What stumps me is how the hell they managed to scroll all that up to the highest speed (8 pixels every frame) , including color ram, and STILL have the stars stationary at the same time. Scroll 1,2 or 4 pixel speed makes it possible to double buffer over several frames, but 8 pixels speed gives you only one frame ahead to draw/scroll.
Also it was super ambitious game in general with all the exploration and searching the rooms. The first version I played was a sequel for the Amiga called 'Impossible Mission 2025' with updated graphics, music and character selection. It had the original port on the disk too. When I realized that something like this was made for 8-bit machines I was really impressed. After playing dozens of simplistic arcade games you get something 'cinematic' like this it may blow you from your socks.
I used to own a Spectrum and never really considered the C64 until the day my head was turned when a friend showed me Sanxion. Hearing that glorious score by Rob Hubbard as the game loaded, then followed by the sheer speed of the game and how good it all looked (programmed by Stavros Fasoulas, if memory serves) made me sell "Old Rubber" and switch to the beige behemoth. I loved that computer. I even invested in a disc drive and a printer for it, so I could use it for other things, and then picked up a Freeze Frame and an Action Replay so I could dump games onto disc. But I kept the tape deck for playing Sanxion, I couldn't do without my fix of "Thalamusic". I also remember the old technique for maximising the space on the old single sided 5.25" floppy, where you'd take a Stanley knife and carefully chop out a notch on the right hand side and be able to record on the back of the disc, thus sparing the hideous expense of proper double sided floppies. Ah, those were the days! Computers these days are just too easy compared to then and they're more dull for it, sadly.
It was actually the C64 port of Montezuma's Revenge that made me buy mine. Especially after seeing how much of a letdown that the Spectrum version was. It was one of my favorite games on the 2600 and after playing the Speccy version, I died a little inside.
THE SENTINEL: 3d, 10.000 procedurally created levels, amazingly tense gameplay, a huge influence on Minecraft.. all too often overlooked in videos like this.
@@neyoid I actually had quite a few 3D games, due to clever fudging of the actual animation. The Sentinel has you teleporting instead of moving, but other games do use actual 3D. Framerates are.. well.. :)
I played Sentinel on ZX Spectrum. It took me awhile to figure out how to play the game, I didn't have a manual, but I did finally understand the game to my brother's surprise who was stumped as to how to play it. Our minds were blown with how incredible that game was for the time. Considering the modest specs of the ZX Speccy.
REVS - the only driving simulation where you can freely drive in any direction, also the car set-up makes a real difference. I think that was the most complex simulation at the time.
As of 20 years ago, you could listen to it via SIDPlayer on Windows. Or export it from that as Stereo Wave to be burnt onto CD. And that's pretty much where the remix scene kicked off.....and that's still striving!! remix.kwed.org
3D game: "Elite" (also worth comparing to other platform versions such as NES). 2D game: "Flimbo's Quest" (especially the tricks for the colours. Also the music is good). Cartridge btw. Or "Shadow Of The Beast" and "ChaseHQ" and "Batman". Maybe "Pang" too but not sure if limit-pushing. Thumbs up btw. :)
What always amazed me was the jousting scene (first person scene) in the Defender of the Crown, sure it was hard to win, but seeing the attacking knight and horse running towards you was just amazing.
You just saved me from doing this... " what.....noooo DEFENDER OF THE CROWN??!" The entire video as he spoke, "Next up....", I was like... say it... say it... Noooo!
Nearly every scene in that game was a graphical marvel. That game really, REALLY pushed the graphics on the C64. When I saw the game a few years later on the 16-bit Amiga, I thought it did look better than the C64 version, but not by that much.
@@plpmandenJim Sachs is a genius pixel artist. Check out his Marine Aquarium Serene Screen screen saver and run it on a modern PC or Mac, it is a sight to behold
Also, Creatures. It came out towards the end of the C64 life cycle and caused quite a stir. (Mayem in Moserland came out when the C64 was already dead, in fact I didn't know nothing about it until I started to take an interest in retrogames).
Pitstop II was a brilliant two player game, probably the best. When you were both driving full speed at 251mph the sound of the engines really sang and got you ultra competitive. After a nine lap race trying not to blow a tyre or run out of fuel it was a great feeling to come out the victor! 🇬🇧
The one 3D game that impressed me the most on the ol' bread bin was Fighter Bomber by Activision. A couple of adventure games that also blew me away back in the day was Maniac Mansion and Zak McCracken. And Times of Lore - where you could even save your game on a blank tape!
With my C64, I was never into any of these types of games. They never even crossed my radar (well maybe "The Last Ninja" did a little. I played a LOT of games, but none of them were space shooters, arcade type games, or platformers. I was really into computer RPG's, and strategy games at the time. My absolute favorite game on the system was "The Adventure Construction Set". I pushed that game to it's limit, designing all kinds of games with it that the design kit was never made to create. Things like "Bard's Tale", and the Epyx rouglikes were really my jam. And I LOVED simulation games, and board war games. The C64 was the first system I had that actually had games like these. I even preferred the games that I played on the C64 to the games that the NES had at the time. NES games bored me, and seemed like kid stuff by comparison.
Home computers were flooded with space shooters, because they were super popular on the arcades, so it was kinda money grabbing trick to basically make another clone of R-Type or Xevious. Most of these shooters were based on the same mechanics and only few had some innovations in the gameplay. The main advantage of these games was that they were easy to get into and play. RPG and Strategy games need time to understand the mechanics at even basic level. RPG games are story driven, with dialogues to read, character to upgrade etc. Often you need to read manual, make a map etc. Old RPGs seem more difficult than modern ones too. There were no tutorials etc. The Last Ninja was also quite demanding, since it was action-adventure with some exploration. It wasn't a pick-up&play type of game like some platformer or beat em up. I was more into arcade stuff, because I wasn't super patent as a kid to sit down for hours exploring the world of the game, learn sophisticated mechanics etc...
Funnily enough I was a small child when the C64 was popular in 1987 and 1988 when I owned it and also a Nintendo (before we would get a Sega Genesis I believe in 1989), but I could never wrap my head around the simulation and strategy games that my dad loved. He would have huge thick books like the original Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader, or board games like Axis & Allis, and they were just way too complicated for me. When we got the Snes years later he would play P.T.O. on it all the time. There was a game similar to "The Adventure Construction Set" on the C64 that I could never remember the name of, but I remember you would place sprites on a background and kind of "create a scene" or something. It may have been the game Movie Creator, but there was a lot of games like it, and I have never been able to find that exact game. I think it is the last one from my childhood I've attempted to figure out the name of, the rest I have rediscovered as an adult.
Turrican II was the game I was really amazed when first saw it, from the graphics to gameplay to music, all were among the best you can see on a C64, I'll place it at n°1 on my list. More recently I was also impressed by Prince of Persia, it looks and plays almost the same as the original with the same smooth animations.
@@theyamo7219 PoP does have SID music. The original game doesn't have a soundtrack, just intro theme and sound effects, so that is matched in the C64 version. I agree also though, PoP on C64 is fantastic.
I played Prince of Persia on the PC. And it was amazing. It was a 286, with hercules GPU and monitor which were monochrome. Recently I tried the C64 version and it looked better with color and all. Amazing game.
@Metagalactic Llama A common misconception. Indeed Elite did play faster on the BBC. In truth the gained performance was minimal. The 64 version had better sound, graphics and dynamics than the BBC version. And don't forget this game came out in 1985. Elite was more than ground-breaking, it was a monumental feat of programming.
To be honest, the HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE C64 demoscene pretty much desensitised me. Now there's no longer a surprise when someone manages to, say, port the Unreal Engine 4 to the C64.
Almost forgot this one....some kind the forerunner of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?". 10 questions, 4 options, make it til sunrise! And that was sold as a commercial game. But I loved it for its graphics.
I would add Chris Butler's Turbo Charge, by far the most impressive pseudo 3D racing game for the C64. Very large objects running very fast, tons of graphical interludes and racing and shooting that actually plays well and has some variation.
