C64 games… sigh… The original Zork rocked. Or Suspended, that was very frustrating.
There was a C64 game called Spelunker. I miss that game.
Kaboom, but I broke like 100 paddles playing it.
CandyMan
My good old C64! I remember when I first got the thing, and had a tape drive instead of the disk drive. The disk drive was referred to by a number, but I can’t remember what it was now. Now I get frustrated when the computer takes a minute to boot up, but back then we typed in the “LOAD” command, pressed “PLAY” on the tape drive…and then went outside to play for a while. I still can remember the frustration of coming back inside and seeing an error message, having to rewind the tape again, and start all over.
Many of my old faves have already been mentioned here: Jumpman, Space Taxi (“Hey, taxi!”), Choplifter, Lode Runner, Beachhead, and the Bard’s Tale games. My absolute favorite though, was one called Silent Service. It was a submarine simulation, and I played it for hours upon hours and never really got sick of it. I definitely need to go to the emulation site and see if I can download and recover some of those old favorites.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot Summer Games. Me and my friends would have tournaments with that one. A friend of mine doggedly picked West Germany every time we played. The blocky “FRG” next to his name looked a lot like “FAG”, which we would always tease him about. “Ha, ha! Scott’s a fag!” (Yeah, I know that’s not cool, but we were just kids with no social awareness.)
Oregon Trail for the Apple IIe. I was addicted to that damn game and lost many nights of sleep playing it.
Fret not. Though I haven’t tried it with MacOS 9, Scarab of Ra has run successfully on both of my G3-based machines with MacOS 8.5.x (a 266Mhz iMac and a PowerBook G3). And I too have lost countless hours to the deeper levels of the pyramid.
What’s amazing is the thought that went into these games even back then. Many people today would scoff at the poor graphics, but that doesn’t matter to me if the story or mechanics are great. Graphics should normally come second.
I’ll second anyone who’s mentioned any Infocom games, especially Zork. They have Z-machine interpreters for most modern systems, too, somewhere out there on the web.
And Mojo, you were not alone with Jumpman.
My siblings and I spent a good two years attempting to play the game perfectly all the way through, and then to solve the royal puzzles properly. For those who missed it, this was similar to Loderunner but each level had something different about it (freezing thingies, moving ladders, etc.) The main ‘enemies’ were bullets that would float around the screen, then fire randomly at your little Jumpman; the randomness made it much more a reflex game than pattern-finding.
Two of my favorites were wargames :
one was a collaboration that Sid Meier worked on called the ‘command series’ (Decision in the Desert was one title). This was battalion-level, accelerated real-time. You didn’t move units, you gave them orders and then you’d find out later when or if they’d moved. Sometimes your map wouldn’t be up to date, and that could screw things up.
The other was Lords of Midnight - the story was an unmasked rip-off of Lord of the Rings, but the interesting part was the perspective. You had no map, instead each general or major character had a first-person on-the-ground view of the landscape. So you’d see mountains, trees, forests, etc. in the distance and also armies. but there was no intelligence about them unless you actually sent someone right up to them. I haven’t ever seen anything like it.
My nomination for the best game of all time has to *Red Storm Rising. This was a submarine simulation that did everything right. Extremely detailed, but you didn’t have to take in every detail at once. The was plenty of suspense, and at times the need to act quickly, but it wasn’t dependant on action. Also, since you were just one sub, the campaign missions sometimes had little or no effect on the progress of the larger war, which made the important missions feel much more crucial. I checked a few years ago for reviews of sub games then, and nearly every review would have a line like “almost as good as Red Storm Rising” (yes, that would be nearly 10 years after it was released).
panama jack
I’ll second anyone who’s mentioned any Infocom games, especially Zork. They have Z-machine interpreters for most modern systems, too, somewhere out there on the web.
=-=-=-=-=-
I still feel, to this day, that the first Zork is the greatest computer game ever written.
