Ah, I had those Wico joysticks as well. They were the bathandle variety.:-) I STILL have those and I am sure they still work just fine; I have to dig them out with my C64 sometime soon. They were expensive once upon (I think like $29 apiece), but they were top quality. They used to have commercials for them where they showed someone dropping them from the top of a ladder and bouncing off of the ground. They were/are nearly indestructable.:-)
Actually, the Vectrex even shocked people with its ability to replicate raster-type graphics. Have you played Scramble on the Vectrex? It is quite amazing how well they did that game with vector graphics. I think it even won awards for its adaption, if I remember correctly. That console was definitely stand-out. I never owned one, but I just might someday.;-) I played one at a friend's house once upon. I have an emulator for my PSP, but the games lack sound and the controls aren't that great. I hope there is an update to that emulator, because I crave sound emulation.:-)
I also loved the Infocom games like "Zork" and "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy".:-) I still have a love for those interactive fiction games. (or text adventures, as they used to be called. lol) In fact, the first game I ever played on a Vic-20 was Scott Adams' "Adventureland". Great little game.:-) I had it on a cartridge. lol
One of my favorite games from the C-64 era was "Elite". What a fantastic game. It was a true original and WAY ahead of its time. Another gem was "Maniac Mansion". This was the type of game that made gaming on a computer so much better than on a console. They did actually end up putting out "Maniac Mansion" for the NES, but it was famously butchered because of Nintendo's censor-happy ways at the time. Another great batch were the Gold Box games like "Pool of Radiance". Ah, such fun times.:-)
Just for fun, here are other games I thought were the best on the system (I mostly left out arcade ports). This list comes from my C-64 emulator currently on my PSP. heh:
Airborne Ranger, Alice in Wonderland, Aliens (Activision), Alter Ego, Archon 1 & 2, Arctic Fox, Autoduel, Bard's Tale (all), Beach Head 1 & 2, Below the Root, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, Blue Max, Boulder Dash, Broadsides, Bubble Bobble, Bruce Lee, California Games, Castle Wolfenstein, Chilly Willy, Chuckie Egg, CJ in the USA, Commando, Creatures, Crush Crumble and Chomp,,Dambusters, Defender of the Crown, Demon Stalkers, Diplomacy, Dizzy (all of them), Dragonhawk, Druid, Fight Night, Flight Simulator (Microsoft), Gateway to Apshai, Ghostbusters, Goonies, Great American Cross Country Road Race, Great Giana Sisters, Green Berret, Gumball, Gunship, H.E.R.O., Hardball, Head Over Heels, Heart of Africa, Hes Games, Hobbit, IK+, Impossible Mission, International Soccer, Into the Eagle's Nest, Jet, Jet Set Willy, Jumpman, Karateka, Kennedy Approach, Kikstart 1 & 2, Knight Games, Labyrinth, Last Ninja (all), Law of the West, Leaderboard, Little Computer People, Lode Runner, M.U.L.E., Master of the Lamps, Mercenary, Microleague Baseball, Movie Monster Game, Neuromancer, Ninja, Nukewar, Ogre, On Court Tennis, Paradroid, Parallax, Park Patrol, The Pawn, Pinball Construction Set, Pirates, Pitstop 1 & 2, Platoon, Project Stealth Fighter, Racing Destruction Set, Radar Rat Race, Raid on Bungling Bay, Raid Over Moscow, Rally Speedway, Rambo - First Blood Part 2, Realm of Impossibility, Red Storm Rising, Rescue on Fractalus, Seven Cities of Gold, Shamus, Silent Service, Six Gun Shootout, Skate or Die, Skool Daze, Slap Shot, Space Taxi, Spy vs. Spy (all), Star League Baseball, Star Trek - The Kobyashi Alternative, Stealth, Summer Games, Super Cycle, Super Pipeline, Telengard, Temple of Apshai Trilogy, Test Drive 1 & 2, Toy Bizzare, Trailblazer, Ultima 3 & 4 (and the others too), Wasteland, Winter Camp, Winter Games, Wizard, Wizball, World Games, World Karate Championship, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, Zone Ranger
And those are just my favorites! lol;-) I didn't list everything in my emulator.
Yeah, I have my manual still too.:-) For now, I have been using emulators, but I should pull out my Commodores from the storage unit I have them in to tinker again sometime soon. Then maybe I will remember those FastLoad commands perfectly. lol
I also had a machine code manual, but that was torture. lol I completely agree with you that the Programmer's Reference Manual was an awesome book. I still tell people about how perfect that book was. I credit it with getting me started on the path I am now in a career with computers and still a tinkerer too. lol;-)
Granted, my first computer was actually a Vic-20, the C-64 really shone for me.:-)
I had (and still have) Wico Bathandle joysticks. Best joystick ever made.:-) You could bounce those things off of a concrete floor and they would keep on trucking.
