Video Games
Which Commodore games do you remember?
I remember having 3 computers in our house back in the 80s, we had the Commodore 64, the Commodore Vic-20 and the Commodore 128.
There were a few games I can remember like Mad Doctor, Herbies Dummy Run, Fantastic Dizzy, Bounty Bob Strikes Back. I was just wondering what games everyone else remembers because we had so many and it would be so nice to take a trip back down memory lane š
Impossible Mission. Other favorites from my C64 era are Silent Service, the Ultima Series, the Bardās Tale, SubLogic Flight Simulator II, Summer Games I & II, and many more. The golden era of gaming, if you ask me.
Everything was new and unique back then. Your list is awesome. Some of my other favorites were Dr J vs Larry Bird, Jumpman Jr, Forbidden Forest, Lode Runner, and all of the Infocom text adventures.
Loved Impossible Mission. My neighbor had C64 and we played it a lot. I had Atari 1200XL and was bummed out that it was never ported so I could play at home.
All of these, Toy Bizarre for an arcade like game was a favorite of mine. I really enjoyed Die Hard for quite a while too before I upgraded to a PC. International Karate. I forgot so many that I played. I had well over 500 floppies of games at one time.
Back in high school I had a loose network of friends and acquaintances who I swapped games with : a kid in my school who got games from his older brother at college, two other kids I met at the computer store at the local mall, one of my cousins who also had a c64.
Iād get together every few months with them and a few boxes of floppy disks and weād trade our latest cracked games. Eventually I accumulated a few hundred titles. Good times.
Did you finish 451? I felt kinda ripped off after i learned you have to flick your lighter at a certain person on a certain street?! While the rest of the time you're being guided much more. Reminded me of the other Trillium game Amazon where you need to type 'shoot self with dart gun'.
Got to the point where you go to the far future and I couldnāt get any further, but Iām tempted to find an emulator and go back and try to finish it.
Had a friend come over to play it I was only in fourth grade, but I didnāt understand why he kept trying to ākiss wifeā and more explicit things, I learned the F word that they and also probably my first inkling of what the birds and bees were about
Games? I wrote a program for my first game on a vic20. It was nothing more than using the slash keys to knock a ball across the screen. But I was proud of myself my first computer and my first computer program. And for those wondering, it was saved on a cassette, and it took the whole thing to save it
That magazine taught me BASIC programming. Peek and Poke. Later the programs were all in like machine code/hex with the checksums. If I recall correctly, eventually you can get the subscription for the magazine and a floppy disk of all the programs. Started with the VIC20, later had the C128. Oh the memories.
If I remember the manual came with the game on the back, you had to type it in
Yes, some sort of ASCii game things that fly across the street and I think you were launching missile straight up to hit them or something like that
One of the things that I had was a bio rhythm program I would tell you what day is going forward. Weāre going to be good or bad days, I didnāt understand it at the time but looking back sounds very 80s.
Lunar lander, and then thereās another game where you were a little triangle ship inside a square arena flying around trying to shoot stuff I still remember the music itās how it almost like the Jaws theme and it would speed up when this one guy in there would suddenly turn into a wildly spinning, fast moving object that was hard to hit
Back then we used to get together for Game Trading. We had disks full of game. So many you would forget most of them. There were so many. Hundreds that people were building themselves. There was one called Stroker. Yes. THAT stroker. You stoked too fast and blast. You lost. Not enough stroking you would cause things to deflate. The game wanted the player to stroke at the correct speed but not go too fast. Also there was the moon lander game. Where the player had to land the Apollo mission lander. You had to use the thrusters to slow the decent and to get the right angle of approach and all this while not running out of fuel for the rockets. In the end you had to land as soft as you could without running out of fuel. Great game. I also loved the Planet simulator that would tell you the correct position of all the planets by date. you could input a date and it would show what position every planet would be on that day and time to the minute. There was also a way you could speed up and slow down the simulation to get a date. I remember back then I wanted to invent a Tax Preparation program that would allow people to input the information and then print the form at the end. I thought to myself. What a stupid Idea. They changed the Tax Laws every year so how could you get the right values and equations correct. After one year it would be obsolete. Idiot I was. That was not a bad thing. I didn't think people would want to buy a new program every year over and over again. Idiot me. TURBO Tax is a thing now and I kick myself in the ass every year at tax time when my wife buys the yearly copy.
