Remembering playing the game back in the day is a totally different view, than someone who has played PC games of the late 90s and 2000s and THEN playing C64 games!
As a C64 owner (but not an Evercade owner), I don't think this was the best selection of C64 games. I have theories on why that is. Maybe they couldn't get the licenses to some of the better games. Many more complex games also used the keyboard for additional input and that wouldn't be easy to do with just a virtual keyboard. Some games came on multiple floppy disks and Evercade owners probably wouldn't put up with having to swap disk images. You have to understand that the C64 came out in 1982, three years before the NES. And while developing and marketing games for a system like the NES or Sega Master System required a dedicated development kit and a license from the company, literally anyone could write and sell games for the C64. Many game programmers started out writing games in their bedroom. In fact, Iridis Alpha was written by Jeff Minter. Minter started out writing games like Attack of the Mutant Camels when he was 20, founded his own software company, and went on to develop Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar, and has continued to develop games for consoles. All this is to say that there were thousands of games written for the C64, and with no quality control, some were great and some sucked. Also, new games are STILL being written and released for it, albeit on a much smaller scale, but still... The Movie Monster Game - The lizard was originally Godzilla, but they must have lost the rights to the name. The flickering is when the game is loading from (emulated) floppy disk. Many larger games on the C64 were too big to fit everything in memory all at once, so they would load from floppy disk as needed. Eliminating the loading would require major hacking of the game's code to replace all the loading code. Instead, the emulator just emulates the floppy disk drive, so that they only had to do it once, and then any game can load from a disk image. Interestingly, only cracked/pirated games had that flickering screen, at least as far I know. Lee - This was originally Bruce Lee, but again, they lost the rights to the name. There's also much more to it than just beating up the two enemies, They're only there to serve as obstacles, and on a real C64, a second player could take control of one of the other characters. You need to collect all the lanterns on each screen and that will open new areas for you to explore. This game is quite fondly remembered by C64 users. Street Sports Baseball - I don't care for sports game (or sports in general), but I like this one. I like that the players don't all look the same and they have noticeable differences in their abilities. The slow pace of the game never bothered me. As for the many choices at the start, I suppose they could have made an option to jump right into a game, but if it didn't give you the option to customize everything about the teams, other people would have complained. Summer Games - There was also a Summer Games 2, and if you had both, you had the option of playing all the events from both games. Also in the "Games" series were California Games, World Games, The Games: Summer Edition, and The Games: Winter Edition. I really liked World Games myself. BTW, the graphics for the gymnastics event on that copy are corrupted, they're not supposed to look like that. Impossible Mission - This game is basically legendary on the C64. Oh, in case you didn't notice, you have a generous time limit for completing the game, BUT you lose time every time you die.
If it's the same World Games that was on the Sega Master System, I really liked that one too. Although all I can remember about it is that it had the caber toss. It's a shame as I was genuinely excited for this collection to see what I missed out on while I was playing on the Acorn Electron. Maybe I'll add some C64 games to my Pi one day.
The flickering on the Movie Monster game is down to the game unpacking the data as it's loading. Some legit games did this, but it was common on pirated games as it was an easy hack to speed up loading the games and making them take up less disk space. The intro scenes on that game in the cinema are also just there to mask the disk loads, since it's loading in quite a bit of data and the disk drive was notoriously slow.
The Commodore C64 was available at retail from August 1982 onwards, but only in North America, at least through official channels. It was launched [at retail] in Europe in 1983. It was announced in January 1982 at the CES show in Las Vegas.
I made a fairly long video a while ago talking about the C64 with a mate who was heavily involved with the C64 modding scene back in the day. The best bit of the video is when he basically says that most of the games were shit. Still love the system, though. There was a lot more to it than just playing games and the sound system on the machine was awesome for its day. The Amiga was a massive step up and while I never owned one, I did get to play on it quite a bit as the aforementioned mate owned one. One of the few games I actually really enjoyed on the C64 was HERO. It was fun to play and when I played it recently I found it stood the test of time better than most games on the system. Shame it’s not on this collection.