It's amazing how much enthusiasts could squeeze out of this 1 Mhz machine. 16 year after Mayhem in Monsterland we got Minecraft to prove how little can be squeezed out of 3 Ghz machines ;P
To my knowledge, until Minecraft, no one had succeeded in combining "huge procedurally generated world" + "completely modifiable world". Unless you count infiniminer, which as far as I can work out wasn't all that "infini". Certainly none had succeeded with it. It was a "this thing is actually possible on today's hardware" game, even if the graphics were kind of primitive. (Another game which did that without any impressive graphics, was Scribblenauts for the DS. A game with a huge dictionary of things you could just summon was possible before, it's just that no one had thought of the fact that it was possible.)
Actually, despite the "coder art", Minecraft was a graphical milestone. The artistry might not have been up to much, but the programming was definitely pushing the envelope. Because, until then, no-one had successfully pulled off the "100% modifiable world". The engine has to be able to cope with any number of voxels in any possible configuration. There could be no pre-rendering, as used by pretty much every other game, where level designers have carefully designed and compiled maps ahead of time, because the user could place blocks conceivably anywhere, in any configuration, and the engine just has to render it. It has to handle the "worst case" and that could conceivably get very bad indeed with the as-then traditional rendering methods. But this is an algorithmic triumph, it must be said. The approach of only rendering the "surface" polygons - that was the "magic sauce" for making it possible. The code itself is pretty crap. Single threaded and, for a long while, didn't even use VBOs. Even in 2010, using "immediate mode" on OpenGL was ancient. Doesn't "greedy mesh" either. It's not well-coded, but it was well-thought-out design to finally pull off the thing - 100% dynamic generation - that so many developers had been chasing and not landed. Notch landed it with Minecraft and, you know, became a multi-billionaire with the best-selling game of all-time.
I used to work in a computer shop in Liverpool called Bits and Bytes from we 1986 to 1989 and loved every minute of it..we had the sid chip on number 11.📢
Powerdrift was a fantastic arcade port to the humble C64. A rare case if the developer NOT trying to make an arcade perfect port and instead interpreting it differently. And it works. Midnight Resistance was another feat of programming too.
Glad you mentioned this. I was always impressed with the 'running man' sprite that Epyx had developed for this game, as well as its other hits like Summer Games, Summer Games II, etc. Incredibly smooth animation for its time.
It was actually the C64 port of Montezuma's Revenge that made me buy mine. Especially after seeing how much of a letdown that the Spectrum version was. It was one of my favorite games on the 2600 and after playing the Speccy version, I died a little inside.
Absolutely. Between the smooth, detailed animation, the ever replayable game play, and the oh-my-god-did-my-64-just-do-that speech synthesis it was a true milestone.
@A LITTLE BIT OF THE BUBBLY "Help, I'm dyyyyyyying" :) Beach head, destroyer, all the Games(summer, winter, world), Street sports baseball, Skate or Die, Druids, Parallax, Wizball. The RPG games like Bards Tale, Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure bonds. Dragons Lair to practice for the arcade version. Yie Ar Kung fu(sp), International Karate, Barbarians. So much goodness.
What is missing: Sound, sound and more sound. Today, that is what every C64 follower remembers, the music quality in the games that were developed. There was nothing ever mentioned about the Sound Interface Device (SID) anywhere in this video. So, lets get started: Back in the older days, games were developed by one man (ie. one man, one game), it was a bunch of programming nerds that knew the assembly language and knew very little about music. That was about to change, as more people started to look at computers and how to program for them, there were people with backgrounds that werent just about programming. A man that worked for a game company called Synchro was working on a running man game with a bow in his hand. Too bad Synchro went bankrupt to be bought by Cosmi. Cosmi loved the game and it was 75% complete and they hired the man that made the game, which eventually became Forbidden Forest. Paul Norman was a studio musician at first and started programming for computers as they were the future of music. There was a reason why his early games sold well, because they had great music and atmosphere, but as time went on and games required more, his later works only had music during the title. This game kind of got the ball rolling with musicians slowly realizing the potential of the Sound Interface Device inside the C64. Paul Norman wasnt the only person to realize the future of music landed towards computers. Another studio musician also entered the scene with his own games, his name was Rob Hubbard. Too bad his games were dog awful, but Gremlin Graphics loved his sound programming and hired him to make games for their games (although he was a freelancer, it was Gremlin Graphics that noticed everything). Rob Hubbards music is highly recognized today (75 C64 games had his music, but lets just focus on one game). The one game that really put the SID to the test was Skate or Die. That heavy metal title screen music couldnt beat anything in terms of music, its still impressive by todays standards. Back then, not too many games had speech synthesis. Although some programmers (ie. Silas Warner) had their own speech synthesis programming, the most commonly used speech synthesis programming was done by: Electronic Speech Synthesis. This company was best known for being involved in the production of Impossible Mission (too bad they raised their prices after this game was successful). Just one flaw in the SID made speech possible, and memorable. Of course, speech is very common today, but back then, it was amazing to hear the speech coming out of games.
There were at least two references to the SID chip in the video; one explicitly by name, and another earlier in the video talking about the advanced sound chip. I'm not going to go back and find the timestamps; I just found it an odd thing for you to call out. I haven't read your accompanying article yet. Just replying to your erroneous omission callout.
I think the C64 was what spawned the actual programmer/composer role, which Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway pretty much dominated. I recall there were a few games that I'd load up just to listen to the music.
When you started talking about the SID, damn, Ron Hubbard was the name that popped right up. And this from 30 years ago. I will always remember him from his music of IK+, one ot the greatest C64 games.
I was just about to post this too. A lot of what you see in Mayhem was first seen in Creatures and Creatures 2. Both those games along with Retrograde are 3 of my all time fave games on any system, let alone the C64. The Rowland brothers really were legends of C64 gaming.
@@robintst if the theme song pops into your mind I would recommend that you listen to "machine supremacy". They made a very good heavy metal cover which will rock your socks off.
When multiload games came in they made a big difference to the size of games, and the amount of content if not the looks of the game. One of my absolute favourite was Gunship. It chugged along at maybe 6 or 7 FPS, and took 40 minutes of loading before you actually got to fly the mission. That you had to do in under 20 minutes to stand a chance of a medal. And I used to play with a friend, taking it in turns. That meant 1 hour and 40 minutes or waiting for loading or watching your mate play for 20 minutes of actually playing the game. I still have it, and the tape with my friend's and my career saved. Oh, and Creatures 2 I thought looked great for the C64.
u forgot to mention one KEY aspect in C64 gaming success: the SID chip; this sound masterpiece along with musical talents like Ben Daglish, Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway paved the way for true 8-bit multimedia genius back in the day; and almost 40 years later the demoscene is vibrant and pushing the limits
Many years ago, I walked into a local computer store. At that time, game demos were not really a thing, but there was a "rolling" demo of nebulus, I just stood there for ages staring open-mouthed at this tower rotating on the C64
I'm not complaining, but, one that blew me away back then was Mean Streets. Its the only C-64 game I can remember that had full facial animations of a real actor. Yes, they were grainy and pixelated. But, my C-64 was stock and it ran it fine. And it was a digitized human face....on an 8bit computer with 64k memory. Dang. The rest of the game was a combination of side scrolling shooter, point and click adventure and flight simulator. Yes...flight simulator. You played as the detective Tex Murphy trying to solve a crime for a client. (basic bad girl type a la the Noir detective genera)
'Creatures' by Apex Computer Solutions, published by Thalamus, mainly for its music although for some of its visuals too. The music of Monty on the Run.
Great video! i've just purchased a 2nd hand C64 mini and after the firmware update i downloaded ALL games ever released for the breadbin and, after finishing Giana Sisters, i'm now looking for hidden gems. This video sure has some!
What about elite… Came i 84 and pushed not only the c64, but Vector graphics and space games to the limit. One of the first open world/sandbox games ever.
Exile, Mercenary, The Sentinel, Ultima 4, 5 & 6, Gunship & F117, Rainbow Islands, Vendetta, Tusker, Space Rogue, The Eidolon and a really clever Time Travel adventure whose name escapes me.
By F117 you probably mean Project: Stealth Fighter, out of which F117 was basically the second 16-bit remake? In any case I also was impressed how smooth vector graphics that ran on C64 in comparison to most other simulators on the platform that were not always even really playable.
