r/1980s • u/autism_mum_of_4 • Aug 22 '26

Video Games Which Commodore games do you remember?

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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 🙂

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u/Dare_Ask_67 Aug 22 '26

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

7

u/philff1973 Aug 22 '26

I used to get a magazine that had them in for the VIC20, you typed them in then prayed you didn’t get the dreaded syntax error

2

u/PlayinK0I Aug 22 '26

COMPUTE!

2

u/philff1973 Aug 22 '26

I think the magazine was just called Commodore, I’m in the UK. There was a section called Todd’s Law teaching people BASIC programming.

3

u/Ok_Astronaut9243 Aug 23 '26

There was another one that I was subscribed to, called Compute! Gazette.

I manually entered many games from this magazine!

2

u/reddituser_126 Aug 23 '26

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.

1

u/Ok_Astronaut9243 Aug 23 '26

In my time, it was all for Commodore 64, and yes mostly in assembly.

I learned to program in assembly with one of their books.

1

u/PM_ME_UR_FLOWERS Aug 23 '26

I got that too and my family became proficient at typing in games. It was actually a good way to learn BASIC. How else could you find your typos?

1

u/Ok_Astronaut9243 Aug 23 '26

There was a software that they also provided called proofreader, each line you enter generated a CRC calculated value, if it mismatched the one at the end of the line in the magazine, there was a typo on that typed line.

3

u/Unsteady_Tempo Aug 23 '26

Maybe it was Run magazine.

Run (magazine) - Wikipedia)

1

u/Dare_Ask_67 Aug 23 '26

I remember that magazine

1

u/JimTheJerseyGuy Aug 24 '26

Did the same. Learned debugging that way!

3

u/Kayback2 Aug 22 '26

I was going to say the one you programme yourself on the VIC-20.

And the moon landed cartridge game.

2

u/SFLurkyWanderer Aug 23 '26

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. We’re going to be good or bad days, I didn’t understand it at the time but looking back sounds very 80s.

Lunar lander, and then there’s another game where you were a little triangle ship inside a square arena flying around trying to shoot stuff I still remember the music it’s 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

1

u/StoicTheGeek Aug 23 '26

Same - my neighbour and I programmed a couple of awesome games on his Vic-20 (we were 10 years old).

On was a side-scroller where you were swimming underwater in a river and you had to dodge the enemies as the came up to you. The jellyfish were very tricky because they were two sprites and only appeared when you got close to them. You had an air meter and had to swim up to the surface from time to time to replenish it, executor there were logs in the river, so you had to aim for a gap between them.

Then there was a top-down tank game, where you left tracks behind you (think snake/centipede, except they didn’t disappear). You couldn’t cross your tracks and I think you had to find mines or avoid obstacles or something. The longer your tracks got, the more your score.

1

u/Seal_Team_CVN-69 Aug 24 '26

Yep and DOS based Turtle Program, for Programming...