Heh… I’ve been binging your channel tonight, and I seem to have had all the systems you never played as a kid (C64, Atari Lynx, Mattel Intellivision…). :-)
@@thegamesapprentice You didn't play it for long enough then. There's a trap door that opens. Bruce Lee is such a loved game that there are many videos that you can watch about it. I recommend the one from 8 Bit Show and Tell though
Impossible Mission was ported to 8 systems, including the Sega Master System. The worst port was for the Atari 7800, as it can't be completed. A homebrew port for the 7800 fixed that and is called Possible Mission. There were over 11,000 games released for the C64 worldwide over its lifetime. In fact homebrew games are still being made for it. I DO have a C64. Blast will be releasing more Evercade collections for other micro computers like the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. The C64 is an 8-bit console, while the Atari ST is 16-bit and the Amiga is 32-bit. They both have large game libraries as well.
Alleykat was primarily a racing game, you have two flight modes one for speed and one with more firepower, have too worry that the manual didn't explain any of that. With the exception of Alleykat and Stormlord the collection seems to be of some very very early US c64 games, hopefully they get licences for some of the later UK titles too.
It seems like either he didn't read the instructions for some of these, or the cart came with very lacking instructions. Iridis Alpha is a great game, for instance, but the instructions are absolutely needed to understand what's going on
The only game I owned in the 80's for the C64 was the wonderful Impossible Mission game and nowdays there even more excellent titles for this platform. Do not bother purchasing the mini versions of the VIC20, C64 or Amiga.
I'm going to get more enjoyment out of this video than I do out of owning the C64 mini. Although, to be fair, I got a fair bit of entertainment out of making my own youtube video, _complaining about_ the C64 mini. ;-)
Haha yes if you like hearing someone slag off the C64 this one is for you. It's a shame as I've since looked into it and there were some classics that I'd love to have seen on here. Mainly the 3 I show in the opening blurb
I've seen your video. What were you even trying to say in that video? I couldn't make sense of half the things you said, other than TheC64 Mini is crap according to you. All that stuff you said about curiosity and nostalgia didn't make sense. Do you realise there is a full sized version of TheC64 with a working keyboard? I had it and I love it. Loading and playing games on TheC64 is not that hard really, as long as you understand what you need to do you should be able to use it. Yes there is some trial and error when it comes to loading external programs on the unit, but it's not as bad as you seemed to be suggesting. TheC64 isn't perfect, and I had no interest in the mini version because it didn't have a keyboard, but I think the full sized version is pretty good and I do enjoy using mine. Also, why did you turn off comments on that video? Why? I really don't like it when people do that.
That's funny. I was going to ask if you had considered the C64 Mini but you already answered. I enjoy the mini consoles and would strongly consider both the C64 Mini and the A500 Mini as I think their included games both seem at least interesting but so many reviews bash the included joystick and gamepad so I think I'll continue to pass on both.
@@thegamesapprentice yeah, if the included library was bigger or if the control pad got better reviews I could more strongly consider it but at its current price it's just not for me.
I feel sorry for your friend who subjected to having one! They were definitely an awful set of games, bubble bobble and silk worm were good but that’s about all i remember, rest in pieces c64
The C64 had a ton of great games. Archon 1 & 2, Elite, Destroyer, Realm of Impossibility, Ace of Aces, The Train: Escape to Normandy, Barbarian, International Karate, Skyfox 1 & 2, Demon Stalkers, Project Firestart, Lode Runner, and more. New games are still being written and released for it.
Footnote: you will _probably_ prefer the version of _Impossible Mission_ made for the Sega Master System. I'm sure you can imagine -without even trying it- how a professional software development house would have streamlined the game for play on a mainstream console. There is also an Atari 7800 version (you could probably get a hit video out of contrasting the three). Footnote to a footnote: Sega's _Zillion_ (i.e., Zillion 1, *not* Zillion 2) is very clearly "inspired by" Impossible Mission, and is _probably_ more enjoyable in every way.
Interesting, I'm a big sega fan but haven't heard of Zillion. I'll have to check it out. Master System is a bit of a blind spot for me, I had one growning up but not for long
I'm pretty sure that Epyx was a professional software house; many of its developers would have been amongst the best in the world in the early 1980s, many were likely multi-platform developers. I don't know about the developers for the C64 version of Impossible Mission, but for a computer that was only 2 years old, and an industry not yet 10 years old if you count from the Atari 2600, it is a very good production with slick graphics and great gameplay. I'm also not sure about the Sega Master System, but if it was like Nintendo's Famicom/NES, some games may include additional hardware in the cartridge to improve the console's capabilities and therefore make for a better production (in fact, Activision already did this with the Atari 2600, with Pitfall II being a prime example). I'm not saying this is the case with Impossible Mission, but the 4 years later SMS version may have been better, and also the games market had matured another 4 years too.
