underrated c64 jems that arent in the top 100 list worthy to invest time in

[carlsson]

Some people find Mission Elevator frustratingly difficult though, being a mix of Elevator Action and Impossible Mission.

[youxia]

Dunno, only played it for a spell now. Maybe a little bit more than the original EA, you do have to shoot a lot.

 

I loved the fact it was a bit different and has all these pointless little things like sitting in a chair or clock chiming...charming and unusual.

[Vinnie D.]

One of my personal favorites is The Movie Monster Game. It's basically an isometric take on Rampage. There's a nice variety of monsters, missions, and locations, so you can always mix it up. It does feel a bit slow, but still smashing buildings with monsters is fun.

[youxia]

The Movie Monster Game reminded me of Crush, Crumble and Chomp! (aka the only game I managed to write up on my "website" - which is kind of its predecessor. The premise is the same, you unleash various monsters on a few US cities, the difference is in top-down, sort-of-RTS gameplay. I love it, very advanced for its time, with varied gameplay and you ca neven play for high scores.

 

You need to read the manual though - the control scheme is a bit puzzling.

[carlsson]

Over at the Atari 8-bit HSC, we considered playing Crush, Crumble and Chomp! earlier this year, but it seems like a lot of manual to read in order to play it. Fortunately all the material is scanned and online, but the mere thought of trying to digest it gave me an instant TL;DR feeling. But yes, I'm sure both are fine games if you can manage to get into them. That probably applies to far more games from the C64 era than one at first would think, far from everything was pick up and play after just a quick glance at instructions for controls.

[youxia]

My background is RPG/strategy first, then twitch games, so I have no problem with manual reading. But yeah, as you say it's often not so bad as it looks at first: in CCC's case you just need to get your head around how to move the monster - it's bit of a "tank" style where head can swivel independently - and keep the keyboard commands page open. Rest is pretty straightforward (unless you want to build your monster from scratch).

Edited July 3, 2018 by youxia

[BackInTimeSime]

Who Dares Wins II - Played it just the other day still amazing.

Falcon Patrol II - Simple but fun shooting.
Kick Start II - Amazing stuff.

All 2's, odd

[Raiu]

The Top 100 list on Lemon has Archon, but not Archon II: Adept. (Avoid Archon III: Exciter; it's a terrible homebrew rather than an official sequel. Not saying that homebrews are terrible, mind you, just that Archon III is)

[carlsson]

Archon has an average score of 8.76 with 280 votes, while Adept has an average score of 8.09 with only 90 votes. The default cut-off is at least 120 votes to be on the Top 100 list, though it can be adjusted as desired to find the lesser known games of high quality.

[Bill Loguidice]

I'm not surprised Archon II is not in the top 100. The first game is an undeniable classic that's a lot easier to grok than the sequel. There's nothing wrong with the sequel as a game - it's obviously quite good - and it's nice that they took a somewhat different approach with the sequel, but it would have been impossible to hang with the original.

[zylon]

I'll add a few I didn't see here:

 

Threshold

Falcon

Wavy Navy

Night Driver

Dragonsden

 

I still use some old Spinnaker software regularly, such as The Filer, and The Planner.

[oky2000]

On 3/20/2018 at 3:33 PM, carlsson said:

I wonder if there exists any person who has played through even 1/4 of the C64 games library. Lemon64 has a little over 4000 commercial games, Gamebase64 has over 25700 games of which lots are duplicates and hacks but I'm willing to think at least half of those are unique titles. Even if one only considers the smaller library, that would be 1000 games to have tried. I must admit most of the titles you have mentioned in this thread only, I have never tried and I've been a C64 gamer for 30+ years.

I have been playing probably 50 C64 games a week on average over the last two years now so I probably have videos of closer to 2000 than 1000 C64 games played on my C64 and CRT on my youtube channel lol

 

Mountie Mick's Death Ride is pretty fun.

Xerons (a fantastic Galaxian clone)

Scramble by Rabbit Software was the best of those clones

First Strike is a fantastic Afterburner style game (with a bit of strategy)

 

Most of the other gems I've found, like the remarkably playable 3D game Grand Prix Circuit (Accolade) are probably in the top 100. 

 

A guide I like is the ZZAP!64 Top 64 games (as of April 1985 in issue 1 of ZZAP!64 where it was printed) which is a playlist I am working on specifically now. In fact most of the time I just browse through the first 2-3 years of ZZAP magazines and check out the reviews. I owned most of the best C64 games as originals and 1987/88 was a good time to leave that scene behind after the pirates had made software houses shat out any old 4 colour rubbish (done better in the past). 

 

Generally I stick to the early to mid eighties games, saves a lot of time and wear and tear for nothing of your C64 (all my videos for the last 2 years are done on real hardware and 90% of the time on a CRT TV). I can't stand those shitty character based non Color RAM multicolor later games just so they can waste memory blocks of VIC-20 for hi-res sprite overlays and other rubbish and then use crappy Acorn Electron + 3 greyscale palette crap.