I got one of the original C 64 systems when it came out. (I just dated myself) I played almost all of these featured games. 2 that I think should have made the list are Maniac Mansion and Paradroid. The later of the 2 was easily my favorite. As simple as it was I thought it was genius.
There's a Paradriod port for Android! 25 years later, I finally managed to finish it! Woot! If only it were my C64 -- it belonged to my Grandfather who left it to my cousin -- I learned to program in basic as I'm sure many of you did, and this stood me in good stead all through comp-sci particularly having a feel for graphics and sound which weren't taught in our dry pascal and c classes...
I found the game Forbidden Forest pretty good considering the C64 hardware, all the dual layers give that game a good field of depth an also it's music was perfect. The slowly moving moon across the sky was also a nice feat. - Cyberdybe Warrior was like Turican 2 and equally as impressive Then you had Falcon Patrol, a fighter jet platform game, graphically very nice to see. And who can forget Bruce Lee? A wonder platform fighting game that played very smoothly with nice levels. My first ever game played on the C64, which made me love the machine was actually Choplifter. Although not a graphical impressive game, it was just a FUN game to play.
Forbidden Forest was the first videogame that genuinely creeped me out. The graphics were blocky, but it did such an amazing job of building atmosphere.
I can remember my senior year in college (1985) when I played the original game of a genre that would later be called "4X," "Reach for the Stars." The publisher, Strategic Studies Group, came out with an MSDOS version, and then a highly modified version that I'm not sure ran under Windows. You can only fall in love once. I can code now. Been doing it for over 30 years. These days I have a little time on my hands because I've come down with Crohn's disease,, and I've never completely given up the hope of contacting the folks at SSG (one of the two founders has died) and offering to clone the game in Java to run on modern hardware and not be tied to a single CPU or operating system. Looks like my dream of getting a decent clone up and running will forever remain a dream. I still play an occasional game on a C64 emulator (the MS DOS version was unplayable); this is how I know that I could clone the graphics and the interface easily, but I could never replicate the game's AI. I've never been able to get in touch with these people, much less hear them turn down my offer to do the job for free (you KNOW that this is how corporations work). So I'll have to be content with things as they are. Oh well...
Sooooo many you missed and sooooo many you included that weren't that good. Impossible mission was pushing the envelope in 85 with digitised speech and fluid sprite animation, plus it's responsible for more sleepless nights than I care to remember! The Sentinel was an amazing game with just the scope of its size with 10000 levels... Sensible softwares output was incredible and pushed the system musically and visually and made games of those elements... the Staff of Karnath was sooooo ahead of its time! Beachhead II could play digitised speech with no slowdown of game play. Bounder perfected putting sprites in the border... Blade Runner redefined adventure games... Kronos Rift and Rescue of Fractalus pretty much stood alone in 3d Fractal graphocs. Scarabeus was pretty tightly programmed as well. Ahh memories.....
@@SECONDQUEST yeah right... I had a 1st generation commodore 64 in 1983. I ended up owning 5 of them and a 128. I had multiple disc drives, a modem, 3 printers, 2 monitors, action replay 2 and 3, the 66 key keyboard and music software they released in 85, lots of cartridges and more floppy discs and tapes than i care to remember. I even learned assembler. I attended all of the commodore shows, read zzap64 from issue 1 and built my own arcade joystick because I played on it so much. Ever since I owned a pc in the 1990s I have been using emulators. Not only have I played them, I lived through the whole period and frankly I think I know what I'm talking about. None of the games in this video are from the early c64 scene. There were far more games released than most played unless you were there. You remind me of one of those idiots who thought the spectrum was a better games machine I used to have to put up with at school. What's your history with the c64? What makes you such an expert?
Last Ninja would have been absolutely gorgeous on a Color Computers 3 with 512kb RAM. Alas, the company did not have enough financial resources for porting the game, knowing that the market for Tandy's little 8bit computer was much smaller than that of the C64.
So, I was probably a vintage gamer even when I got my C64 having had a pong and VCR machine. I had also enjoyed Jet Pac and Sabrewolf on my Sectrum but the C64 is when it all came together. Uridium, Choplifter, Dropzone, The Sentinel, Impossible Mission, Kennedy Approach, Thrust and Buggy Boy all shone on the C64. It didn't matter that it took 10-15 mins to load a game, it stayed on all night! When imagination counted before pixels!
By 1993 I had an amiga 500 but I grew up with commodore(s), my father bought the classic one with tapes, later he bought the external floppy drive and later the SX... It was placed in my room. Back then, most of the games shop would copy the games or there were pirate mailorders sending huge printed catalogues. I always thought that the most console like games were Creatures, Midnight Resistance, Strider and another one with a little Ninja that I bought original.
Great vid, for those of us growing up on 16 bit. I love to learn and see what old systems could do. Also west of the pond love to learn about the uk gaming experiences . And great script. Cheers
The games listed in this video are decades old. The C64 is still getting a dozen commercial releases every year. Some of the "pushing the limits" recent titles include, of course, Sam's Journey, as well as Powerglove (A full featured cross between Metroid and Megaman squeezed into a 16k filesize). Some other recent releases include Steel Ranger, Pains N Aches, Wolfling, Sizzler, and Sydney Hunter. Age of Heroes is set to drop any day now, and It's Magic 2 (like Mayhem but with parallax scrolling, more varied baddies and better music) is getting a special gold cartridge release for it's 20 year anniversary.
Sam's Journey is pure witchcraft on two 5.25 inch floppies. As much polish as a 16 bit platformer, epic soundtrack all from a very small production team. Who'd thought it was running on a machine from 1982.
ungratefulmetalpansy why is it a hoax? It’s just a tech demo sadly. The developer lost interest in it. To be honest it’s nothin really super special technically. It’s more a thumbs up to great art management. Perfect use of palette and mixes hires and multicolor. I started actually last year pixeling on the c64 again after a 30 year break and realized how much you can push it visually if you do it right.
Can't wait to dive in to the C-64 gaming pool! Just ordered the C64 Maxi and the preloaded games list is looking very weak indeed. Your videosl will definitely help me flesh out a powerhouse classic C64 gaming library. Thanks my friend! 👍 👍
I agree completely. I hate it when you see those videos on the news where, say, some passenger is filming an on board incident, and the TV or internet has to put those crappy blurry jobbies on each side. What's wrong with pain colour, or nothing at all? It eally is worse than those diagonals you used to get on pix of mobile phones!
I do not think the blur effect is distracting and I'd prefer it to a static border. However, if a majority of the footage you show off in your video is 4:3, or an aspect ratio close to that, then you should just make the whole video 4:3.
@@Sharopolis It's a stylistic choice and I don't mind it. I read somewhere that our brain will squash a widened image back into understandable shapes too. For some (such as myself) a black border is a constant reminder that there is a physical dimension beyond the image on the screen which causes distraction and disconnect where there should be immersion.
C64 was best known for its SID soundchip, which spawned an enviable amount of chiptune musicians like Jeroen Tel who composed music for many of the best C64 games.
Those were like the games every computer shop demoed to get people to by C64s. The early 80s "killer app". Sadly I am old enough to remember... Raid Over Moscow was pretty good too.
used to have a c64 back in the days, 2 1541 drives, cassette , mps 803 printer and 5 boxes of floppies . Learned how to program machine code in Hex. Now I use that knowledge for modern computer programming.
Just found your channel today and subscribed, liking the content and your presenting style. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more of the 'Games That Push The Limits...' content, an Amiga episode would be welcomed'.
Used to love inputting programs and then debugging them. Spend 3 days inputting in basic and spend 2 weeks debugging, then move on. Was great for my ADHD. Would recommend it still today.
R R.....Didn't you have to time/press the joystick button with the onscreen footsteps to run faster? Then up on stick to launch? That was so much fun.... Thumb never felt do numb since😁
So what did you miss? Well, Wizball, for one thing. I mean, you showed it at the end, but didn't spend a single word on it! It was Sensible Software's original masterpiece. A true original. As for other games that pushed the envelope at the time they came out, I think Defender Of The Crown deserves a mention as well. Oh, and IK+ too.