There’s a competition each year where new text adventures are submitted for cash and prizes. This site: ( http://www.textfire.com/comp00/history.html ) has more information on that. Some of the games that have been developed since the competition arrived rival the best of Infocom in many ways. This year’s batch of new games will be ready October 1st.
Activision (who bought Infocom) released Zork I, II and III to the public when Grand Inquisitor came out. I think you can grab them by via anonymous ftp at ftp.activision.com.
anybody remeber the old text-based game “Adventure”?
“You’re in a maze of tiny, twisty passages all the same.”
That game came with our IBM 80-88 in 1980 or thereabouts. I played that game for like 5 years because it was basically the only game I could get my family to buy.
How about the game Midway? That was a great game. Not to mention the old Star Trek games that looked like:
####E###
##*#####
########
##R###K#
Later I was also a huge fan of Jumpman, Civ I, Wolfenstein, Scarab of Ra, and all the other much cooler games.
Balance of Power? I had Balance of Power. I did not, however, have the instructions. My brother copied it from a friend, and never got the info on how to play.
The best part is the fact that when you start, it tells you that you will do nothing but waste a lot of your time if you don’t have the instructions, as you will never figure it out. Guess what? I never figured it out, and I wasted a lot of time.
How was I supposed to play?
Lemonade Stand. For C64. It Ruled.
My flatmate had an Amiga 500. And the coolest game on that, which appealed to me, was a platform game based on ‘The Addams Family’. Totally rocked.
Also loved the first Monkey Island (and the others, but the first was so new and unique).
Another Zorker here. Infocom games were great. I now have Zork I, II, and III on my Palm V. It seems like that should be really profound for some reason, but I can’t figure out why. If you want a copy, email me. It’s shareware these days.
Beware the grues!
Yes I remember this game, I think I might even have the original “cheat sheet” the writers made for the game as my father knew them. I really like those text adventure games.
I love the old text-based games!
I have a slew of them and emulators for them.
One time in chat I gave out DOS versions of Zork to anyone who asked!
Yer pal,
Satan
[sub]TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Four months, three weeks, one day, 22 hours, 14 minutes and 58 seconds.
5797 cigarettes not smoked, saving $724.63.
Extra time with Drain Bead: 2 weeks, 6 days, 3 hours, 5 minutes.[/sub]
"Satan is not an unattractive person."-Drain Bead
[sub]Thanks for the ringing endorsement, honey!*[/sub]
Pit Fall?
Starflight! Thanks for reminding me of that one, Baloo. That game was awesome- I liked roving around in your ground vehicle and lasering alien dogs while stealing all the minerals.
Not sure if these two count, since I played them on a system with a whoppin’ 20MB HD, but how about
Hack103, a great ascii-based dungeon adventure game, and Hack’s in-color cousin, Rogue.
And don’t forget Digdug!
My introduction to the genre. I was running around with a leather jacket in my backpack for two weeks before a friend told me I could wear it as armor.
Damn, I miss Starcraft too. Those Elowans were damn smart. Imagine: an entire universe with hundreds upon hundreds of unique planets all on four measly 5 1/4" disks.
The LucasArts Maniac Mansion-Zak McKracken one-two punch was the best. I remember losing sleep trying to figure stuff out. They are also among the hippest theme songs in computer history.
I liked Sundog. I remember a game called Empire(?)in which one had 3 choices: farmer, miner, preacher…i died every time and never could get very far…anyone ever play it and win? Before that trader and star trek on great rolls of yellow paper and tape.
I used to play the hell out of those old SSI D&D games (Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, etc.) on a POS Tandy with no hard drive and a whopping 640K of RAM.
Elite for the C64 seriously rocked.
Years ahead of its time - vector graphics, 3D radar and kick-ass dogfights in space. And you had to make credits by trading - firing a missile could make your mission considerably less profitable. Amazing game.
I started with Might and Magic on my C-64, and have continued with the series faithfuly. I just finished M&M 8, and can’t wait for the next! 