[carlsson]

Actually I played several of the Galaxian type games three weeks ago. I found Xerons to be ok, but not superior. What I did notice though was that the Atarisoft versions of Galaxian for the VIC-20 and C64 are quite different on many points, not only graphics capacity. I also found that the Atari 8-bit version of Galaxian seems much more arcade like than either of the Commodore versions. With a few tweaks, some of the clones could have been better. I suppose there are a few more games in this category to evaluate, not to mention Galencia from 2017 but I focused on 80's games.

[+wongojack]

This guy did a whole series A-Z where he found 10 hidden gems for EACH LETTER.  It must have been a lot of work, but his videos are excellent in that I hadn't heard of at least 75% of the games he mentions.  This was the first YouTube series that I've ever watched beginning to end.  I even became a Patreon (also a first).

 

His Channel

Old Style Gaming - YouTube

 

Direct Link to A
A-Z Of Commodore 64 Hidden Gems - Letter A - YouTube

[youxia]

On 6/19/2018 at 9:51 AM, youxia said:

I'm currently playing through the entire collection, every single game. I heartily recommend this method, it's just so much fun (especially combined with Gamebase's Extras & old magazines). Even the alleged "crappy" ones can be quite charming or curious. Plus, you obviously get to discover a %$ton of the, ahem, "jems".

 

I've just started on "A".

Funny, just remembered this 2 year old post. I'm still at it, and the progress is predictably glacial, but great fun nonetheless. I've changed the tack and go by year now, starting at 1982, instead of the alphabet. I'm currently on the letter "H" from 1983. So, still a long way to go :), partially because I also do the same for all the other micros...

 

Also, a lil' bird tells me a new Gamebase (v17) is about to be released soon. Will contain ~28,5K entries this time....even more "jems" to uncover (though it's probably mostly new games being added).

 

 

[Arnuphis]

I always enjoyed Redhawk. Just because being in your own superhero comic strip was a novel way of presenting an adventure game.

[+wongojack]

59 minutes ago, youxia said:

 

Also, a lil' bird tells me a new Gamebase (v17) is about to be released soon. Will contain ~28,5K entries this time....even more "jems" to uncover (though it's probably mostly new games being added).

 

 

I hadn't heard about this yet!

[youxia]

45 minutes ago, Arnuphis said:

I always enjoyed Redhawk. Just because being in your own superhero comic strip was a novel way of presenting an adventure game.

One of my favourites on ZX Spectrum. Has a sequel, "Kwah!".

 

10 minutes ago, wongojack said:

I hadn't heard about this yet!

https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=943169#943169

[carlsson]

6 hours ago, youxia said:

new Gamebase (v17) is about to be released soon. Will contain ~28,5K entries this time

I misread that as the new GB64 would add another ~28.5K entries and almost shrieked!

[oky2000]

On 4/22/2021 at 1:45 PM, carlsson said:

Actually I played several of the Galaxian type games three weeks ago. I found Xerons to be ok, but not superior. What I did notice though was that the Atarisoft versions of Galaxian for the VIC-20 and C64 are quite different on many points, not only graphics capacity. I also found that the Atari 8-bit version of Galaxian seems much more arcade like than either of the Commodore versions. With a few tweaks, some of the clones could have been better. I suppose there are a few more games in this category to evaluate, not to mention Galencia from 2017 but I focused on 80's games.

Xerons is the only one I know which has coding quality worthy of note but until Gamebase has more detailed game types to include "clone of galaxian" I'm a bit stuck unless I spend days trawling through the website. The Atarisoft version of Galaxian is pitiful on C64, looks like a Commodore 16 game (not plus/4) but Star Battle on the VIC-20 was really cool. Eagle Empire on the C64 was however an excellent clone of my fav' shmup after Galaxian came to town and left. Not really a fan of Galaga or Gaplus but I always look for a good Galaxian clone to check out on any machine I own.

 

Which C64 Galaxian clones did you like then?

[oky2000]

On 4/22/2021 at 3:39 PM, wongojack said:

This guy did a whole series A-Z where he found 10 hidden gems for EACH LETTER.  It must have been a lot of work, but his videos are excellent in that I hadn't heard of at least 75% of the games he mentions.  This was the first YouTube series that I've ever watched beginning to end.  I even became a Patreon (also a first).

 

His Channel

Old Style Gaming - YouTube

 

Direct Link to A
A-Z Of Commodore 64 Hidden Gems - Letter A - YouTube

Judging by his piss poor quality control for Amiga games he highly rates I won't be bothering with that channel lol

[carlsson]

2 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

Which C64 Galaxian clones did you like then?

None of them really stood out IMHO. I did find that the BASIC game Tiradians was quite OK but horribly slow. If it had been rewritten in machine code and perhaps spiced up a little, it could have been a rather good Galaxian alternative.

[+wongojack]

29 minutes ago, oky2000 said:

Judging by his piss poor quality control for Amiga games he highly rates I won't be bothering with that channel lol

HARSH!

