Kevin's Watch

For Christmas my brother gave me a device that looks like a joystick, but it also has classic C64 games in it. It just plugs into the TV - it has both Impossible Mission and Jumpman Jr as well as other games. If anyone wants details I'll post them.

seven reds, seven blacks wrote:the original Ultima Series by Lord British aka Richard Garriott!!!anyone ever played them?

IV.

I loved the Ultima Games, and I loved my C64. I think I got through most of them until 10, which didn't work on my machine. Good memories, particularly of IV.

Anybody remember M.U.L.E.?

I loved the Jumpman games. I actually liked the first one more than Jumpman Jr.

Oh, and I think it was called Forbidden Forest. Greatest music at the time.

And to threadjack a bit, my favorite game of all time had to be Tunnels of Doom for the Texas Instruments computer. I used to put in Covenant character names and play that for days.

C64...
Wow, that goes back.
Yah, I had it, mostly for my writing projects, but I had games. Some D&D rpg things and a funny Rollerball type game.

Wow...going back a long way.

I loved the Avalon Hill games. Midway Campaign and Nukewar were some of my favorites. Just about as basic as war strategy games could get, but it was about all that was out there of you wanted war sim games on the 64.

Anyone ever play Telengard? The absolute best character building game on the 64 that I ever played. 'The Dragon King approaches...he likes you...he gives to you a '+389 sword''!

The Sword of Fargoal. Another great one.

And then there as Gunship. Many hours I spent playing that one. That one was by Microprose. They also put out F-117A Stealth Fighter, too.

A couple of other notables. Epyx's Summer Games, Electronic Arts' Bard's Tale. Space Taxi, Combat Leader.

And anyone ever remember the original Madden Football on the 64? This was back around 1986 or so.

Atari's Temple of Apshai games were pretty cool, too.

M.U.L.E. - that theme music still rings in my head.

Definately some classics there were on the ole' 64.

jelerak wrote:M.U.L.E. - that theme music still rings in my head.

Now it and some remixes can ring in your head if you download them here. Damn I loved this game.

Apparently, Commodore 64 is great for committing crimes these days.

[u][b]CNN.com[/b][/u] wrote:Teen's captor used 1980s computer
POSTED: 11:23 a.m. EDT, September 5, 2006

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Police combing through the house where Natascha Kampusch was held captive for 8 1/2 years said Tuesday they made an unusual discovery: her captor, a communications technician, used an obsolete computer -- and his odd choice now threatens to complicate their investigation.

Maj. Gen. Gerhard Lang of the Federal Criminal Investigations Bureau said kidnapper Wolfgang Priklopil, who killed himself by jumping in front of a train within hours of Kampusch's escape on August 23, relied exclusively on a Commodore 64 computer -- a model popular in the 1980s but now considered an antique.

Lang told reporters the outmoded computer would complicate investigators' efforts to transfer files for closer examination later, saying it would be difficult "to transmit the data to a modern computer without loss."

Ha. I saw that article myself. Pretty amazing huh? Not the first time either...read about some writer who had 20 years of backups, when his old pc went phut, he found out they were irretrievable.

The inexorable march of technology huh?

--A

I played Ultima III on a friends IBM, then I got my first job delivering junk mail (*flinching as you all pelt rotten fruit at me*) and managed to buy myself a C64 to play Ultima IV.

I remember spending about 3 hours getting from the last possible save point down to the bottom of the final Ultima IV dungeon. You can imagine my excitement as I realise that I am in the penultimate room of the whole game.

I find the secret door to the LAST ROOM!!!

I go through.

I get the blue C64 "Ready" screen with the blinking cursor. What we now call "Crash to Desktop".

I still bear the scars of that terrible day.

I'm pretty sure I played Ultima I on it as well. (Pretty sure it was Ultima I, I remember it had the going into dungeons thing, and for some reason you'd fly a space shuttle as well. You could find and board them much like you'd find and board ships in III and IV).

But my favourite games on the C64 were LodeRunner and first and foremost:

ELITE.

I still cannot believe the programming skills that must have been required to make a game like Elite function on a mere 64K of memory.

It took 45 minutes to load off the Datasette (cue Monty Python: "...and if you tell that to the young kids today they'd never believe it") each day when I got home from school but it was worth it. (It was a game much like Privateer in the '90's, space-trade etc).

Haha, I still play Elite III, (First Encounters) in a version remade for WinXp.

If you want, I'll find you the url, or mail you the Zip. (It's pretty small I think.)

--A

Avatar wrote:Haha, I still play Elite III, (First Encounters) in a version remade for WinXp.

If you want, I'll find you the url, or mail you the Zip. (It's pretty small I think.)

--A

That would be wonderful Av.

I'll always remember the difficulties of learning to dock with space-ports.

Great game.

Although my registered e-mail doesn't work anymore. If you want to contact me please do so through travischarATgmail.com

You might want to edit that and replace the @ with (AT) to stop bots picking it up. (And update your registered e-mail too...it sometimes causes probs onb the board if it's not valid for some reason.

While it is still possible to dock manually, FE has a handy navigation computer that you can install to work with the autopilot which will dock you automatically (provided it's undamaged.)

Anyway, yeah, it'll be a pleasure. I'll bring the .zip to work tomorrow and mail it to you. Good fun.

--A

I found a version of Ultima IV which works on Windows... but it lacks the music. What fun is it without the music? Well, if there is a superior version around, I'd be interested.

Will look around for you WF. I'm often on abandonware sites etc.

Trapper...gmail wouldn't let me mail you the zip file, despite renaming the .exe's but I mailed you the links to the download pages.

--A

Thanks Av I sent an email reply.

Schweet.

--A

I got a copy of Lode Runner from here:

www.omninet.net.au/~irhumph/index.htm

If you had a C64 then maybe your favourite old games are there as well.

You can't just download the games, you've got to e-mail Ian the site owner to get them. But he seems like a guy.

I've been pleasantly surprised by how fun LR still is after all this time, although some of the puzzles take a great deal of perseverence to solve.

I guess with only 64k of RAM you had to come up with a great game concept and do some pretty damn nifty programming to make it entertaining.