@Rooflesoft Games True, from a pure graphics and performance standpoint, Wizball didn't push any boundaries (although I do love the visuals to bits), but I would argue that sound and gameplay wise, it certainly did. Martin Galway's music was phenomenal, and the whole gameplay concept had never been seen before (or since, for that matter).
I still have the 4 MHz Schnedler TurboMaster CPU, which makes my C64 go 4 times faster than normal stock speed. Great for games that have animation & 3D reliant on processor speed. My favorite game back then that got a 4x speed improvement from the TurboMaster was Stellar 7. At normal C64 speed, the vector animation was around 7 frames per second, but with the TurboMaster it was closer to 30 fps, which meant the game was more intuitive to play, no more slide show. I still have 3 C-64's as well as the TurboMaster.
3d games? Look at the early Lucasfilm games. The Eidolon. Rescue on Fractalus. Koronis Rift. They were at least 10 years ahead of their time. Oh, and of course the First Person puzzle shooters based on Freescape, the world's first general purpose multiplatform 3D engine. Basically the ancestor of today's 3d game engines.
I really liked The Eidolon, and the only reason I wouldn't say that the Lucas games and Freescape games shouldn't be here is that they didn't push the hardware, they broke it. The frame rates were terrible, but they showed another generation of gaming, so they deserve recognition.
Yeah, the Freescape games didn't 'push the hardware', they were unfortunately as fast as you would expect them to be on a C64 - no where near an acceptable speed. the Lucasarts (was that a thing then?) fractal games were clever, but ultimately limited. I'd say Mercenary is the best example of 3D on the C64. It really is amazing that they got it to move so fast in 1MHz.
Metagalactic Llama I agree with that, while Rescue on Fractulus was a pretty decent game on the C64, I felt that the animation ran much smoother on the Atari 8-bit computers
I absolutely hated flight combat simulators until I played Gunship....I did like Silent Service too, but that was technically a naval/sumarine combat sim.
@@theyamo7219 oh hell yes. The Sid Meier games were the best. I too had Silent Service. Also had Strike Fleet, Red Storm Rising, and Chuck Yeagers Flight Simulator
This was actually great. Really enjoyed seeing the fast scrolling games, considering most have memories of games being slow and clunky and the main thing about consoles was that they were slick and fast and well put together. If commodore had the budget of say Nintendo and maybe cartridge games weren't so expensive on it then maybe we'd have seen more produced before it's end of life.
Not gonna lie, the thing I like best about Uridium is how smooth that ship's turning animation is. Like, that is a VERY nice animation.
What stumps me is how the hell they managed to scroll all that up to the highest speed (8 pixels every frame) , including color ram, and STILL have the stars stationary at the same time.
Scroll 1,2 or 4 pixel speed makes it possible to double buffer over several frames, but 8 pixels speed gives you only one frame ahead to draw/scroll.
The sound was good too Paradroid also, Andrew Braybrook was brilliant.
Andrew Braybrook was/is a clever guy.
It's nothing compared to xevious on the atari 7800
@@The_Conspiracy_Analyst I'll take that as a joke.🤔
I will always remember Impossible Mission, the first game I played where they managed to get speech from the SID chip. Stay a while. Stay forever.
Also it was super ambitious game in general with all the exploration and searching the rooms. The first version I played was a sequel for the Amiga called 'Impossible Mission 2025' with updated graphics, music and character selection. It had the original port on the disk too. When I realized that something like this was made for 8-bit machines I was really impressed. After playing dozens of simplistic arcade games you get something 'cinematic' like this it may blow you from your socks.
I did an interview with its developer, Dennis Caswell. It was really cool.
didn't like the game, but still have the falling sound stuck in my head from my brother playing it 40 years ago...
Burnt into my mind. I still say it sometimes when inviting some friends who also had a C64 into the house :)
@@takearushfan - I think I saw a video about that, wasn't that his own digitized voice?
You forgot to mention Ben Daglish's excellent musical score for The Last Ninja. Some of the best ever for the system.
I used to own a Spectrum and never really considered the C64 until the day my head was turned when a friend showed me Sanxion. Hearing that glorious score by Rob Hubbard as the game loaded, then followed by the sheer speed of the game and how good it all looked (programmed by Stavros Fasoulas, if memory serves) made me sell "Old Rubber" and switch to the beige behemoth. I loved that computer. I even invested in a disc drive and a printer for it, so I could use it for other things, and then picked up a Freeze Frame and an Action Replay so I could dump games onto disc. But I kept the tape deck for playing Sanxion, I couldn't do without my fix of "Thalamusic".
I also remember the old technique for maximising the space on the old single sided 5.25" floppy, where you'd take a Stanley knife and carefully chop out a notch on the right hand side and be able to record on the back of the disc, thus sparing the hideous expense of proper double sided floppies. Ah, those were the days! Computers these days are just too easy compared to then and they're more dull for it, sadly.
It was actually the C64 port of Montezuma's Revenge that made me buy mine. Especially after seeing how much of a letdown that the Spectrum version was. It was one of my favorite games on the 2600 and after playing the Speccy version, I died a little inside.
I used to use a paper hole punch to make floppies double sided
THE SENTINEL: 3d, 10.000 procedurally created levels, amazingly tense gameplay, a huge influence on Minecraft.. all too often overlooked in videos like this.
I never thought the C64 could do anything even close to 3D
@@neyoid I actually had quite a few 3D games, due to clever fudging of the actual animation. The Sentinel has you teleporting instead of moving, but other games do use actual 3D. Framerates are.. well.. :)
@@neyoid th-cam.com/video/KW1GLtwtlI0/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=BigCol%27sCommodoreNostalgiaShack
I played Sentinel on ZX Spectrum. It took me awhile to figure out how to play the game, I didn't have a manual, but I did finally understand the game to my brother's surprise who was stumped as to how to play it. Our minds were blown with how incredible that game was for the time. Considering the modest specs of the ZX Speccy.
REVS - the only driving simulation where you can freely drive in any direction, also the car set-up makes a real difference. I think that was the most complex simulation at the time.
Trenz is a genius. He pushed the limits of the C64 with *Turrican 2* and the limits of the SNES with *Rendering Ranger R2* 💪
Baffling that R2 wasn't released in Pal regions.
My favorite game on the C64 was Pitstop II. Two player game with a split screen. I think that made it ahead of its time.
3D Stunt Car Racer, man! I was never a huge fan of it, but getting semi-filled polygons running at that speed was a heck of an achievement.
@Original Prankster So's the original BBC Micro version.
It was just called Stunt Car Racer, not 3D Stunt Car Racer
mPky1 sorry, my mistake. Faulty recollection -- I thought the opponents' cars werent fully shaded
The thing i remember most fondly about the c64 is the iconic ocean loader music. Loaded games just to listen to it.
Fuck yeah! I liked both versions of it! Maybe the metallic one a little more but they both made the loading time more sweet.
As of 20 years ago, you could listen to it via SIDPlayer on Windows. Or export it from that as Stereo Wave to be burnt onto CD. And that's pretty much where the remix scene kicked off.....and that's still striving!! remix.kwed.org
3D game: "Elite" (also worth comparing to other platform versions such as NES).
2D game: "Flimbo's Quest" (especially the tricks for the colours. Also the music is good). Cartridge btw.
Or "Shadow Of The Beast" and "ChaseHQ" and "Batman". Maybe "Pang" too but not sure if limit-pushing.
Thumbs up btw. :)
What always amazed me was the jousting scene (first person scene) in the Defender of the Crown, sure it was hard to win, but seeing the attacking knight and horse running towards you was just amazing.
Ahhh I so liked that game. The silhouette fire scene was hot collar stuff hahaha
You just saved me from doing this...
" what.....noooo DEFENDER OF THE CROWN??!"
The entire video as he spoke,
"Next up....",
I was like... say it... say it...
Noooo!
Nearly every scene in that game was a graphical marvel. That game really, REALLY pushed the graphics on the C64. When I saw the game a few years later on the 16-bit Amiga, I thought it did look better than the C64 version, but not by that much.
@@plpmandenJim Sachs is a genius pixel artist. Check out his Marine Aquarium Serene Screen screen saver and run it on a modern PC or Mac, it is a sight to behold
Pirates is also quite an impressive accomplishment on the C64.
