Paul Reich III was a legendary games programmer back in the day 😇🕹👌 =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= More from 1985: tinyurl.com/1985-C64-GAMES My Top Picks: tinyurl.com/CCGS-BEST-GAMES
Agreed. I know it's going to be a good video from the start. So I usually just click the thumbs up in the first few seconds then sit back and watch the video! It doesn't matter if it's a game I like or not... it's still good to see an interesting review on these classics!
I agree, Paul Reich III truly was a visionary in gaming... some of his other games were also well ahead of their time too - especially with the likes of 'Archon' 😇🕹️👌
My pleasure! Some fantastic memories to be had even playing it back.. that's the beauty of the Commodore 64 days - the games, the music, the happy memories. Nostalgia at its finest 😇🕹👌
I love this game! I remember playing this one with a friend. I think I usually picked the tyro or lionbear... but remember picking the carnifern just for something different... thinking it would probably suck... and then being surprised when I ended up beating my friend in a fight! LOL! Great memories! I love the Archon-style combat!
Some battles could literally go on for 10 minutes if both monsters are without any of the main weapons! Sometimes we'd just use the fist attacks - I remember the laughter chasing my buddy around with the monster trying to get a hit off! Great memories 😇🕹️👌
This one was definitely a favorite among friends from back in the day. So many early elements that have filtered through to modern games. Building/retaining multiple characters for future sessions. (Which led to my first lesson on how to hack to retrieve a forgotten password.) So many characters and worlds and options... some of which can actually do harm if OD'ed upon. But you always want to play this one with a friend. As the AI will brutally KO you around some of the primitive mechanics in play. Like this early menu system. More modern MMORPG found solutions with more buttons to working with real time menu systems. But we always had an honor system that when someone used their menu, just pause the action for a moment. If I recall, it was a clunky interface of 'stand still, double click, click through the multiple menus inside your info box, find your preferred weapon/option, exit'. Inside those vital fifteen seconds, the AI can just swarm you with a thousand claw cuts. Worse yet, when the AI wants to change things, it literally does so inside a fraction of a second. This really OP problem could have been solved so easily with an automatic pause. Probably would have taken one byte of programming to do. Another OP problem comes with a time saving option at the end of a fight. You are given the option to replay a match, which saves well over a minute. But... don't use it. Your character restarts. But that unfair AI goes into town, buys all the fancy upgrades, gets a spa treatment... etc. Basically, after a couple rematches, your character gets to growl while the AI is launching ICBM's and is sporting the latest in Dune body shielding. So unfair! Perhaps one of the worst that happens with advanced characters is that there are simply not enough supplies to go around. After all, the better characters get the better items. But everything needs supplies. Food seems simple enough. Just find plants out in the wild. Nope. Your character lives off of pre-packaged food from town. None of that foraging stuff while waging war. (These days, finding plants in the wild and cooking off grid is a staple of game play.) And those MRE's will run out, really quickly. Ammo. You only get that stuff in town. The game literally had an available answer to this issue. But again... guess they didn't have a byte of RAM left for it. It's called an 'Urban Defender'. These free-for-all battle tanks defend... what, exactly? Could have been supply dumps for reloading all your very limited supplies. Instead, I just used them to lure the AI into for free battle damage. In fact, the game only addresses the third supply, electricity, as a renewable resource. Many characters can have genetic upgrades to absorb sun into power through their bodies. It's painfully slow, especially when your fancy pew-pew gun eats amps for breakfast, that Star Trek grade tri-layer shielding isn't power friendly, the e-bandage is going, and the latte machine has no off switch. Your character doesn't need a cellphone charging battery pack. But an unlicensed Nuclear Accelerator pack. I suppose you could bother with that E-Stealer device. Ahem... which not only demands the same time and skill as a real weapon attack on your foe, but also will probably be trying to take the same watt that your enemy probably struggled to absorb from the sun. Which means that in advanced matches, your two Highlanders with insanely natural healing properties will be wishing to fire off those quad Buck Rodgers laser weapons. But forced to throwing around boomerangs, instead. I mean, just imagine any modern game letting you run out of supplies. No. They're always hiding stuff in the battle zone and dropping supplies from the sky. As for The Horde? Just the worst of the worst from the AI. Powerful weapons. Unlimited supplies. Rapid characters. Those guys needed a difficulty slider from the get-go. Big issues. But I chalk it up to being one of the first games of its type in what would become a super popular category... eventually. And I'd love to see this one rebooted with all the modern features. Barely even needs a name upgrade. Call it... E-Mail Order...
