# What games did you play on your C64? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 4, 2007, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653 "2007-06-04T04:30:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![ArizonaTeach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/45deac/32.png) [@ArizonaTeach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ArizonaTeach)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/61 "2007-06-05T02:20:35Z")
[QUOTE=panamajack] Autoduel - a great way of realizing the board game (Car Wars) on the computer. [/QUOTE] What was evil about that one was that it erased your character when you loaded it, so you couldn’t just shut the computer off when you died…you were dead for good! ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/62 "2007-06-05T02:21:18Z")
[QUOTE=Hello Again] Apparently I’m the only one that played _Family Feud_!? I also played the hell out of _California Games_ – I was awesome at hackeysack. My friend (who had the C64, it wasn’t mine) also figured out that a certain “load” code would load any game. (IIRC the load code was an attempt at copy protection) I think it was LOAD “\*”,8,1 [/QUOTE] That was the code I pretty much used on every disk I ever put in… I’m confused as to your point? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/63 "2007-06-05T02:26:54Z")
The load command was not an attempt at copy protection. To break it down the Commodore Basic command (from memory): LOAD - Access the file from a device. “\*” - First file in the data structure. You could also put a specific file name in to load something else from the disk. “$” was used to access the directory of the disk in ASCII format. ,8 - The device number. The C64 could have multiple drives so you could also load from 9, 10, or 11. IIRC, the printer was device 5 and the cassette port was device 0. ,1 - If the file is an autorunning binary then this will execute it when it completes loading. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/64 "2007-06-05T02:39:13Z")
I played some game- I forget the name, but it had you going from one scenario to the next- if you passed of course. It was sort of leaping things etc. What I will never forget was the annoying sound track- The Lair of The Mountain King. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/65 "2007-06-05T02:47:45Z")
What was the game where you’re sort of jousting, but there is a ball bouncing around, and your little knight character seemed to be tethered to the wall with an elastic cord? ---
**Author:** ![drewbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drewbert/32/15890_2.png) [@drewbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewbert)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/66 "2007-06-05T02:53:58Z")
Summer Olympics Racing Destruction Set ( **panamajack** , you’re not the first person I’ve heard call for a remake) The Three Stooges Maniac Mansion Hitchhiker’s Guide Zork Microsoft Flight Simulator Silent Service Space Station Construction Kit (I played this one until one day I had my shuttle leave orbit with an astronaut still in the middle of an EVA. He died. This wasn’t long after the Challenger accident and I felt really guilty. I never played the game again.) and a great one that I typed in from RUN magazine called Crossroads. It was a bit like Pac Man, with tight little mazes and monsters chasing you and ‘power pill’ thingys to grab. But also like Berzerk - your player is a little dude walking around shooting at the monsters. There were like 9 or 10 different kinds of monsters each with different behaviors. Some of them would fight each other, and you could use that to your advantage. Some of them had rubber in the backs of their heads so if they’re facing away from you, your bullets would bounce right back to you. For a magazine type-in, it was a surprisingly well balanced, challenging and fun game. ---
**Author:** ![drewbert](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drewbert/32/15890_2.png) [@drewbert](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewbert)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/67 "2007-06-05T03:01:52Z")
[Crossroads](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossroads_(game)), and it was Compute!'s Gazette, not RUN. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/68 "2007-06-05T03:21:01Z")
[QUOTE=Hello Again] My friend (who had the C64, it wasn’t mine) also figured out that a certain “load” code would load any game. (IIRC the load code was an attempt at copy protection) I think it was LOAD “\*”,8,1 [/QUOTE] It’s possible you’re joking, but if not, it’s a bit like saying double-clicking “setup.exe” is a hack that installs almost any Windows program. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/69 "2007-06-05T03:24:15Z")
[QUOTE=drewbert] [Crossroads](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossroads_(game)), and it was Compute!'s Gazette, not RUN. [/QUOTE] Good god! That looks like something that would have me rocking in a fetal position in the corner five minutes in… ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/70 "2007-06-05T03:27:26Z")
[QUOTE=berff] I clearly remember playing Super Mario Bros on the C64. In fact, I had it on a floppy disk and I sold it on ebay a couple of years ago for $10. [/QUOTE] I’m _almost_ 100% certain Super Mario Brothers was never officially released for the C64. [You sure it wasn’t a hack of this game?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Giana_Sisters) ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/71 "2007-06-05T03:35:20Z")
[QUOTE=Just Some Guy] ,8 - The device number. The C64 could have multiple drives so you could also load from 9, 10, or 11. IIRC, the printer was device 5 and the cassette port was device 0. [/QUOTE] I believe the cassette port was device 1.The printer was device 4 (on the serial bus). The keyboard was device 0. Device 2 was RS-232 and Device 3 was the CRT. ---