Plus, it was partly written in BASIC.
Also, Creatures. It came out towards the end of the C64 life cycle and caused quite a stir.
(Mayem in Moserland came out when the C64 was already dead, in fact I didn't know nothing about it until I started to take an interest in retrogames).
What is a pirate's favourite C64 game?
ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR-TYPE
Very true. And best version also.
Still my favourite Version of the Game. Spending so much Time with it as a Kid. Ah...good Times.
Pitstop II was a brilliant two player game, probably the best. When you were both driving full speed at 251mph the sound of the engines really sang and got you ultra competitive. After a nine lap race trying not to blow a tyre or run out of fuel it was a great feeling to come out the victor! 🇬🇧
The one 3D game that impressed me the most on the ol' bread bin was Fighter Bomber by Activision. A couple of adventure games that also blew me away back in the day was Maniac Mansion and Zak McCracken. And Times of Lore - where you could even save your game on a blank tape!
Excellent video! FWIW, some of my favourite games that you didn't cover were:
Creatures (Apex Computer Productions/Thalamus)
Creatures II (Apex Computer Productions/Thalamus)
Retrograde (Apex Computer Productions/Thalamus)
California Games (Epyx/US Gold)
Winter Games (Epyx/US Gold)
X-Out (Rainbow Arts)
Katakis/Denaris (Manfred Trenz/Rainbow Arts)
R-Type (Manfred Trenz/Electric Dreams)
Salamander (Imagine/Ocean)
Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (Software Creations/US Gold)
Creatures 1 & 2 definitely deserved a mention here. They were well ahead of their time.
Wizball was the best 2 player game I had ever seen at the time. One game me and my mate finished to the end. The gameplay is pretty unique.
I was thinking the game "the Last V8" was totally impressive.A bit difficult,great graphics and music and speaking voices to boot. Such a great game!
With my C64, I was never into any of these types of games. They never even crossed my radar (well maybe "The Last Ninja" did a little. I played a LOT of games, but none of them were space shooters, arcade type games, or platformers. I was really into computer RPG's, and strategy games at the time. My absolute favorite game on the system was "The Adventure Construction Set". I pushed that game to it's limit, designing all kinds of games with it that the design kit was never made to create. Things like "Bard's Tale", and the Epyx rouglikes were really my jam. And I LOVED simulation games, and board war games. The C64 was the first system I had that actually had games like these. I even preferred the games that I played on the C64 to the games that the NES had at the time. NES games bored me, and seemed like kid stuff by comparison.
Might and Magic was awesome
Home computers were flooded with space shooters, because they were super popular on the arcades, so it was kinda money grabbing trick to basically make another clone of R-Type or Xevious. Most of these shooters were based on the same mechanics and only few had some innovations in the gameplay. The main advantage of these games was that they were easy to get into and play. RPG and Strategy games need time to understand the mechanics at even basic level. RPG games are story driven, with dialogues to read, character to upgrade etc. Often you need to read manual, make a map etc. Old RPGs seem more difficult than modern ones too. There were no tutorials etc. The Last Ninja was also quite demanding, since it was action-adventure with some exploration. It wasn't a pick-up&play type of game like some platformer or beat em up. I was more into arcade stuff, because I wasn't super patent as a kid to sit down for hours exploring the world of the game, learn sophisticated mechanics etc...
Same story. I had c128 and NES. Barely played on NES.
Funnily enough I was a small child when the C64 was popular in 1987 and 1988 when I owned it and also a Nintendo (before we would get a Sega Genesis I believe in 1989), but I could never wrap my head around the simulation and strategy games that my dad loved. He would have huge thick books like the original Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader, or board games like Axis & Allis, and they were just way too complicated for me. When we got the Snes years later he would play P.T.O. on it all the time.
There was a game similar to "The Adventure Construction Set" on the C64 that I could never remember the name of, but I remember you would place sprites on a background and kind of "create a scene" or something. It may have been the game Movie Creator, but there was a lot of games like it, and I have never been able to find that exact game. I think it is the last one from my childhood I've attempted to figure out the name of, the rest I have rediscovered as an adult.
Zak mckracken, maniac mansion, rocket ranger...
Nebulous. I still can't get over that was a C64 game. So much happening and so smooth and solid performance. And Wizball was full on as well.
*Nebulus not Nebulous
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebulus_%28video_game%29
Nice alliteration..."taupe tantaliser" made me smile, but "diarrhea pillowcase" made me lol hard!!!
Well Done Sir, Well Done!!
Thanks!
diarrhea pillow case made laugh but also frown (poor little breadbin being subjected to scatalogical epithets :-( )
Cool video. I missed out on C64 as a kid, but like the charm of the c64 graphics.
Same here
Hey, look-it’s BTG! Hey, Darby! I think it’s a nice video, too!
"like the charm of the c64 graphics" ...really?
That palette is hideous :-/
@@gravious better than the original dos and the sharp x1
@@DeusVult838 Lol, yeah, i suppose... but that's like saying i prefer elephant dung to hippo dung because there's more of it ;-)
Turrican II was the game I was really amazed when first saw it, from the graphics to gameplay to music, all were among the best you can see on a C64, I'll place it at n°1 on my list.
More recently I was also impressed by Prince of Persia, it looks and plays almost the same as the original with the same smooth animations.
I agree with Prince of Persia. Could have used some SID music though.
@@theyamo7219 PoP does have SID music. The original game doesn't have a soundtrack, just intro theme and sound effects, so that is matched in the C64 version. I agree also though, PoP on C64 is fantastic.
Absolutely the best game on the c64 , played that game for months
Although late in the game, the Atari xl version of POP is amazing.
I played Prince of Persia on the PC. And it was amazing. It was a 286, with hercules GPU and monitor which were monochrome. Recently I tried the C64 version and it looked better with color and all. Amazing game.
Elite (complexity, many planets, nice 3d)
Head over heels (high resolution gameplay, many rooms)
@Metagalactic Llama A common misconception. Indeed Elite did play faster on the BBC. In truth the gained performance was minimal. The 64 version had better sound, graphics and dynamics than the BBC version. And don't forget this game came out in 1985. Elite was more than ground-breaking, it was a monumental feat of programming.
Elite was my favorite game for a long time.
Really high quality in both presentation and content. Love all these Games That Push The Limits series as a developer.
14:06 Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis performance on a 0.985 MHz Commodore 64 computer from 1982. I'm genuinely speechless.
Like the game Solaris. Near NES graphics on an Atari 2600.
Eh more like NES Super Mario 3. Still 8 bit, not like polygons or anything.
Indian Jones and the Last Crusade by Lucas Games impresses me very much.
It’s 3D, challenging, fun and varied, just like Impossible Mission II.
To be honest, the HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE C64 demoscene pretty much desensitised me. Now there's no longer a surprise when someone manages to, say, port the Unreal Engine 4 to the C64.
You're not wrong about the demoscene, my god, those guys know how to get the best out of the system!
Well, the guys in the PAL demoscene anyway. LOL
Give a bunch of sceners a years supply of beer and just wait.
@BOOZE & METAL Maybe but that doesn't change the fact that especially Europe was the C64's home turf.
lol ur booze design?
Very well executed video, mate. I appreciate that you embrace the retro nostalgia without letting yourself be blinded by it. Cheers.
Test Drive on Commodore 64 was my favorite. It was done pretty well.
Almost forgot this one....some kind the forerunner of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?". 10 questions, 4 options, make it til sunrise! And that was sold as a commercial game. But I loved it for its graphics.
I would add Chris Butler's Turbo Charge, by far the most impressive pseudo 3D racing game for the C64. Very large objects running very fast, tons of graphical interludes and racing and shooting that actually plays well and has some variation.
It's amazing how much enthusiasts could squeeze out of this 1 Mhz machine. 16 year after Mayhem in Monsterland we got Minecraft to prove how little can be squeezed out of 3 Ghz machines ;P
That's largely because Minecraft is still single threaded - meaning it cannot take advantage of multiple cores. Minecraft is not that well coded.
