the other way around with Speccy and C64 games, those 2 games being some of the very few I completed properly. I remember Bruce Lee as being one of the first games  I played where co-op meant playing aganist your friend, not being on the same side or switching joysticks when one of you died.

[Cold Meat Platter]

Who Dare Wins 2, good commando clone.
Uridium
HERO
Wizball
Scarabeus, a weird 3d maze game, strangely creepy.
Dropzone, great defender/stargate clone
Green Beret, good version, great music
Zoids, strange mech commander/strategy hybrid with Rob Hubbard soundtrack
Airwolf, to experience one of the most pointlessly difficult games ever created
Thrust, great gravitar-like
Rambo
Blue Max isometric WW1 flying

[biggytitbo]

Batman the isometric game and Batman the caped crusader platform adventure are both excellent batman man games.

[Twed]

Just play Speccy games but imagine everything is brown.

I actually love the C64 but I can't resist dunking on it

[Default to the negative]

A couple of adventure games I don't see mentioned often:

Alice in Wonderland

Below the Root

[The Boston Crab]

Don't waste your money and time. They're absolutely shit these days. Maybe one second per game at most.

[madhair60]

I like old games so why don't you Francis Ford Cop a load of my bollocks in your face

[The Boston Crab]

Just saying I played on one of these though and it's awful. I played a lot of these games as a kid. CPC, BBC Micro, Spec, Commod, Electron. Fond memories but let the PAST stay in the PAST (past a certain point).

[Mister Six]

Just play Speccy games but imagine everything is brown.

Or grey.

[Elderly Sumo Prophecy]

Why is everyone ragging on the C64 when it had better graphics and a larger colour palette than the Spectrum? Spectrum games all looked garish with that horrible cyan and yellow all over the place. Arseholes.

[Twed]

Because the C64 looks like you took the garishness and made a colour dot matrix printout of them.

[biggytitbo]

Spectrum games can still look great, at least when not moving - higher res and the distinctive color palette give them a really stylised look which has aged well. C64 games just look bad.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Yeah I can count on 2 hands the number of console games ive played and not comleted, its the other way around with Speccy and C64 games, those 2 games being some of the very few I completed properly. I remember Bruce Lee as being one of the first games  I played where co-op meant playing aganist your friend, not being on the same side or switching joysticks when one of you died.

I'm trying to think of other games I completed now but am struggling. I know there were a couple more as I remember the frustration of doing so and then getting an end screen which was absolutely rubbish but bar Ghostbusters (another shockingly easy game) I can't think what they were, discounting Mastertronic titles which only had 10 screens or something naff like that.

[Uncle TechTip]

C64 mate? Massive cunt. Also known as "ski jacket mate".

[BeardFaceMan]

I think I first noticed a change with the Amiga. Up until then, arcade, Speccy and C64 games were crazy difficult, me being young probably had a bit to do with it too but back then I remember games were to be played, not completed. Then when I got the Amiga it felt games were a lot easier to complete and I was doing it more often. And then when I got a PS1 and entered the console world there are barely any games I play that I dont complete, if I dont then its because I stopped playing through boredom, not because it was too hard. I do like the 'it is what it is' mentality of those old games, no difficulty levels, no guides, no customization, no entitlement,  just 'this is the game we made, play it or dont', I miss that.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I think I first noticed a change with the Amiga. Up until then, arcade, Speccy and C64 games were crazy difficult, me being young probably had a bit to do with it too but back then I remember games were to be played, not completed. Then when I got the Amiga it felt games were a lot easier to complete and I was doing it more often. And then when I got a PS1 and entered the console world there are barely any games I play that I dont complete, if I dont then its because I stopped playing through boredom, not because it was too hard. I do like the 'it is what it is' mentality of those old games, no difficulty levels, no guides, no customization, no entitlement,  just 'this is the game we made, play it or dont', I miss that.

The problem for me with Amiga games was the ridiculous amount of them I had as it was so easy to get hold of pirated copies, so I only ever completed the games I really loved as if I got bored of one even briefly I'd move on to the next.

[lazarou]

Anyone thinking of buying a c64 mini, be warned the joystick is kind of garbage. It may look like a Comp Pro but I've used the real thing and the later PC-compatible replicas and it's a long way off those.

Anyway, c64 games:

Park Patrol - Might be my favourite game on the system. Lovely chunky graphics and unique but simple gameplay. Be warned once the soundtrack has lodged in your brain there's no getting it back out again.