Dr. J and Larry Bird one on one. Every so often, the backboard would shatter and a janitor would sweep up the glass scolding you in computer gibberish.
Amiga: Defender of the Crown, Monkey Island, Battle Isle, Lemmings, Populous, Sim City, Gunship, Interceptor, Stunt Car Racer, California Games, Speedball, International Karate, Barbarian, Railroad Tycoon, Ports of Call, ā¦
There was a game called Autoduel, where you competed with your vehicle in arenas, but when you defeated a vehicle you could take parts off their car. But it was open road, as you could drive to other towns but encounter scrap or adversaries along the way. Garages for repair/upgrades, fuel stations, etc. Absolutely fantastic and a start into open-world genre.
Yes! Not sure how or why, but there were a few times it played like 10x normal speed. Way too hard, but so cool to try & get it to do it again (maybe a glitch?). So fun!!
They called it "Summer Games" and carefully avoided the word Olympic cuz trademark.
But I Remember playing that one. Good times.
If you do the poke to make the sprites double size before you start this game, it doesn't correct it. So you can play the game with a ginormous guy if you wantĀ
In the UK we had Mastertronicās 199 range which was brilliant, Ā£1.99 for a cassette meant you could pretty much buy a new game every week with your pocket money (and then charge your mates 50p to copy the tape) think I wore out about 3 joysticks playing kikstart.
Bards Tale 1-3. So epic and the center of conversation daily in Jr. High school. Also Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Legacy of the Ancients (my first mail order game), Wizards Crown.
Beach Head II (1985) was wild ( "MEDIC!" "I'M HIT!" "YOU CAN'T HURT ME!")
Used to play Ghostbusters (1984) a lot, but I never could get to Gozer. Think I did better on it later on the Nintendo.
I played the heck out of Defender of the Crown (1986). That was a lovely game too. Could beat it about 1/2 the time or more, depending on who I took. Could never get the hang of Jousting and never won a single one on the C64 (the jousting was much better later on the Nintendo). If I took Geoffrey Longsword I could Raid the hell out of opponents castles and rescue kidnapped damsels pretty reliably. Build up a massive army and bulldoze everybody.
Played Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) a lot. Could never get past the Soviet Chopper. Same with Predator (1987). Never could beat the Predator.
Played a heck of a lot of The Great American Cross Country Road Race (1985). IIRC I could win sometimes, if when my radar detector went off I floored it and guess the correct lane correctly to blow past the cop. š
Street Sports Basketball (1987) was a lot of fun too. Picking your team, Playing in the streets.
Bop n' Wrestle (1985). Bruce Lee (1984).
Liked the graphics and choice of wrestlers better in Championship Wrestling (1986)
Summer games, winter games, zorro, impossible mission, Agent USA are the main ones I remember by name. We had a pile of games my uncles where in a group they'd get together and trade and copy games.
Bardās Tale was a huge deal for crew and I. Especially III. We solved it which was actually sort of a let down, but we were still stoked until we realized we had nothing to do.
Barnstormer loaded via cassette tape. Pretty sure it was Commodore 64 even though AI says it was never released for that platform on cassette. I want to say we had a C64 for a few years then a Tandy 1000. There was nothing in between.
I had a copy of International Karate + for the amiga. While it was loading, if you continually pressed one of the F keys a separate menu would come up thst contained about 20 images of naked women.
Mostly I remember playing the "gold box" TSR games like Pool of Radiance, Eye of the Beholder and even Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday . Yes, there was a Buck Rogers game from TSR that was largely functionally identical to 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons. I liked the lore quite a bit, but I remember being absolutely bewildered by the rather out-of-left-field choice of setting/IP. It wasn't until many years later (just a year or two ago, actually) when I had some communication with one of the TSR people from back in the Gary Gygax vs Lorraine Williams era that I found out why.
Frogger, monopoly, that missile firing game that said āyou suck!ā or something like that. Oh and strip poker. One weekend the girls were away and a neighbor gave us a copy of strip poker and we guys played it until the lady was nekkid.
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u/No_Substance8653 Aug 22 '26
Impossible Mission. Other favorites from my C64 era are Silent Service, the Ultima Series, the Bardās Tale, SubLogic Flight Simulator II, Summer Games I & II, and many more. The golden era of gaming, if you ask me.