That's right! I remember having some program to enable the drives to copy on their own. I remember being blown away the first time I copied something with my computer turned off. lol I remember it being a slow copy, though.
Yeah, the load command was hardwired into my brain too. lol I remember moving to a PC and having to get used to the keyboard layout, since the double-quotes were above the 2 on the Commodore. lol If you run an emulator, you still have to remember that. lol
That reminds me? What was the loading shortcut when you used the FastLoad cart? Wasn't it the Commodore key and Run/Stop or something like that? lol
Oh... and who didn't double-side their own floppies? I know I always had a hole-puncher nearby.;-)
Am I the only one that had GEOS? Remember that? It was the attempt to give a "Windows-like" GUI to the C-64. I remember being amazed at what it could do. I remember being impressed by the word processor that came with it too. It bailed me out when my other word processing program crapped out on me when I needed to do a paper for school. lol
Another goofy thing I had for the Commodore that nobody I know had was the 4-pen plotter. Did anyone here have that? It had demo software that would draw crazy shapes. I remember really loving playing with that, but the pens were micro-tiny and held like no ink. The paper roll was uber-pricey and the replacement pens were too. It ended up being a short-lived fascination... I couldn't get my parents or grandparents to buy more supplies for it. lol Kinda wish I still had that little plotter, but I remember tossing it ages ago.
I also had a light-pen, but that was uber-crap. I always wanted a Koala Pad. lol:-)
Nah, I doubt many here will understand what the hell a "Hamster Reset" is... except maybe you. heh (pins 1 and 3, btw);-)
btw, yeah, I had the FastLoad cart too. And IcePick... and Final Cartridge. Cool tools!:-) What about the software tools like The Hacker's Toolkit? I had others but I am forgetting the titles now. lol
Another thing I remember from loading those games back then was how the pirates always had to give shout-outs to their buddies and that crazy "midi" SID music jamming out on the load screens. lol *sigh* I miss that in a silly nostalgic way. I do love how pirates now {with keygens and such) seem to keep that spirit alive.:-)
Damn! I tore my shuba! Gotta go... haveta find a token and buy another one. heh
By Ebert's logic, you could then add the Left Behind game as art because the outcome of the game is set. The good guys win and the bad guys lose. It is set in stone.
Damn... what a sucky game that must be... for several reasons. But at least Ebert might see it as art.;-) heh
There is also "Elite: The New Kind", which is out there on the web for download if you poke around a bit. (I think the guy who made it had to remove it at the request of one of the creators.) It is a great remake of the game that works perfectly under XP. A definite winner!
I have it working on my WinXP SP2 laptop. It has been a while, but I remember looking it up online to find out how to make it run on XP and it involved downloading some patches. That got it working for me under XP.
As someone else said on here, look for a torrent. It shouldn't be that hard to scoop up. Otherwise, do what I did and poke around for the proper patches.
Actually, I think kryptonite can give humans cancer if they are exposed to it for too long. Wasn't that how Lex Luthor got cancer and lost his hand? He wore a ring with kryptonite in it to keep Superman away.
I honestly didn't read the comic, myself, but I swear I remember that being explained to me years ago by someone who did.
Gee, I wonder if it still will use the Rockwell MOS 6502 microprocessor with 1MHz and 64k RAM! That would ROCK SO HARD! They could call it the Commodore 64. w00t!
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LMAO! I remember when that was on the store shelves... I almost died laughing.
http://carcino.gen.nz/images/index.php/42e23aa3/63ed627e
Too funny!
Nooooo!!! 404 Not Found?!! Now I will never know what the missing component is!!! I'm doomed! :(
Yeah, I saw that Simpsons too. Good episode. ;)
Yeah, The Silmarillion read like the Old Testament, to me.