An interesting blueprint for a remake, more RAM & rename it 'Email Order'... definitely got some good points in there - I'd like to see this happen! 😇🕹️👌
Oh man, another from the vaults! My friends and I played a ton of this game and that music will now haunt me all day (in a good way). This is one I'd love to see get a modern remake.
Electronic Arts was one of my fave publishers/developer for the C64, always top quality...but ive never heard of this baby. Thx for the great review bro!
You're going to love this game - get it fired up and give it a whirl. It's not too difficult to get into either and you'd be up and running within minutes. Just got to be patient whilst you earn some cash to build monster ugrades and then the true fun begins 😇🕹️👌
Electronic Arts released so many legendary classic games for the Commodore 64 and Amiga 😺👍🕹️. I have never played this game, but, as always, it looks pretty cool 😺👍🕹️. Gotta love these old retro games 😹😺👍🕹️.
EA was the bomb for gaming names to rely on in those days. That company was replaced from the inside out by whatever resides in those offices, these days.
Fantastic game! You can really see Paul Reiche III's influence in this game with the very Archon-inspired combat screens. Another game I really didn't appreciate fully as a kid and really learned to love later on which is a shame, I think me and my friends at the time could have gotten into this in a big way.
I only got to play this one a handful of times (a family friend we visited during the summer owned it), but there was a surprising amount of depth to this one. You could certainly see the Archon lineage clearly- not surprising, given the developer.
I loved this game! I guess it's the closest thing we had to Pokemon back then. The music is catchy, if somewhat repetitive, and the combat reminds me a bit of Archon
Yeah you could definitely see the resemblances with games such as Pokemon. Also, like you say, the combat was very similar to the battle sequences in Archon 😇🕹️👌
You'll enjoy this one I reckon, great with a 2nd player too. The battles can be long winded but once you get the right power ups and weapons they become much shorter 😇🕹👌
All time fave. Each player had a disk formatted for their monsters, so you could take your morph to a friend's house. Also, there was a missile that said "strategic use only" but I never figured out how to use it. My guess is that it works on the overhead map. When you get enough money to keep enhancing your morphs evebtually the strength, intelligence, etc icons get all screwed up, which was fun.
Thats right! Similar to owning your very own mail order monsters... a bit like a Pokemon monster on a disk! You could show offf your builds to friends, then battle their monster to the death in the arena. Brilliant 😇🕹️👌
The closest game I can think of to compare this to is _Archon,_ but with much greater detail. Graphics seem not too shabby to me, but honestly I was always willing to give any game a play if it had excellent game play, which this one definitely did! I've seen plenty of games that have great graphics but just just didn't do it for me, game-wise. Twelve year old me would love this game!
Was a game to really sink your teeth into, literally! I liked the fact you could carry your own monster around on a pre-saved disk and play it on a friends C64 if they also had a disk drive and the game... so was a precursor to the Pokemon concept in some regards 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer That's pretty darn clever from a marketing standpoint. Encourage more people to buy the game so they can play against a friend. Ah, the things we did before the internet existed! Imagine the absolute _torture_ of having to actually travel to someone's house! LOL. 😋
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Yeah, it's weird, i can't remember any good monster games up to King of the Monsters by Neo Geo and here there are two of them :)
I love M.O.M. so much, but man it could have been even more. The map view and zoomed in view could have made for an epic CRPG, especially with flip screen maps for an even larger feeling world. You can compare a bit with Autoduel, with a somewhat similar city view. My favorite build would be a crab armed with a flamer. The computer opponents were always dumb enough to walk into the flamer if you aimed it right.