To my knowledge, until Minecraft, no one had succeeded in combining "huge procedurally generated world" + "completely modifiable world". Unless you count infiniminer, which as far as I can work out wasn't all that "infini". Certainly none had succeeded with it. It was a "this thing is actually possible on today's hardware" game, even if the graphics were kind of primitive.
(Another game which did that without any impressive graphics, was Scribblenauts for the DS. A game with a huge dictionary of things you could just summon was possible before, it's just that no one had thought of the fact that it was possible.)
Actually, despite the "coder art", Minecraft was a graphical milestone.
The artistry might not have been up to much, but the programming was definitely pushing the envelope. Because, until then, no-one had successfully pulled off the "100% modifiable world".
The engine has to be able to cope with any number of voxels in any possible configuration. There could be no pre-rendering, as used by pretty much every other game, where level designers have carefully designed and compiled maps ahead of time, because the user could place blocks conceivably anywhere, in any configuration, and the engine just has to render it. It has to handle the "worst case" and that could conceivably get very bad indeed with the as-then traditional rendering methods.
But this is an algorithmic triumph, it must be said. The approach of only rendering the "surface" polygons - that was the "magic sauce" for making it possible.
The code itself is pretty crap. Single threaded and, for a long while, didn't even use VBOs. Even in 2010, using "immediate mode" on OpenGL was ancient. Doesn't "greedy mesh" either. It's not well-coded, but it was well-thought-out design to finally pull off the thing - 100% dynamic generation - that so many developers had been chasing and not landed. Notch landed it with Minecraft and, you know, became a multi-billionaire with the best-selling game of all-time.
Power drift is one of the games I remember pushing barriers. Despite the meager hardware, it looked and felt fast and the music was fantastic.
easily the best game on that 'Wheels of Fire' collection
Last Ninja and Gunship were my go to games on my C64 still remember playing Gunship 30 hours straight lol.
Gunship was awesome. I wasn't really into simulation games until that came out... OK, I did like Silent Service a little
So many hours spent on Gunship, Silent Service and F15 Strike Eagle.
I remember getting Way of the Exploding Fist and it was next level stuff compared to my previous games.
7:09 the parallax is very impressive! And the last game...wow
These games really bring me back, thank you for this! Looking forward to the next one.
Thanks, its on the way!
I used to work in a computer shop in Liverpool called Bits and Bytes from we 1986 to 1989 and loved every minute of it..we had the sid chip on number 11.📢
Bard's Tale 3.
Largest rpg story I have ever seen.
Pool of Radiance too (edited)
Stephen Cresswell
POOL, not Pools
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_of_Radiance
Ultima IV!
Really glad i found your channel. Top quality content. Thanks.
Powerdrift was a fantastic arcade port to the humble C64. A rare case if the developer NOT trying to make an arcade perfect port and instead interpreting it differently. And it works. Midnight Resistance was another feat of programming too.
Spot on!! those two games were the first that come to my mind when thinking about the limits of the C64 and are also my two favorites:)
loved that game, and what about Stunt Car racer....That on the C64 was ground breaking for the time.
Just watched a clip of that, never forget the sound......they were Happy days.
I prefer it to the original arcade actually. I'm not a fan of the original coin-op at all
One of my favorite games for this platform was Airborne Ranger (aside from SSI's Gold Box series and the Bard's Tale series).
Yes, and there was more than the graphics in that game. The AI was quite good with interesting behaviour from the enemies
Impossible Mission. That's what made me buy a C64.
Glad you mentioned this. I was always impressed with the 'running man' sprite that Epyx had developed for this game, as well as its other hits like Summer Games, Summer Games II, etc. Incredibly smooth animation for its time.
Another visitor. Stay awhile, stay forever......👍👍👍
It was actually the C64 port of Montezuma's Revenge that made me buy mine. Especially after seeing how much of a letdown that the Spectrum version was. It was one of my favorite games on the 2600 and after playing the Speccy version, I died a little inside.
Absolutely. Between the smooth, detailed animation, the ever replayable game play, and the oh-my-god-did-my-64-just-do-that speech synthesis it was a true milestone.
@A LITTLE BIT OF THE BUBBLY "Help, I'm dyyyyyyying" :) Beach head, destroyer, all the Games(summer, winter, world), Street sports baseball, Skate or Die, Druids, Parallax, Wizball. The RPG games like Bards Tale, Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure bonds. Dragons Lair to practice for the arcade version. Yie Ar Kung fu(sp), International Karate, Barbarians. So much goodness.
Brilliant wrap up. Thanks.
What is missing:
Sound, sound and more sound. Today, that is what every C64 follower remembers, the music quality in the games that were developed. There was nothing ever mentioned about the Sound Interface Device (SID) anywhere in this video. So, lets get started:
Back in the older days, games were developed by one man (ie. one man, one game), it was a bunch of programming nerds that knew the assembly language and knew very little about music. That was about to change, as more people started to look at computers and how to program for them, there were people with backgrounds that werent just about programming.
A man that worked for a game company called Synchro was working on a running man game with a bow in his hand. Too bad Synchro went bankrupt to be bought by Cosmi. Cosmi loved the game and it was 75% complete and they hired the man that made the game, which eventually became Forbidden Forest. Paul Norman was a studio musician at first and started programming for computers as they were the future of music. There was a reason why his early games sold well, because they had great music and atmosphere, but as time went on and games required more, his later works only had music during the title. This game kind of got the ball rolling with musicians slowly realizing the potential of the Sound Interface Device inside the C64.
Paul Norman wasnt the only person to realize the future of music landed towards computers. Another studio musician also entered the scene with his own games, his name was Rob Hubbard. Too bad his games were dog awful, but Gremlin Graphics loved his sound programming and hired him to make games for their games (although he was a freelancer, it was Gremlin Graphics that noticed everything). Rob Hubbards music is highly recognized today (75 C64 games had his music, but lets just focus on one game). The one game that really put the SID to the test was Skate or Die. That heavy metal title screen music couldnt beat anything in terms of music, its still impressive by todays standards.
Back then, not too many games had speech synthesis. Although some programmers (ie. Silas Warner) had their own speech synthesis programming, the most commonly used speech synthesis programming was done by: Electronic Speech Synthesis. This company was best known for being involved in the production of Impossible Mission (too bad they raised their prices after this game was successful). Just one flaw in the SID made speech possible, and memorable. Of course, speech is very common today, but back then, it was amazing to hear the speech coming out of games.
There were at least two references to the SID chip in the video; one explicitly by name, and another earlier in the video talking about the advanced sound chip. I'm not going to go back and find the timestamps; I just found it an odd thing for you to call out.
I haven't read your accompanying article yet. Just replying to your erroneous omission callout.
I think the C64 was what spawned the actual programmer/composer role, which Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway pretty much dominated. I recall there were a few games that I'd load up just to listen to the music.
@Metagalactic Llama Ah, yes, I forgot about Ben Daglish!
Great bit of history. Thanks.
When you started talking about the SID, damn, Ron Hubbard was the name that popped right up. And this from 30 years ago. I will always remember him from his music of IK+, one ot the greatest C64 games.
Don't forget Creatures, that was game!
Clyde Radcliffe Exterminates All The Unfriendly Repulsive Earthridden Slime....lol.....great game
@@baddestmofo3724 Was just about to (google and) write that! :)
I remember "super wonder boy in monster world" being an AWESOME game for the c64
Robin K. Agree.. Not bad at all
I was just about to post this too. A lot of what you see in Mayhem was first seen in Creatures and Creatures 2. Both those games along with Retrograde are 3 of my all time fave games on any system, let alone the C64. The Rowland brothers really were legends of C64 gaming.
I remember "super wonder boy in monster world" being an AWESOME game for the c64.
Very nice piece of Nostalgic history, thank you for this!
giana sisters showed everyone how music was done on a c64
a top ten C64 game for sure!
That theme music will still occasionally pop into my head to this day. That and Skate or Die!
@@robintst if the theme song pops into your mind I would recommend that you listen to "machine supremacy". They made a very good heavy metal cover which will rock your socks off.
Music in head just now, haha. Great mario type game.
Many loaders were great. The Last Ninja 2 and Deathwish 3.
Turning around felt soo dynamic in Uridium lol Loved it + its Soundtrack
*around not arround
@@scottbreon9448 😘
Where's Sam's Journey? It absolutely has to be in such a list!