Wow, that brings back memories. I used to love "What's News". I also remember enjoying Larry Elmore's weird strip, "SnarfQuest". lol :)
Ah, I had those Wico joysticks as well. They were the bathandle variety. :-) I STILL have those and I am sure they still work just fine; I have to dig them out with my C64 sometime soon. They were expensive once upon (I think like $29 apiece), but they were top quality. They used to have commercials for them where they showed someone dropping them from the top of a ladder and bouncing off of the ground. They were/are nearly indestructable. :-)
Actually, the Vectrex even shocked people with its ability to replicate raster-type graphics. Have you played Scramble on the Vectrex? It is quite amazing how well they did that game with vector graphics. I think it even won awards for its adaption, if I remember correctly. That console was definitely stand-out. I never owned one, but I just might someday. ;-) I played one at a friend's house once upon. I have an emulator for my PSP, but the games lack sound and the controls aren't that great. I hope there is an update to that emulator, because I crave sound emulation. :-)
For a moment of seriousness... Actually, Windows 98 wasn't released yet. Windows 95 was still the soup du jour in January of 1998. :-)
I also loved the Infocom games like "Zork" and "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy". :-) I still have a love for those interactive fiction games. (or text adventures, as they used to be called. lol) In fact, the first game I ever played on a Vic-20 was Scott Adams' "Adventureland". Great little game. :-) I had it on a cartridge. lol
:-)
,Dambusters, Defender of the Crown, Demon Stalkers, Diplomacy, Dizzy (all of them), Dragonhawk, Druid, Fight Night, Flight Simulator (Microsoft), Gateway to Apshai, Ghostbusters, Goonies, Great American Cross Country Road Race, Great Giana Sisters, Green Berret, Gumball, Gunship, H.E.R.O., Hardball, Head Over Heels, Heart of Africa, Hes Games, Hobbit, IK+, Impossible Mission, International Soccer, Into the Eagle's Nest, Jet, Jet Set Willy, Jumpman, Karateka, Kennedy Approach, Kikstart 1 & 2, Knight Games, Labyrinth, Last Ninja (all), Law of the West, Leaderboard, Little Computer People, Lode Runner, M.U.L.E., Master of the Lamps, Mercenary, Microleague Baseball, Movie Monster Game, Neuromancer, Ninja, Nukewar, Ogre, On Court Tennis, Paradroid, Parallax, Park Patrol, The Pawn, Pinball Construction Set, Pirates, Pitstop 1 & 2, Platoon, Project Stealth Fighter, Racing Destruction Set, Radar Rat Race, Raid on Bungling Bay, Raid Over Moscow, Rally Speedway, Rambo - First Blood Part 2, Realm of Impossibility, Red Storm Rising, Rescue on Fractalus, Seven Cities of Gold, Shamus, Silent Service, Six Gun Shootout, Skate or Die, Skool Daze, Slap Shot, Space Taxi, Spy vs. Spy (all), Star League Baseball, Star Trek - The Kobyashi Alternative, Stealth, Summer Games, Super Cycle, Super Pipeline, Telengard, Temple of Apshai Trilogy, Test Drive 1 & 2, Toy Bizzare, Trailblazer, Ultima 3 & 4 (and the others too), Wasteland, Winter Camp, Winter Games, Wizard, Wizball, World Games, World Karate Championship, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, Zone Ranger
;-) I didn't list everything in my emulator.
;-)
One of my favorite games from the C-64 era was "Elite". What a fantastic game. It was a true original and WAY ahead of its time. Another gem was "Maniac Mansion". This was the type of game that made gaming on a computer so much better than on a console. They did actually end up putting out "Maniac Mansion" for the NES, but it was famously butchered because of Nintendo's censor-happy ways at the time. Another great batch were the Gold Box games like "Pool of Radiance". Ah, such fun times.
Just for fun, here are other games I thought were the best on the system (I mostly left out arcade ports). This list comes from my C-64 emulator currently on my PSP. heh:
Airborne Ranger, Alice in Wonderland, Aliens (Activision), Alter Ego, Archon 1 & 2, Arctic Fox, Autoduel, Bard's Tale (all), Beach Head 1 & 2, Below the Root, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, Blue Max, Boulder Dash, Broadsides, Bubble Bobble, Bruce Lee, California Games, Castle Wolfenstein, Chilly Willy, Chuckie Egg, CJ in the USA, Commando, Creatures, Crush Crumble and Chomp,
And those are just my favorites! lol
So... what are your favorites?
Yeah, I have my manual still too. :-) For now, I have been using emulators, but I should pull out my Commodores from the storage unit I have them in to tinker again sometime soon. Then maybe I will remember those FastLoad commands perfectly. lol
;-)
:-)
I also had a machine code manual, but that was torture. lol I completely agree with you that the Programmer's Reference Manual was an awesome book. I still tell people about how perfect that book was. I credit it with getting me started on the path I am now in a career with computers and still a tinkerer too. lol
Granted, my first computer was actually a Vic-20, the C-64 really shone for me.