 

I don't generally agree with his top listicles, but these were really great because there were so many games I had just never heard of or would simply never play without a recommendation.  Seriously, he put a lot of work into it.  I'd be shocked if you knew enough about the games in the letters with tons of games (R, S , T, N, etc) to have an opinion on them before watching the vid.

[oky2000]

9 hours ago, carlsson said:

None of them really stood out IMHO. I did find that the BASIC game Tiradians was quite OK but horribly slow. If it had been rewritten in machine code and perhaps spiced up a little, it could have been a rather good Galaxian alternative.

I am not sure if Tiradians is compiled BASIC V2 or BASIC V2 with bespoke machine code, remember looking at it with others over a decade ago on Lemon64 forums possibly. The guy who wrote it also did another really good type in game but I forget the name of it now but easy enough to find on GB64. The graphics on Tiradians are better than Xerons but Xerons plays more like Galaxian I think.

 

I found the lack of screen height was really the issue on most. The screen height will always be a problem for a decent Galaxian clone on the C64 unless you use top and bottom borders for Score etc and player in bottom border all the time and Galaxians transitioning into the bottom border when they fly down. I think it is possible to have a Scramble 2014 quality port of Galaxian with the right talent on the project.  Quality Galaxian authentic ports are tough to find on home computers (inc Amiga) in general I find, one of my all time fav' arcade games due to nostalgia though. 

[oky2000]

9 hours ago, wongojack said:

HARSH!

 

I don't generally agree with his top listicles, but these were really great because there were so many games I had just never heard of or would simply never play without a recommendation.  Seriously, he put a lot of work into it.  I'd be shocked if you knew enough about the games in the letters with tons of games (R, S , T, N, etc) to have an opinion on them before watching the vid.

Well when you put up compilations with titles like technically stunning or something and the first few gamea include ones that have 16 colours and is not running at 50fps that's how I am going to rate their channel. I did not go from Spectrum or Amstrad or ST to Amiga. I also knew what the tech articles printed in PCW and Byte meant as a coder so I can tell you the Amiga has so few games worth the wear and tear on an A1000 today that it is painfully obvious and crigneworthy to watch clueless videos with low standards.

 

I can make big budget commercial quality effects on my videos if I want just using Camtasia and some lateral thinking, effort put into a video is like handwriting quality of an answer to an exam question that is pretty so-so. 

 

You know how people felt ripped off in the mid 80s when we got Atari 8bit shoddy ports dished out waaaayyyy too often (and they were right, the artistic and technical talent for UK releases was pretty pathetic compared to the hardware), THAT is what owning an Amiga was like. WHY is Grand Prix Circuit so slow on Amiga with a 7mhz 68000 and plenty of memory for code execution speed improving tricks compared to the really awkward to use C64 screen modes pushed along by the 1mhz 6510? Lack of talent. So when channels tell you to go play them....well if you don't think something is wrong then you have to be one of those people who had no choice but to put up with a home computer without and decent custom hardware like Acorn/Amstrad/Sinclair. 

 

The C64 rot in the quality of games nosediving didn't really start to happen until 1987, and 1983 with titles like Manic Miner and Beach Head was a great starting point to boot, it is my favourite home computer for games simply because the piss poor quality by default the Amiga got 99% of the time took half a decade to ruin the format. My Amiga 1000 is my favourite computer I have ever owned in my life (and always will be due to the clueless designers of Linux/Mac OS/Window forced choice of today) BUT I spent a hell of a lot more time doing creative stuff like 250 frame full screen anim brushes in Dpaint on my 9mb Amiga than playing games. Lotus II is the ONLY 2.5D racing game worthy of being run on an Amiga technically, Turrican III is the only version of Turrican technically worthy of the wear and tear on my Amigas today. Even Monkey Island series is a HORRIBLE DOS port job...the music sounds like some cheesy knock-off of Hans Zimmer with TERRIBLE sample quality used AND the 32 colour graphics which should be EHB are badly converted (I did better in minutes with Dpaint 4 using VGA sources). So yeah, if you don't understand exactly what the Amiga is capable of like me then you shouldn't make videos about 'stunning' games when half of them make me cringe as an engineer and coder.

 

I had a VCS by 1980, a C64 at the start of 1983, an Amiga by 1986 and I played games in arcades all through those years, so I am REALLY happy Nemesis and Salamander never came out for Amiga because they sure as hell wouldn't have looked as good as the graphics I did back then with Dpaint II let alone look/sound/play as well as tinyius today.

 

Same goes for any channel doing games, like 1990s born generation clueless people doing retro game reviews complaining about graphic differences between arcade and VCS Space Invaders and then completely ignoring the fact it has all sorts of better than arcade improvements like 2 player co-op, no/moving bases, laser turret size options and all sorts of stuff that actually making it the king of home Space Invaders right up to 2021 never mind the sheer technical expertise that made that game possible on VCS. Most people actually think the ST is to blame for bad Amiga games but fail to then tell you there are only 2 or 3 Amiga 2.5D racing games that even run as slickly as Lotus II on the ST