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http://www.zzap64.co.uk/c64/c64emulators.html

You're on your own for the actual game, but I promise it's out there. It's only 6k zipped.

C64 emulators run on a variety of platforms. Most old gaming platforms have thriving communities of emulator users. Games are readily available online. Technically copyright infringement, but there's not a lot of enforcement, since the software has little or no commercial value.

Scanned back issues (legal) are available from http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzuperstore.html ALL back issues of Zzap 64, Crash, Commodore Disk User, Zero and lots of other 80s luvvlies!

Hmm. I don't know. I was thinking more of Floyd the Droid for the Commodore 64. Now if they could just make the robots say "BOO!" to scare off sewer rats and the occasional masked fugitive from justice..

Then the whining School Child, with cassette and shining morning face creeping like a snail unwillingly to databank. . .

*choke*... they don't make 'em like that any more. Mel Croucher, where are you?

It's not much of an article! OK, so it covers the very beginning, and is only a short column, but there's an awful lot it misses out. Sure, it mentions C&VG, and indeed, the whole industry read it at the time, here in the UK. But Sinclair User came along shortly afterwards and garnered a sizeable following. There's also no mention of the Newsfield publications. Crash and Zzap!64 really were the defining magazines of the 1980s computer gaming scene.

Zzap!64 was the game mag I bought more than any other, there seems to be a pretty good resource of material from the mag here

OK, the actual article is here. My own write-up on the game is here. The Zzap!64 review is here.

For those of you still not sure what this is, it's a game where you have a person in your computer, and you can feed him (they're all male for some reason), buy him books and records, ask him to play the piano, and scritch his hair. If you don't feed him, he'll go to bed, turn green, and die. It's a pretty original game, and you can get the C64 tape re-release second hand for around its original cost of £2.99 quite easily. It's reminiscent of tamagotchi and, I've been told, The Sims. It's quite good fun, anyway.

Little tangent, but there's a brilliant diary by the guy who wrote Gribbly's Day Out and Paradroid about the development of the latter over on Zzap!64. Fascinating read.

Little tangent, but there's a brilliant diary by the guy who wrote Gribbly's Day Out and Paradroid about the development of the latter over on Zzap!64. Fascinating read.

1. Poke 95830,1
2. ?????
3. Profit!

It's somehow sad that a name that used to mean so much to me and my generation has become such a base commodity. Most brand names live on or fade into oblivion, but somebody keeps coming up with a reason to flog the dead C=. Having been a huge C= fanboi in the eighties, even I think it's time to just let it rest. Of course, whenever I read anything even vaguely Commodore related I get all nostalgic regardless. The Zzap 64 archive is often just the tonic I need at times like that.

Anyone interested in this really should read Birth of a Paradroid", which is Andrew Braybook's developer's diary for the C64 classic Paradroid. It's a fascinating glimpse into what game writing was like back in those days...

Indeed

Zzap64

Great Giana Sisters banned for similar reasons.

The Paradroid port Windows and Linux
The making of... Andrew Braybrook's diary

I'm playing computer games (mind you! computer not video games) since the early eighties. And I seriously doubt that Complex Games(TM) are a recent development. I played and loved Ultima IV on my C64. And if that was not complex, what is it then? Think of the first Microsoft Flight Simulator for instance.

That said, I'm not an exclusive player of these games. I like playing both types. And I think there are games that are both, simple and complex in one.

I wondered about the debate over 'use' and 'crouch' keys. In my opinion that does not divide games in simple, as in easy to pickup and just play for a while, and complex (we need at least an hour to get into that one). Complexity of interface and functions is not a good indicator for this. If this was the case then a game like Paradroid would be a simple game. Which is it not. Because you have to invest some time and strategic thinking even to get somewhere in this game, let alone beat one level.

Just my two Eurocents.

-Arnulf

Co-incidentally, just today I was commenting to my wife about games from the 80's - when I was a school boy - today.

I was just investigating some old computer magazines for the most popular gaming platforms back then.

These mags make good reading. The reviews praise games which took only a few weeks or months for a one/two person development team to write.

Games then had what I call "playability" - more substance than style. Graphics capabilities were not good, memory was very tight (32K on some machines) and typical processors were clocked at less than 1Mhz.

In these days of fast processors, graphics GPUs, realms of memory etc, it seems (IMHO) that all that games are all about style with little substance.

Nostalgia.

I recently tried an emulator and had a look at some of the games that I spent hours and days on as a teen. Games such as Mercenary.

And frankly, most of those games that I had the fondest memory of, from today's perspective, plain and simply suck.

I care about this cause it's "orbit" as seen from Earth is Really,Really, Reallyneat.

Although I admit that everytime I look at the JPL Orbit Diagrams, I feel the urge to load up the original version of Elite

Games like Black & White & the Sims have been around for years, huh?

The argument could be made that Black & White is merely a combination of Populous and Creatures, and the Sims is just a newer version of Little Computer People.

The truth is that a good game is more in the execution than in the idea. There have been many hokey, tired ideas that became good games because the games were made well. There have been many games with superb, avant-garde ideas that made very poor games. Ocasionally somebody will break through and make something really new, but the fact that that's rare doesn't mean that every game that DOESN'T do that is worthless.

_Dark Side_ (1988) was a follow-up of _Driller_ (1987). Those two where probably the first games with solid 3d (unless there were som early 3d Amiga games?)

Earlier non-filled games include _Mercenary_ (1987), _Elite_ (1986), ported to almost every imaginable platform (though more of a first-person space game than a shooter).

Of course, _The Sentinel_ (1986) needs a mention as well. The 3d is somewhat limited, but its definitely solid... And it's a truly great game!

You really need them as PDF? Otherwise it's surprising how many are available online. I don't know much about the console mags & C64 mags because I was a Speccy / Amiga owner, but I know many mags are archived online by enthusiasts (often WITH covertapes, posters, silly 3D pullouts etc).

A few I know of:
http://www.zzap64.co.uk/
http://www.old-computer-mags.co.uk/
http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/cover1.htm
http://www.mjwilson.demon.co.uk/crash/
http://www.sincuser.f9.co.uk/
http://www.btinternet.com/~amigapower/

Mercy Dash is currently unemployed at http://www.grenville-evans.co.uk/mercy.htm

LONG LIVE THE PAST!!!

• You don't have to have a non-linear storyline in a game to be both interactive and engrossing.
• You don't need a full-motion video intro to a game to be impressive.
• Really effective AI code isn't about how clever it is - it's about how clever it looks. The soldiers in Half-Life are individually stupid, but the fact that they work as a team is already way better than most games.
• There are points in Half-Life where the designers came up with a completely fantastic idea. They used it once to full effect, and then never again. Rather than making you utterly bored of it, that one point really sticks in your memory. There's also amazing subtlety in the soundtrack.
• Oh, and the point about mods and Counterstrike and stuff.

Adrian Braybrook (sp?)

Andrew Braybrook - and he wrote a fantastic diary while creating Paradroid, for a magazine called Zzap 64!

I loved every minute of it. I was surprised to find just how many other people remember it fondly too. You can read it here.