Looking back now, i’m just amazed at what they could squeeze out of that little machine.
My votes:
M.U.L.E.
Ultima III
Pirates!
Trying to remember another one…it was based on a boardgame called “Car Wars”…anyhoo it began with a map of the new york area, in a post-acpocalyptic world… you were a courier running stuff between fortress cities… as you progressed you could upgrade your car, chassy, weapons, etc to allow you to fight your way through the ‘no man’s land’ in between cities…
D.
You talking about “The Last V-8” possibly? I had that game and couldn’t get anywhere in it.
I loved Paradroid. Simple graphics, addicting gameplay.
FOUND IT!!
Auto Duel!
None other than Origin Systems and Lord British…the gods of the commodore 64 game world…
COOL!!
FOund a place online where you can download c-64 games and play em!
Firing up the MULE, Pirates!, ULTIMA!
Bard’s Tale
That would be mine too… I played that game too much for too far too long. I even made my own hand-made codewheel, because the original one was torn to shreds.
I played AutoDuel to death on the Apple. I found out the Atlantic Casino poker game was screwed up (even money if you held one pair) so I always went there first and racked up a million bucks.
Also, if you tried to catch the bus while you had a car with you, at one point the ticket guy would ask “Do you want to leave your car on the streets?”. If you hit ESCAPE instead of Y or N, you’d ride the bus to the next city and still have your car!
The original Bard’s Tale had no codewheel (nor did the sequels I believe). The protection for the first game involved asking you for the name of a street in the city. The catch was if you were playing a pirated game, the street names in the game were all misspelled. You had to have a copy of the box where the map was located to have the correct street names.
The Gold Box series, another favorite of mine (Pool of Radiance, Curse of Azure Bonds, etc.) did use code wheels. I still long for a game that was true D&D like that was with real tactical combat, as opposed to NWN and it’s real-time fakery.
Mail Order Monsters I loved, as well as the Questron Games, Impossible Mission (get him my robots) was one my younger brother could be but I was stuck. For sports you had Summer Games 1 and 2, Winter Games, World Games (barrel jumping anyone?), and California Games (hackysack, wooooo).
Neuromancer was one of my favorite pseudo-rpgs with the funky opening sound clip by Devo. Archon rocked as well, and I would love to see another Adventure Construction Set, with the two games spawned from it, one based on Roman Mythology (whose name escapes me) and one based on Ali Baba.
M.U.L.E. (the best game ever made by a transexual) was one of the best strategy games out there as was Lords of Conquest (very Risk-like). Seven Cities of Gold and Heart of Africa kept me entertained for far too many hours, and Wasteland, the precursor to Fallout was wonderfully original and used the instruction book to relay important conversations in the game (you meet a sex blond, read paragraph 12). Dragon Wars used the same device.
I could go on for hours and hours waxing nostalgic about this system. I still have about 200 floppies in my den (though the machine is packed away in my mother’s attic) that followed me with my other, newer software. I still have a folder full of the BT (1,2, and 3) and Gold Box maps that took countless hours to create.
Hurray for emulators at least.
Wow…completely forgot about 7 cities of gold…played the hell outta that…
To this day my knowledge of the Carribean islands and geography I owe to Sid Meier and Pirates!
Mail Order Monsters! Hilarious…
how about Crush! Crumble! and Chomp!
Hacker
Beach-Head
The Enchanter Series
Anything by Activision
And, of curse, Jumpman.
BTW, the best emulator IMO is CCS64. Google it. It even uses the C64 keyboard inputs, so I hope you didn’t forget where the keys are, since you’ll never figure it out otherwise on the standard PC keyboard.
:smack:
You’re right… Pool of Radiance was the codewheel game. I still played Bard’s Tale too much, but it was followed hard upon by the AD&D games.
My brother and I grew up utterly addicted to MULE, Bard’s Tale, and the original, 2D Sim City as well as C-64 ports of arcade and Nintendo games like Gauntlet, Galaga and Super Mario Brothers.
The third one did. I still have the codewheel for that somewhere…
Max: I recently discovered a couple of fan-made Paradroid games for PCs. Search the Café for “Paradroid” and you’ll find links.
I spent lots of time playing Roadwar 2000 but never finished it. I did figure out how to hex-edit the saved game files to set my vehicles’ fuel consumption to “0”. Not having to carry fuel around saves a whole bunch of space, especially if your gang has a bunch of trucks & busses. 
Dr J and Larry Bird in One-on-One
The Last Ninja.
Turrican.
Bombuzal.
Bard’s Tale 2 had a unique copy-cripple scheme. You needed to understand a certain hint in the manual, or the final puzzle was extremely difficult to solve. Even with that, I won BT 1 and 2 only with heavy reliance on the clue books. BT3? The less said the better.
Archon I rocked! Mail Order Monsters rocked! Ultima III and IV rocked! There is an excellent port of U3 to the Mac, and I hope they port U4 some day.
I would love to see a modern version of Auto Duel, with a driver’s-eye view. It might make a great MMORPG.
I never won Hacker, nor played MULE or Neuromancer. I need to get a C64 emulator just for those games.
To add a few of my other favorite old games: Below the Root, Montezuma’s Revenge (an old game, long AWOL from my collection), Raid Over Moscow, PHM Pegasus, and almost every arcade port.
California Games was the best-ever C-64 game. I ruled in surfing and Hackey-sack. I sucked at BMX and roller skating. OMG the memories!
Ooo…
A chance to tell my Sid Meier tale…
I was meeting with Sid three years ago at E3 (a big computer game convention) at a bar after the AIAS Awards. I told him how much I’d always enjoyed his games and the first one I played was ‘Pirates’.
He instantly asked me which platform I’d played it on. I told him the C-64 and he got all misty-eyed and said, “Man, I loved programming games for the C-64. That was the best version.”
He was great at the show. The theme of E3 that year was 'Video Games do NOT inspire violence or influence young people in ANY way. Sid got up to the podium to accept his ‘Lifetime Acheivement Award’ and basically told them they were fools and that if games were an ‘art form’ (as the Academy was saying) that OF COURSE art has an effect on the audience and each of them had a moral responsibility to try to make games that had a moral center.
You could have heard a pin drop.
Some unusual picks, but here goes:
M.I.S.L. Soccer. It had player drafts, preseason training, regular season and playoffs, and allowed a player to develop a team over several seasons.
The Goonies. Based on the movie, one could play this solo or with another player, as two kids would have to navigate the booby traps underground on their way to the pirate ship.
Beach Head. Already mentioned, the best part of this game was the knife throwing at the end, especially the sound the guys would make when they were hit with a knife and fell into the water 
Gold box D&D games. Already mentioned; I enjoyed these so much that I bought the series when they were released for the PC.
Skate or Die. Half Pipe, down hill, skate fight, these were a lot of fun.
Jeopardy. I liked this game because one of the characters would play air guitar when he got a question right 
Montezuma’s Revenge. They made this game harder at each level by turning out the lights from the lower levels up. I knew the game so well I could play it with all levels being pitch black.
Wizard. In this game you were a wizard who had to navigate through various dungeons. It also had an editor function so you could create your own dungeons.
Super Zaxxon. At the time, the 3/4 perspective made the game look almost 3D. Great spaceship flying game.
Zork!!!
For some reason I have in my mind that Zork was on the Vic 20. Am I remembering wrong?