**Author:** ![Scuba\_Ben](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@Scuba\_Ben](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scuba_Ben)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/72 "2007-06-05T03:52:12Z")
[QUOTE=bump] and the Ne Plus Ultra of C64 games… Mail Order Monsters [/QUOTE] I kept getting basic sponsorship from the gladiasaurus league. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/73 "2007-06-05T04:46:42Z")
I was so proud of myself when I learned how to hack a simple copy-protection scheme. I knew C64 Basic already but I had to teach myself Commodore assembly code to figure it out. The load routine looked for a deliberate but harmless flaw on the floppy, and aborted if it wasn’t found. Tweaking two bytes eliminated that. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/74 "2007-06-05T05:20:13Z")
[QUOTE=panamajack] Yes, I remember having to practically lean forward over the joystick to get the controls right. It was like trying to pee with morning wood. [/QUOTE] Insert joke about size of joystick here. 😃 One non-game that was very frustrating was a cartridge based word processing program, with which I attempted to write a chapter of a book. Combining a buggy program, the old C64 40 character line, and a crappy printer did not make for a good experience. I eventually just gave up and retyped everything either at work with Bell Labs MM or on a PC I eventually got. ---
**Author:** ![berff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/43a26b/32.png) [@berff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/berff)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/75 "2007-06-05T05:22:18Z")
[QUOTE=pulykamell] I’m _almost_ 100% certain Super Mario Brothers was never officially released for the C64. [You sure it wasn’t a hack of this game?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Giana_Sisters) [/QUOTE] No, I’m 100% positive it was Super Mario Bros. I ordered it from a magazine though so I’m not sure that it was an official release. I wish I would have hung on to it now. But the good news is that I’ve still got a box full of Compute! Gazette magazines from the 80s, not to mention, a working C64 and hundreds of floppy disks. Maybe I’ll hook it back up tonight. ---
**Author:** ![Pixiesnix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/898d66/32.png) [@Pixiesnix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixiesnix)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/76 "2007-06-05T05:26:53Z")
_Amazon_, with a parrot sidekick who would chide you when you cursed. Cursing was so much fun in those text adventure games. Or you’d do something totally impossible and the game would reply, “Don’t be silly!” ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/77 "2007-06-05T05:46:50Z")
I began my programming career on a PET 2001, with the built-in cassette deck and the “chicklet” keyboard. My brother and I wrote hand-assembled 6502 code on the VIC-20 for software for which we were really well paid. The Commodore 64 was a dream machine when it came out – hardware sprites, programmable ADSR sound, and a full 64K of RAM (if you flipped the pesky operating system and BASIC ROMs out of the way). If you ever played a game called Frog Hunter, with its strange, yet somehow listenable original music, that was written by my brother and me. (Well, the music was actually the result of bug tromping through our data and creating the score that we left in the game.) We also created a game called Fortune, an early ASCII dungeon game based loosely on an arcade game we saw once in Detroit. It was originally for the PET, but was ported to the C64 later (the VIC-20 was too limited to run it). The only “game” that I routinely played on the C64 was Rogue, but that was via loading a VT52 emulator and dialing into a Unix box at the University of Toronto. I’d made the jump to the IBM PC by late '83, so I missed the C128. A shame that that machine didn’t take off, since it was in many ways more advanced than the PC at the time (with a native CP/M mode, as well!). ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/78 "2007-06-05T05:51:04Z")
I almost forgot! The software that I used most that took the longest to load was Punter BBS software. I ran a user group for sysops, and we had our own BBS that ran on my C64 with a borrowed IEEE-488 cartridge and 8050 drive. We had a killer 1200 baud Hayes modem, a huge step up from the 300 baud Commodore modem I’d had to write dialing programs for. Um, sorry to inject so much non-game stuff into the thread. I was overcome with nostalgia. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/79 "2007-06-05T06:11:57Z")
[QUOTE=Pixiesnix] _Amazon_, with a parrot sidekick who would chide you when you cursed. Cursing was so much fun in those text adventure games. Or you’d do something totally impossible and the game would reply, “Don’t be silly!” [/QUOTE] Oh man I forgot about that game! I think I had it for the Apple IIe. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 6:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653/80 "2007-06-05T06:17:48Z")
[QUOTE=Cerowyn] I almost forgot! The software that I used most that took the longest to load was Punter BBS software. I ran a user group for sysops, and we had our own BBS that ran on my C64 with a borrowed IEEE-488 cartridge and 8050 drive. We had a killer 1200 baud Hayes modem, a huge step up from the 300 baud Commodore modem I’d had to write dialing programs for. Um, sorry to inject so much non-game stuff into the thread. I was overcome with nostalgia. 🆒 [/QUOTE] So how long did it take to load? (And I had the crapy 300 baud modem. I used to dialup to local BBSs and try to chat, but people with C128 would type fast and it would scroll past so fast I couldn’t read it.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-games-did-you-play-on-your-c64/406653.md?page=5)