I agree, would have been good to see a bit more depth to the map screens and my strategy was also to use the flamer, usually against my brother... who would quickly get super annoyed with me and try to range attack me to no avail 🤣🕹👌 good times
I loved the two Archon games, and this seemed like the combat portion expanded into its own game, but for whatever reason, I just couldn't get into this one.
Yeah Archon was more strategic than this one, but this was good for the all-out warfare of 2 player mode battles which definitely added to the appeal for me & my friends as a kid. However, for depth... I think Archon was more of a fully rounded game 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer It wasn't that I wanted more strategy, there was just something about it that didn't "click" with me. I didn't really care for the whole monster management side of it and I didn't find the battles as much fun as I thought they would be.
Paul Reich III was a legendary games programmer back in the day 😇🕹👌
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
More from 1985: tinyurl.com/1985-C64-GAMES
My Top Picks: tinyurl.com/CCGS-BEST-GAMES
The only channel where you can give a thumbs up before watching the video. 😉👍
Ha that's what I like to hear - thankyou 😇🕹👌
Agreed. I know it's going to be a good video from the start. So I usually just click the thumbs up in the first few seconds then sit back and watch the video! It doesn't matter if it's a game I like or not... it's still good to see an interesting review on these classics!
The concept of this game is 10 years ahead of its time! I'm very surprised.
I agree, Paul Reich III truly was a visionary in gaming... some of his other games were also well ahead of their time too - especially with the likes of 'Archon' 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer And he later did the Star Control games! Those were great (especially Star Control 2)!
This was another gem of a game that I played the heck out of. Thank you for sharing this with us!! Great memories.
My pleasure! Some fantastic memories to be had even playing it back.. that's the beauty of the Commodore 64 days - the games, the music, the happy memories. Nostalgia at its finest 😇🕹👌
I use to play this all the time and love it. So glad you covered it.
Superb isn't it, couldn't miss this game out - a classic 😇🕹👌
I never heard of this! thanks! Archon 2 was one of my favorite games! I see the similarities.
I have the video for the original Archon on the channel, but I'll definitely get around to the sequel someday 😇🕹️👌
I love this game! I remember playing this one with a friend. I think I usually picked the tyro or lionbear... but remember picking the carnifern just for something different... thinking it would probably suck... and then being surprised when I ended up beating my friend in a fight! LOL! Great memories! I love the Archon-style combat!
Some battles could literally go on for 10 minutes if both monsters are without any of the main weapons! Sometimes we'd just use the fist attacks - I remember the laughter chasing my buddy around with the monster trying to get a hit off! Great memories 😇🕹️👌
This one was definitely a favorite among friends from back in the day. So many early elements that have filtered through to modern games. Building/retaining multiple characters for future sessions. (Which led to my first lesson on how to hack to retrieve a forgotten password.) So many characters and worlds and options... some of which can actually do harm if OD'ed upon. But you always want to play this one with a friend. As the AI will brutally KO you around some of the primitive mechanics in play. Like this early menu system. More modern MMORPG found solutions with more buttons to working with real time menu systems. But we always had an honor system that when someone used their menu, just pause the action for a moment. If I recall, it was a clunky interface of 'stand still, double click, click through the multiple menus inside your info box, find your preferred weapon/option, exit'. Inside those vital fifteen seconds, the AI can just swarm you with a thousand claw cuts. Worse yet, when the AI wants to change things, it literally does so inside a fraction of a second. This really OP problem could have been solved so easily with an automatic pause. Probably would have taken one byte of programming to do. Another OP problem comes with a time saving option at the end of a fight. You are given the option to replay a match, which saves well over a minute. But... don't use it. Your character restarts. But that unfair AI goes into town, buys all the fancy upgrades, gets a spa treatment... etc. Basically, after a couple rematches, your character gets to growl while the AI is launching ICBM's and is sporting the latest in Dune body shielding. So unfair! Perhaps one of the worst that happens with advanced characters is that there are simply not enough supplies to go