I had (and still have) Wico Bathandle joysticks. Best joystick ever made. :-) You could bounce those things off of a concrete floor and they would keep on trucking.
That's right! I remember having some program to enable the drives to copy on their own. I remember being blown away the first time I copied something with my computer turned off. lol I remember it being a slow copy, though.
;-)
Yeah, the load command was hardwired into my brain too. lol I remember moving to a PC and having to get used to the keyboard layout, since the double-quotes were above the 2 on the Commodore. lol If you run an emulator, you still have to remember that. lol
That reminds me? What was the loading shortcut when you used the FastLoad cart? Wasn't it the Commodore key and Run/Stop or something like that? lol
Oh... and who didn't double-side their own floppies? I know I always had a hole-puncher nearby.
Cool! I should do that too and use the M.U.L.E. theme. hehe :-) I wonder how many people would "get" that if I used it. ;-)
Am I the only one that had GEOS? Remember that? It was the attempt to give a "Windows-like" GUI to the C-64. I remember being amazed at what it could do. I remember being impressed by the word processor that came with it too. It bailed me out when my other word processing program crapped out on me when I needed to do a paper for school. lol
:-)
Another goofy thing I had for the Commodore that nobody I know had was the 4-pen plotter. Did anyone here have that? It had demo software that would draw crazy shapes. I remember really loving playing with that, but the pens were micro-tiny and held like no ink. The paper roll was uber-pricey and the replacement pens were too. It ended up being a short-lived fascination... I couldn't get my parents or grandparents to buy more supplies for it. lol Kinda wish I still had that little plotter, but I remember tossing it ages ago.
I also had a light-pen, but that was uber-crap. I always wanted a Koala Pad. lol
Nah, I doubt many here will understand what the hell a "Hamster Reset" is... except maybe you. heh (pins 1 and 3, btw) ;-)
:-) What about the software tools like The Hacker's Toolkit? I had others but I am forgetting the titles now. lol
:-)
btw, yeah, I had the FastLoad cart too. And IcePick... and Final Cartridge. Cool tools!
Another thing I remember from loading those games back then was how the pirates always had to give shout-outs to their buddies and that crazy "midi" SID music jamming out on the load screens. lol *sigh* I miss that in a silly nostalgic way. I do love how pirates now {with keygens and such) seem to keep that spirit alive.
Damn! I tore my shuba! Gotta go... haveta find a token and buy another one. heh
By Ebert's logic, you could then add the Left Behind game as art because the outcome of the game is set. The good guys win and the bad guys lose. It is set in stone.
;-) heh
Damn... what a sucky game that must be... for several reasons. But at least Ebert might see it as art.
I think you meant that this was good for the CRACKERS. :)
Sorry to be anal.
There is also "Elite: The New Kind", which is out there on the web for download if you poke around a bit. (I think the guy who made it had to remove it at the request of one of the creators.) It is a great remake of the game that works perfectly under XP. A definite winner!
I have it working on my WinXP SP2 laptop. It has been a while, but I remember looking it up online to find out how to make it run on XP and it involved downloading some patches. That got it working for me under XP.
As someone else said on here, look for a torrent. It shouldn't be that hard to scoop up. Otherwise, do what I did and poke around for the proper patches.
Actually, I think kryptonite can give humans cancer if they are exposed to it for too long. Wasn't that how Lex Luthor got cancer and lost his hand? He wore a ring with kryptonite in it to keep Superman away.
I honestly didn't read the comic, myself, but I swear I remember that being explained to me years ago by someone who did.
I mean... just watch Mimic with the GM Cockroaches? That would surely make them think. heh
Gee, I wonder if it still will use the Rockwell MOS 6502 microprocessor with 1MHz and 64k RAM! That would ROCK SO HARD! They could call it the Commodore 64. w00t!
heh
To be slightly anal...
;-)
The line is, "He saw Jedi 17 times, eh?"
The line is extra interesting because Jedi wasn't even released yet when Strange Brew was shot.
Actually, that should be, "Amen Sister." lol ;-)
;-) I did hear that it wasn't as good from others, also.
:-) Great fun!
Yeah, Deus Ex is excellent too. And don't forget System Shock 2!
I haven't played Thief 3, but I will heed your warnings.
Also, despite the article making complaints, I absolutely loved both No One Lives Forever games.
A FPS without guns? Anyone here ever play Thief?
:-)
I still feel that Thief is one of the best games I ever played. Maybe because it was so original and different!