Creatures 2 - The best game ACP ever made. Varied, vivid puzzle platforming with an obscene amount of polish and a wonderful soundtrack. Far better than the original for my money, and I have no idea why they didn't put that on the system when they clearly seems to have the rights to Thalamus games.

Seconding Blue Max - not the biggest looker out there but it plays like a dream. The 64 also has a really solid port of Zaxxon but I suppose these days arcade ports are a little redundant when you can just go straight to the source.

On a similar note there's Falcon Patrol, a fairly spartan Defender/Dropzone-alike that's just somehow really satisfying to have a quick bash on.

Space Taxi is another very early effort that still holds up thanks to simple and satisfying arcade gameplay.

If you can rope someone else into it the Spy vs Spy series can be a fun time, but let's be honest that's probably not gonna happen.

Similarly there's Archon. Tactical chess-like with 1-on-1 arcade combat bits. Might be a bit of an easier sell as it's a lot less fiddly and much easier to learn, but it's still not happening, is it?

Best of the lot there's Mule, but now you really need 3 to 4 players to get the most of it.

I have a huge soft spot for Colony, it's an odd one that casts you as a lone farming robot defending your mushroom crop from ravenous alien infestation. If I'm honest you'd probably be better off playing that on an Amstrad though, and it's not often I say that.

Split Personalities looks like a fairly stock sliding-tile puzzler but actually livens things up with some sharp mechanics making it a surprisingly fun time and still the best of its odd little genre to this day.

Pirates! because it's Pirates! ffs. If you like that and fancy something a little jankier but still strangely compelling, there's its direct influence Seven Cities of Gold

Laser Squad is great but you do have to question if you can be arsed enough to play a fairly complex tactical strategy games with a joystick. I'd argue it's worth the effort though.

[Kryton]

Turrican II
Exile
Impossible Mission
Wizball
Defender of the crown
Ugh!
R-Type
Barbarian I + II
Creatures II
Rainbow Islands
Spy Hunter
The Addams family
Elvira
Zork
Ghostbusters
CJ in the USA
Park Patrol
Sentinel
Arkanoid
Head over Heels
Bubble Bobble
Mayhem in monsterland (bonus points for having possibly the best graphics on the C64)
Microprose soccer
Cabal
Trapdoor
Chase HQ
Target Renegade
Crackdown
Dan Dare II (I think?)
Various Dizzy games (treasure island / magic land etc)
Gradius
Pedro
Operation: Wolf
Rampage
The Last ninja I + II + III
Zamzara
Zaxxon
Havoc

Anyone who says the C64 was shit is a dickhead who probably preferred the Amstrad or something.

Sorry for the list but it was a good nostalgia trip to be googling these. Some of these were quite ahead of their time too... Ugh! for example had excellent inertia physics, Mayhem in monsterland had great graphics and Havoc was a brilliant isometric (for the time)..


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSv1nZIarBg <-- Havoc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldo2ewLBt3Y <- Mayhem in monsterland

[biggytitbo]

The magic knight games are all good proto adventure games - Spellbound, knight tyme and stormbringer.

[lazarou]

West Bank is a cracking Bank Panic clone that I lost many hours to.

In a similarly western style Law Of The West is a wonderful little oddity and an early example of branching conversations in games.

[madhair60]

Thanks everyone for all these recommendations. I'm dead excited to get going.

Lazarou, I believe I read somewhere that the Mini supports the original Competition Pro joysticks as well? Not that I, er, have one.

Does anyone know a decent solution for Speccy games? Preferably through HDMI?

[lazarou]

I stupidly got rid of mine a while back so I can't check but they're definitely officially supported. EDIT: Oh wait, I was thinking of the usb comp pros, I'm not sure of the situation with the original sticks. It's usb-only but might work with an adapter maybe.

Sadly the speccy situation is a bit of a shambles. There's the original Sinclair Vega but that's an odd fucking thing and the promised Vega+ ended up being a crowdfunding disaster that is a whole story all by itself. Notorious gobshites Elite (yes, the chrome logo Elite) released a bluetooth keyboard modelled exactly after a rubber-keyed speccy but that's not quite the same thing. Definitely the best thing on the horizon is the ZX Spectrum Next, but you're going to have to wait for another round of crowdfunding to get your hands on one of those. Also they are fucking expensive as it's basically a proper modern speccy and not just an emulator in a box.

[madhair60]

I just want something I can plug into the TV and play Speccy games on, the Wii U isn't cutting it!!!