When multiload games came in they made a big difference to the size of games, and the amount of content if not the looks of the game. One of my absolute favourite was Gunship. It chugged along at maybe 6 or 7 FPS, and took 40 minutes of loading before you actually got to fly the mission. That you had to do in under 20 minutes to stand a chance of a medal. And I used to play with a friend, taking it in turns. That meant 1 hour and 40 minutes or waiting for loading or watching your mate play for 20 minutes of actually playing the game. I still have it, and the tape with my friend's and my career saved. Oh, and Creatures 2 I thought looked great for the C64.
u forgot to mention one KEY aspect in C64 gaming success: the SID chip; this sound masterpiece along with musical talents like Ben Daglish, Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway paved the way for true 8-bit multimedia genius back in the day; and almost 40 years later the demoscene is vibrant and pushing the limits
Some interesting trivia: Depeche Mode used modified SID chips in some of their synthesizers.
@@PurplePixieEater that it's true!!! music equipment called Elektron SidStation en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektron_SidStation
The sid is legendary. The designer of the hybrid analog digital sound chip went on to create Ensoniq. They made some really cool synths.
Many years ago, I walked into a local computer store. At that time, game demos were not really a thing, but there was a "rolling" demo of nebulus, I just stood there for ages staring open-mouthed at this tower rotating on the C64
"Large colour palette" LMAO. Could have any color you want as long as it is not Red.
I'm not complaining, but, one that blew me away back then was Mean Streets. Its the only C-64 game I can remember that had full facial animations of a real actor. Yes, they were grainy and pixelated. But, my C-64 was stock and it ran it fine. And it was a digitized human face....on an 8bit computer with 64k memory. Dang.
The rest of the game was a combination of side scrolling shooter, point and click adventure and flight simulator. Yes...flight simulator. You played as the detective Tex Murphy trying to solve a crime for a client. (basic bad girl type a la the Noir detective genera)
'Creatures' by Apex Computer Solutions, published by Thalamus, mainly for its music although for some of its visuals too. The music of Monty on the Run.
Great video! i've just purchased a 2nd hand C64 mini and after the firmware update i downloaded ALL games ever released for the breadbin and, after finishing Giana Sisters, i'm now looking for hidden gems. This video sure has some!
I enjoyed the living crap out of Raid on Bungeling bay on the C64
Great game. I played a lot of that one.
Not really a limit pusher though
Damn on NES I hated that game
What about elite…
Came i 84 and pushed not only the c64, but Vector graphics and space games to the limit.
One of the first open world/sandbox games ever.
Manfred Trenz "THE MASTER"
‘Is that really running on the old commode’ - fantastic!
Exile, Mercenary, The Sentinel, Ultima 4, 5 & 6, Gunship & F117, Rainbow Islands, Vendetta, Tusker, Space Rogue, The Eidolon and a really clever Time Travel adventure whose name escapes me.
The game was called Time Tunnel.
By F117 you probably mean Project: Stealth Fighter, out of which F117 was basically the second 16-bit remake? In any case I also was impressed how smooth vector graphics that ran on C64 in comparison to most other simulators on the platform that were not always even really playable.
Amazing! I can still remember the final assault on the c64!
the Sid chip alone is Marvel of analog engineering!
I got one of the original C 64 systems when it came out. (I just dated myself) I played almost all of these featured games. 2 that I think should have made the list are Maniac Mansion and Paradroid. The later of the 2 was easily my favorite. As simple as it was I thought it was genius.
There's a Paradriod port for Android! 25 years later, I finally managed to finish it! Woot!
If only it were my C64 -- it belonged to my Grandfather who left it to my cousin -- I learned to program in basic as I'm sure many of you did, and this stood me in good stead all through comp-sci particularly having a feel for graphics and sound which weren't taught in our dry pascal and c classes...
Paradroid is an awesome game, but it wasn't really a system limits pusher
Excellent video. Your collection "games that push the limits..." is amazing. Won another subscriber.
I found the game Forbidden Forest pretty good considering the C64 hardware, all the dual layers give that game a good field of depth an also it's music was perfect. The slowly moving moon across the sky was also a nice feat.
- Cyberdybe Warrior was like Turican 2 and equally as impressive
Then you had Falcon Patrol, a fighter jet platform game, graphically very nice to see.
And who can forget Bruce Lee? A wonder platform fighting game that played very smoothly with nice levels.
My first ever game played on the C64, which made me love the machine was actually Choplifter. Although not a graphical impressive game, it was just a FUN game to play.
Many of the cosmi games were excellent. forbidden forest was very cool with its effects and music
Forbidden Forest was the first videogame that genuinely creeped me out. The graphics were blocky, but it did such an amazing job of building atmosphere.
Generally considered to be the first horror game for the home pc
I can remember my senior year in college (1985) when I played the original game of a genre that would later be called "4X," "Reach for the Stars."
The publisher, Strategic Studies Group, came out with an MSDOS version, and then a highly modified version that I'm not sure ran under Windows.
You can only fall in love once.
I can code now. Been doing it for over 30 years. These days I have a little time on my hands because I've come down with Crohn's disease,, and I've never completely given up the hope of contacting the folks at SSG (one of the two founders has died) and offering to clone the game in Java to run on modern hardware and not be tied to a single CPU or operating system.
Looks like my dream of getting a decent clone up and running will forever remain a dream. I still play an occasional game on a C64 emulator (the MS DOS version was unplayable); this is how I know that I could clone the graphics and the interface easily, but I could never replicate the game's AI.
I've never been able to get in touch with these people, much less hear them turn down my offer to do the job for free (you KNOW that this is how corporations work). So I'll have to be content with things as they are.
Oh well...
Sooooo many you missed and sooooo many you included that weren't that good. Impossible mission was pushing the envelope in 85 with digitised speech and fluid sprite animation, plus it's responsible for more sleepless nights than I care to remember! The Sentinel was an amazing game with just the scope of its size with 10000 levels... Sensible softwares output was incredible and pushed the system musically and visually and made games of those elements... the Staff of Karnath was sooooo ahead of its time! Beachhead II could play digitised speech with no slowdown of game play. Bounder perfected putting sprites in the border... Blade Runner redefined adventure games... Kronos Rift and Rescue of Fractalus pretty much stood alone in 3d Fractal graphocs. Scarabeus was pretty tightly programmed as well. Ahh memories.....
Oof. Your memories are far more impressive than the real games. Maybe play some?
@@SECONDQUEST yeah right... I had a 1st generation commodore 64 in 1983. I ended up owning 5 of them and a 128. I had multiple disc drives, a modem, 3 printers, 2 monitors, action replay 2 and 3, the 66 key keyboard and music software they released in 85, lots of cartridges and more floppy discs and tapes than i care to remember. I even learned assembler. I attended all of the commodore shows, read zzap64 from issue 1 and built my own arcade joystick because I played on it so much. Ever since I owned a pc in the 1990s I have been using emulators. Not only have I played them, I lived through the whole period and frankly I think I know what I'm talking about. None of the games in this video are from the early c64 scene. There were far more games released than most played unless you were there. You remind me of one of those idiots who thought the spectrum was a better games machine I used to have to put up with at school. What's your history with the c64? What makes you such an expert?
Last Ninja would have been absolutely gorgeous on a Color Computers 3 with 512kb RAM. Alas, the company did not have enough financial resources for porting the game, knowing that the market for Tandy's little 8bit computer was much smaller than that of the C64.
So, I was probably a vintage gamer even when I got my C64 having had a pong and VCR machine. I had also enjoyed Jet Pac and Sabrewolf on my Sectrum but the C64 is when it all came together. Uridium, Choplifter, Dropzone, The Sentinel, Impossible Mission, Kennedy Approach, Thrust and Buggy Boy all shone on the C64. It didn't matter that it took 10-15 mins to load a game, it stayed on all night!
When imagination counted before pixels!
By 1993 I had an amiga 500 but I grew up with commodore(s), my father bought the classic one with tapes, later he bought the external floppy drive and later the SX... It was placed in my room. Back then, most of the games shop would copy the games or there were pirate mailorders sending huge printed catalogues. I always thought that the most console like games were Creatures, Midnight Resistance, Strider and another one with a little Ninja that I bought original.
