Playing Old Games for Some Reason
I really don't know why, but I've started playing a bunch of the Commodore 64 games I grew up with. Brief reviews?
The current version of VICE (the emulator) is nifty. You can even emulate the sound of the 5¼" floppy drives. They sound basically like I remember. I wonder if someone sampled the actual sounds? The sound seems to be the same between the 1541 and 1571 though, so maybe not.
Christ on a cracker, did these things *really* take this long to load? Why aren't we veterans of '80s computers more patient? Gah! Which key maps to Run/Stop? Why do some games use a different joystick port? But on to the games!
Telengard is still awesome. My dad had a character with so much experience the game expressed it in scientific notation. I died five or six times before making it to level two, but it's awesome regardless. "The dragon likes your body!" Ummm, uh-oh...
Lords of Conquest: pretty cool little Risk-like game (but based on another board game called Borderlands). I used to be good at this. I lost my stockpile in the first two turns twice in a row today.
Expedition Amazon: I remember this being *so* awesome as a kid. After monkeys stole my map *twice* though, I gave up this time.
Impossible Mission: DESTROY HIM MY ROBOTS! *zzzzap-craaackle* Good stuff.
Ultima IV: My first real RPG. The Ultima games truly make my heart ache for a simpler time. The Ultima series will always be very close to my heart.
Way of the Exploding Fist. Fun fighting game at the time. Kind of goofy now. The noises they make are hilarious!
Spyhunter: The best thing about this game may be the Peter Gunn theme. Hearing that on a SID kicks ass. The game itself is decent too though.
Spy's Demise; not bad. The music is forever burned into my brain.
Sammy Lightfoot: this game is kind of crap.
Jumpman. Jumpman is 8-bit love! Yes! Thank you Randy Glover. Still one of the best platform action games because of the unique elements to the different levels.
Master of the Lamps: This was a *weird* game. I think acid was involved.
Seven Cities of Gold: Such colonize. Much slaughter. Wow. Also, "creation will take about 20 minutes." It's easy to forget how long things took on a machine with a ~1mhz processor and 64k of memory. But it's amazing how *much* it could do too.
Sword of Kadash: Ooh, interesting dungeon crawler. The gameplay isn't quite like anything I can think of. Not as mysterious-feeling as when I was a kid though! I used to get so anxious when I could hear ghost noises but couldn't see them. Where are you?! Careful with that ax, Eugene: it's cursed. I might come back to this one.
Also, I had the following experience trying to start it up. "Why isn't the character creation working? It just makes me keep swapping disks forever. *reset* Nope, same thing. *keeps swapping disks approximately forever* Ok, it works. You just have to swap disks a stupid number of times... "Your adventure begins..." *waits 5 minutes for the disk to be read* Good thing you can turn off speed limiters on emulators!"
Boulder Dash: Wow, that music! I remember that! This is a fun little game; I may come back to this one too.
Space Shuttle - a Journal Into Space: I never had clue 1 what I was doing, but I still thought flying a space shuttle was awesome! The title screen has a trademark symbol after the text, and for some reason I always kind of sang it to myself "Space Shuttle, a journey into space tee-emm." Through my whole life, that weird little musical phrase still comes randomly to mind for no reason at all. Brains are weird.
Just tried to play it. Still have no clue.
Satan's Hollow: Doood! I remember this! I knew the title, but couldn't remember the game. It's kind of like Galaga, but with Satan. C'mere Satan, I'll fuck you up!
Save Me Brave Knight: Why is this lock spitting hummingbirds at me? This is weird. Level two may have the most annoying sound track of any game ever.
Ok, maybe more later. I might go back to Jumpman right now.
The current version of VICE (the emulator) is nifty. You can even emulate the sound of the 5¼" floppy drives. They sound basically like I remember. I wonder if someone sampled the actual sounds? The sound seems to be the same between the 1541 and 1571 though, so maybe not.
Christ on a cracker, did these things *really* take this long to load? Why aren't we veterans of '80s computers more patient? Gah! Which key maps to Run/Stop? Why do some games use a different joystick port? But on to the games!
Telengard is still awesome. My dad had a character with so much experience the game expressed it in scientific notation. I died five or six times before making it to level two, but it's awesome regardless. "The dragon likes your body!" Ummm, uh-oh...
Lords of Conquest: pretty cool little Risk-like game (but based on another board game called Borderlands). I used to be good at this. I lost my stockpile in the first two turns twice in a row today.
Expedition Amazon: I remember this being *so* awesome as a kid. After monkeys stole my map *twice* though, I gave up this time.
Impossible Mission: DESTROY HIM MY ROBOTS! *zzzzap-craaackle* Good stuff.
Ultima IV: My first real RPG. The Ultima games truly make my heart ache for a simpler time. The Ultima series will always be very close to my heart.
Way of the Exploding Fist. Fun fighting game at the time. Kind of goofy now. The noises they make are hilarious!
Spyhunter: The best thing about this game may be the Peter Gunn theme. Hearing that on a SID kicks ass. The game itself is decent too though.
Spy's Demise; not bad. The music is forever burned into my brain.
Sammy Lightfoot: this game is kind of crap.
Jumpman. Jumpman is 8-bit love! Yes! Thank you Randy Glover. Still one of the best platform action games because of the unique elements to the different levels.
Master of the Lamps: This was a *weird* game. I think acid was involved.
Seven Cities of Gold: Such colonize. Much slaughter. Wow. Also, "creation will take about 20 minutes." It's easy to forget how long things took on a machine with a ~1mhz processor and 64k of memory. But it's amazing how *much* it could do too.
Sword of Kadash: Ooh, interesting dungeon crawler. The gameplay isn't quite like anything I can think of. Not as mysterious-feeling as when I was a kid though! I used to get so anxious when I could hear ghost noises but couldn't see them. Where are you?! Careful with that ax, Eugene: it's cursed. I might come back to this one.
Also, I had the following experience trying to start it up. "Why isn't the character creation working? It just makes me keep swapping disks forever. *reset* Nope, same thing. *keeps swapping disks approximately forever* Ok, it works. You just have to swap disks a stupid number of times... "Your adventure begins..." *waits 5 minutes for the disk to be read* Good thing you can turn off speed limiters on emulators!"
Boulder Dash: Wow, that music! I remember that! This is a fun little game; I may come back to this one too.
Space Shuttle - a Journal Into Space: I never had clue 1 what I was doing, but I still thought flying a space shuttle was awesome! The title screen has a trademark symbol after the text, and for some reason I always kind of sang it to myself "Space Shuttle, a journey into space tee-emm." Through my whole life, that weird little musical phrase still comes randomly to mind for no reason at all. Brains are weird.
Just tried to play it. Still have no clue.
Satan's Hollow: Doood! I remember this! I knew the title, but couldn't remember the game. It's kind of like Galaga, but with Satan. C'mere Satan, I'll fuck you up!
Save Me Brave Knight: Why is this lock spitting hummingbirds at me? This is weird. Level two may have the most annoying sound track of any game ever.
Ok, maybe more later. I might go back to Jumpman right now.