around. After all, the better characters get the better items. But everything needs supplies. Food seems simple enough. Just find plants out in the wild. Nope. Your character lives off of pre-packaged food from town. None of that foraging stuff while waging war. (These days, finding plants in the wild and cooking off grid is a staple of game play.) And those MRE's will run out, really quickly. Ammo. You only get that stuff in town. The game literally had an available answer to this issue. But again... guess they didn't have a byte of RAM left for it. It's called an 'Urban Defender'. These free-for-all battle tanks defend... what, exactly? Could have been supply dumps for reloading all your very limited supplies. Instead, I just used them to lure the AI into for free battle damage. In fact, the game only addresses the third supply, electricity, as a renewable resource. Many characters can have genetic upgrades to absorb sun into power through their bodies. It's painfully slow, especially when your fancy pew-pew gun eats amps for breakfast, that Star Trek grade tri-layer shielding isn't power friendly, the e-bandage is going, and the latte machine has no off switch. Your character doesn't need a cellphone charging battery pack. But an unlicensed Nuclear Accelerator pack. I suppose you could bother with that E-Stealer device. Ahem... which not only demands the same time and skill as a real weapon attack on your foe, but also will probably be trying to take the same watt that your enemy probably struggled to absorb from the sun. Which means that in advanced matches, your two Highlanders with insanely natural healing properties will be wishing to fire off those quad Buck Rodgers laser weapons. But forced to throwing around boomerangs, instead. I mean, just imagine any modern game letting you run out of supplies. No. They're always hiding stuff in the battle zone and dropping supplies from the sky. As for The Horde? Just the worst of the worst from the AI. Powerful weapons. Unlimited supplies. Rapid characters. Those guys needed a difficulty slider from the get-go. Big issues. But I chalk it up to being one of the first games of its type in what would become a super popular category... eventually. And I'd love to see this one rebooted with all the modern features. Barely even needs a name upgrade. Call it... E-Mail Order...
An interesting blueprint for a remake, more RAM & rename it 'Email Order'... definitely got some good points in there - I'd like to see this happen! 😇🕹️👌
This was one of my all time favorite games. I keep hoping some developer will find a way to remake it.
RIGHT? Like I can't believe we have never seen a new generation of this sort of game.
Oh man, another from the vaults! My friends and I played a ton of this game and that music will now haunt me all day (in a good way). This is one I'd love to see get a modern remake.
Superb memories playing this with my brother too, great game back in the day 😇🕹️👌
Electronic Arts was one of my fave publishers/developer for the C64, always top quality...but ive never heard of this baby. Thx for the great review bro!
You're going to love this game - get it fired up and give it a whirl. It's not too difficult to get into either and you'd be up and running within minutes. Just got to be patient whilst you earn some cash to build monster ugrades and then the true fun begins 😇🕹️👌
Electronic Arts released so many
legendary classic games for the
Commodore 64 and Amiga 😺👍🕹️.
I have never played this game,
but, as always, it looks pretty cool 😺👍🕹️.
Gotta love these old retro games 😹😺👍🕹️.
Definitely play this one if you get chance, it's really good fun 😇🕹👌
EA was the bomb for gaming names to rely on in those days. That company was replaced from the inside out by whatever resides in those offices, these days.
Fantastic game! You can really see Paul Reiche III's influence in this game with the very Archon-inspired combat screens. Another game I really didn't appreciate fully as a kid and really learned to love later on which is a shame, I think me and my friends at the time could have gotten into this in a big way.
I'll be giving my brother a quick competition on this game soon when he comes over for the day hehe, bring back some good memories 😇🕹️👌
Trip down memory lane. thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it - brings me right back to 85' playing this.... those were some great times in gaming 😇🕹️👌
I knew this game existed but it never surfaced as a game I wanted to play. Good to see something new to my eyeballs though :)
This was another 'couch' multiplayer that was my go-to game as a kid. Especially on rainy days when my friends would come over... good times 😇🕹️👌
I only got to play this one a handful of times (a family friend we visited during the summer owned it), but there was a surprising amount of depth to this one. You could certainly see the Archon lineage clearly- not surprising, given the developer.