Loved my c64 spent hours on it
years.... ;)
Great examples of the evolution of Commodore 64 games!
"...the ol' diarrhea pillowcase..." -- christ, dude, crackin' up. 🤣
Thanks!
Great vid, for those of us growing up on 16 bit. I love to learn and see what old systems could do. Also west of the pond love to learn about the uk gaming experiences . And great script. Cheers
Fiendish Freddie, Defender of the crown were two that impressed me. Great vid subbed,liked and notified.
Thanks! Defender of the crown was great, I'll probably talk about it in the future.
Take a look at the game Sam's Journey for the c64 and you find your absolute winner right there :)
@ungratefulmetalpansy it's 100% real and released
Yes Sam's journey must be there ! It's the top one in my opinion
The games listed in this video are decades old. The C64 is still getting a dozen commercial releases every year. Some of the "pushing the limits" recent titles include, of course, Sam's Journey, as well as Powerglove (A full featured cross between Metroid and Megaman squeezed into a 16k filesize). Some other recent releases include Steel Ranger, Pains N Aches, Wolfling, Sizzler, and Sydney Hunter. Age of Heroes is set to drop any day now, and It's Magic 2 (like Mayhem but with parallax scrolling, more varied baddies and better music) is getting a special gold cartridge release for it's 20 year anniversary.
Sam's Journey is pure witchcraft on two 5.25 inch floppies. As much polish as a 16 bit platformer, epic soundtrack all from a very small production team. Who'd thought it was running on a machine from 1982.
ungratefulmetalpansy why is it a hoax? It’s just a tech demo sadly. The developer lost interest in it.
To be honest it’s nothin really super special technically. It’s more a thumbs up to great art management. Perfect use of palette and mixes hires and multicolor.
I started actually last year pixeling on the c64 again after a 30 year break and realized how much you can push it visually if you do it right.
Can't wait to dive in to the C-64 gaming pool! Just ordered the C64 Maxi and the preloaded games list is looking very weak indeed. Your videosl will definitely help me flesh out a powerhouse classic C64 gaming library. Thanks my friend! 👍 👍
Great article. IMHO the blur effect to avoid the 4:3 clip is extremely distracting though.
C64 aspect ratios are weird, but point taken.
I agree completely. I hate it when you see those videos on the news where, say, some passenger is filming an on board incident, and the TV or internet has to put those crappy blurry jobbies on each side. What's wrong with pain colour, or nothing at all? It eally is worse than those diagonals you used to get on pix of mobile phones!
Absolutely agree, I hate this on tv, too. Why ever did a professional consider this a good idea?
I do not think the blur effect is distracting and I'd prefer it to a static border.
However, if a majority of the footage you show off in your video is 4:3, or an aspect ratio close to that, then you should just make the whole video 4:3.
@@Sharopolis It's a stylistic choice and I don't mind it. I read somewhere that our brain will squash a widened image back into understandable shapes too. For some (such as myself) a black border is a constant reminder that there is a physical dimension beyond the image on the screen which causes distraction and disconnect where there should be immersion.
C64 was best known for its SID soundchip, which spawned an enviable amount of chiptune musicians like Jeroen Tel who composed music for many of the best C64 games.
R Type on the C64 was almost as good as the Sega Master System version. Gotta love the old commode!
Except every time you died you had to completely reload the level - at least on tape you did.
Great game, although I like Katakis/Denaris more (which was coded by the same guy, Manfred Trenz)
Walking down memory lane, playing Aztec challenge and revenge of the mutant camels. Oooh the memories.
Loved Beach Head 1 and 2, sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger did some of the voice acting in Beach Head 2 lol
Those were like the games every computer shop demoed to get people to by C64s. The early 80s "killer app". Sadly I am old enough to remember... Raid Over Moscow was pretty good too.
Hammerfist and Time Machine were also good examples of what the humble C64 could achieve.
used to have a c64 back in the days, 2 1541 drives, cassette , mps 803 printer and 5 boxes of floppies . Learned how to program machine code in Hex. Now I use that knowledge for modern computer programming.
Just found your channel today and subscribed, liking the content and your presenting style. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for more of the 'Games That Push The Limits...' content, an Amiga episode would be welcomed'.
Thanks, I'm working on more. The Amiga's going to be tough, there's just so many good games!
Project X, Elite 1 & 2 and any cineware game
TURRICAN II. My favourite gave on C64. Wow that brings back memories.
I'd just watched the ZX Spectrum counterpart video and was really looking forward to this one. Cheers!
Thanks!
This one had a better microphone sound, though still rather poor. Good article, though!
Used to love inputting programs and then debugging them. Spend 3 days inputting in basic and spend 2 weeks debugging, then move on. Was great for my ADHD. Would recommend it still today.
Rocket Ranger and Neuromancer both caused by C64's power supply to get a tad warm...
R R.....Didn't you have to time/press the joystick button with the onscreen footsteps to run faster? Then up on stick to launch?
That was so much fun....
Thumb never felt do numb since😁
I remember the cartidges made for the c64, closest to arcade ports of donkey kong, ms. Pacman, dig dug and others at the time.
So what did you miss? Well, Wizball, for one thing. I mean, you showed it at the end, but didn't spend a single word on it! It was Sensible Software's original masterpiece. A true original. As for other games that pushed the envelope at the time they came out, I think Defender Of The Crown deserves a mention as well. Oh, and IK+ too.
Yeah, Wizball deserves more attention. I should have talked about it more, but I though the vid was getting a bit too long.
@Rooflesoft Games True, from a pure graphics and performance standpoint, Wizball didn't push any boundaries (although I do love the visuals to bits), but I would argue that sound and gameplay wise, it certainly did. Martin Galway's music was phenomenal, and the whole gameplay concept had never been seen before (or since, for that matter).
I still have the 4 MHz Schnedler TurboMaster CPU, which makes my C64 go 4 times faster than normal stock speed. Great for games that have animation & 3D reliant on processor speed. My favorite game back then that got a 4x speed improvement from the TurboMaster was Stellar 7. At normal C64 speed, the vector animation was around 7 frames per second, but with the TurboMaster it was closer to 30 fps, which meant the game was more intuitive to play, no more slide show. I still have 3 C-64's as well as the TurboMaster.
3d games? Look at the early Lucasfilm games. The Eidolon. Rescue on Fractalus. Koronis Rift. They were at least 10 years ahead of their time.
Oh, and of course the First Person puzzle shooters based on Freescape, the world's first general purpose multiplatform 3D engine. Basically the ancestor of today's 3d game engines.
Sadly, they didn't age well.
I really liked The Eidolon, and the only reason I wouldn't say that the Lucas games and Freescape games shouldn't be here is that they didn't push the hardware, they broke it. The frame rates were terrible, but they showed another generation of gaming, so they deserve recognition.
Yeah, the Freescape games didn't 'push the hardware', they were unfortunately as fast as you would expect them to be on a C64 - no where near an acceptable speed. the Lucasarts (was that a thing then?) fractal games were clever, but ultimately limited.
I'd say Mercenary is the best example of 3D on the C64. It really is amazing that they got it to move so fast in 1MHz.
Metagalactic Llama
I agree with that, while Rescue on Fractulus was a pretty decent game on the C64, I felt that the animation ran much smoother on the Atari 8-bit computers
Great stuff!! Thank you!
Thanks!
I recall playing a certain AH-64 simulator for hours on end on my C64...
Oh man, Gunship. That was a weekend ender. Top game.
I absolutely hated flight combat simulators until I played Gunship....I did like Silent Service too, but that was technically a naval/sumarine combat sim.
@@theyamo7219 oh hell yes.
The Sid Meier games were the best.
I too had Silent Service.
Also had Strike Fleet, Red Storm Rising, and Chuck Yeagers Flight Simulator
This was actually great. Really enjoyed seeing the fast scrolling games, considering most have memories of games being slow and clunky and the main thing about consoles was that they were slick and fast and well put together. If commodore had the budget of say Nintendo and maybe cartridge games weren't so expensive on it then maybe we'd have seen more produced before it's end of life.