I can imagine that even though you only played it for brief periods that they were all good memories as this game is super addictive 😇🕹️👌
I loved this game! I guess it's the closest thing we had to Pokemon back then. The music is catchy, if somewhat repetitive, and the combat reminds me a bit of Archon
Yeah you could definitely see the resemblances with games such as Pokemon. Also, like you say, the combat was very similar to the battle sequences in Archon 😇🕹️👌
Ha! Never heard of this but I like the concept of it all. Great video as always!
You'll enjoy this one I reckon, great with a 2nd player too. The battles can be long winded but once you get the right power ups and weapons they become much shorter 😇🕹👌
This is a fantastic game! Reminds me of a pokemon version of Crush, Crumble, and Chomp! I only ever played the Apple II version of that though.
It is a fantastic game, especially when playing alongside a buddy in 2 player mode... where the competition really ramped up 😇🕹️👌
I am going to download this game today and play it. Never heard of it before now.
Definitely download it, brilliant if you can find a 2nd player to join in too 😇🕹👌
Definitely find a friend. It makes the game vastly superior.
All time fave. Each player had a disk formatted for their monsters, so you could take your morph to a friend's house. Also, there was a missile that said "strategic use only" but I never figured out how to use it. My guess is that it works on the overhead map. When you get enough money to keep enhancing your morphs evebtually the strength, intelligence, etc icons get all screwed up, which was fun.
Thats right! Similar to owning your very own mail order monsters... a bit like a Pokemon monster on a disk! You could show offf your builds to friends, then battle their monster to the death in the arena. Brilliant 😇🕹️👌
The closest game I can think of to compare this to is _Archon,_ but with much greater detail. Graphics seem not too shabby to me, but honestly I was always willing to give any game a play if it had excellent game play, which this one definitely did! I've seen plenty of games that have great graphics but just just didn't do it for me, game-wise. Twelve year old me would love this game!
Was a game to really sink your teeth into, literally! I liked the fact you could carry your own monster around on a pre-saved disk and play it on a friends C64 if they also had a disk drive and the game... so was a precursor to the Pokemon concept in some regards 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer That's pretty darn clever from a marketing standpoint. Encourage more people to buy the game so they can play against a friend. Ah, the things we did before the internet existed! Imagine the absolute _torture_ of having to actually travel to someone's house! LOL. 😋
I married a mail order monster.
Ahh I'm glad you received the parcel I sent! 😇🕹️👌
This and Movie Monster Game are awesome games (i discovered them through Game Grumps)...
Ah yes, 'Movie Monster' is another great game isn't it... definitely on the list that one. So many superb games for the C64 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer Yeah, it's weird, i can't remember any good monster games up to King of the Monsters by Neo Geo and here there are two of them :)
EA nailed it once again back then with this outstanding game - simply abgefahren! 👍😉
Everything EA touched seemed to turn to gold, especially when it came to strategy types... a fantastic game all round this one 😇🕹👌
I love M.O.M. so much, but man it could have been even more. The map view and zoomed in view could have made for an epic CRPG, especially with flip screen maps for an even larger feeling world.
You can compare a bit with Autoduel, with a somewhat similar city view.
My favorite build would be a crab armed with a flamer. The computer opponents were always dumb enough to walk into the flamer if you aimed it right.
I agree, would have been good to see a bit more depth to the map screens and my strategy was also to use the flamer, usually against my brother... who would quickly get super annoyed with me and try to range attack me to no avail 🤣🕹👌 good times
not sure I have seen this, but the name sounds familiar
Was massive over in the USA, but luckily we managed to get a copy over here from a few buddys on the schoolyard in the swapsie scene 😇🕹️👌
I loved the two Archon games, and this seemed like the combat portion expanded into its own game, but for whatever reason, I just couldn't get into this one.
Yeah Archon was more strategic than this one, but this was good for the all-out warfare of 2 player mode battles which definitely added to the appeal for me & my friends as a kid. However, for depth... I think Archon was more of a fully rounded game 😇🕹️👌
@@CheekyCommodoreGamer It wasn't that I wanted more strategy, there was just something about it that didn't "click" with me. I didn't really care for the whole monster management side of it and I didn't find the battles as much fun as I thought they would be.