@7:01 this kind of software instability is really worrying! I had to return my Evercade VS and get a refund because of a total system failure, just due to sloppy software coding (in the cart, in the firmware, or both). Do you know any other (professional) operating system that can implode after a software update? And no, you can't say "Windows 3.1". It's hard to recommend anyone buy into the ecosystem when you've seen evidence of these problems -and, yeah, it doesn't help that the cartridge data is rewritable!
Yea I feel Evercade should be better out of the box. The Alwas Awakening /Cathedral dual cart won't even work on the handheld if it's not updated, and you can only update it by hooking it up to your computer which some people won't be able to do.
I think this is a pretty lazy review video. I get that you don't understand Jeff Minter games, to be honest, neither did I a lot of the time when I were a lad. Jeff's games were certainly a bit far out. Although it's healthy to hear pejorative views on retro and especially Commodore C64 games, I would still recommend playing the games for longer, or doing a bit of background research on each game that you're reviewing where that is possible first, or as you're playing. It's going to make an interesting blog though.
(1) I appreciate hearing another human being admit/affirm _how unremittingly awful_ the C64 library is (although, you have to admit: it's home to some amazing music/soundtracks), (2) I think the only exceptions to the rule are multi-disk games (with complex keyboard controls) that would have required a significant amount of programming to be made playable on a modern console (with minimal delays for "insert disk 2, side B", and pop-up menus for keyboard usage). My own video on the C64 includes some images of _Alice in Wonderland_ for the C64: an example of a game that I *could not get working* on the C64 mini, due to these complexities!
Those games are in no way the greatest games on the C64, I know you are reviewing a retail compilation. I suggest you do some research on C64 games and then try them with some emulation instead of bashing a complete system over 14 games on a compilation
Any negativity at the C64s expensive is aimed at whoever chose to compile and release this collection under the C64 name. When people buy this game they're not going to have Tr00p3r telling them these aren't the best games on system, nor are they gonna go away and do some research. They're gonna think "wow, C64 was pretty rubbish". I represent those people
@@thegamesapprentice you have taken those 14 games from that compilation and presented them as if that compilation was the greatest there was on the system. And then gave a review on the system instead of that compilation
For me, I don't really see the point. Either play the games on original hardware if you've got it, or just play on emulator. Seems silly to pay all that money for a cartridge when you can play them all just as well for free on an emulator.
I covered the reasons in my introduction to Evercade video. Personally though, being able to switch between handheld and TV with little fuss is a big appeal as well as discovering games I've not heard of before.
This is not a good compilation. Especially when you can play much better ones free, using emulation, by downloading .D64 files! But a lot of your problems were because you were comparing 8-bit games from the mid 80s to games you played on console 10/20 years later. This is why you complained about UI's, speed of game, "user-friendliness", etc. You even said a mid 80s game was original, then mentioned a game that came out years later and then said "so it's not really original". If you came out first you ARE original, whatever comes later!
For a certain age group (old farts like me) Lee & Jumpman are iconic c64 games and a lot of fond memories playing these two games.
Remembering playing the game back in the day is a totally different view, than someone who has played PC games of the late 90s and 2000s and THEN playing C64 games!
Lee has multiple rooms, I found it a good game back in the day.
As a C64 owner (but not an Evercade owner), I don't think this was the best selection of C64 games. I have theories on why that is. Maybe they couldn't get the licenses to some of the better games. Many more complex games also used the keyboard for additional input and that wouldn't be easy to do with just a virtual keyboard. Some games came on multiple floppy disks and Evercade owners probably wouldn't put up with having to swap disk images.
You have to understand that the C64 came out in 1982, three years before the NES. And while developing and marketing games for a system like the NES or Sega Master System required a dedicated development kit and a license from the company, literally anyone could write and sell games for the C64. Many game programmers started out writing games in their bedroom. In fact, Iridis Alpha was written by Jeff Minter. Minter started out writing games like Attack of the Mutant Camels when he was 20, founded his own software company, and went on to develop Tempest 2000 for the Atari Jaguar, and has continued to develop games for consoles. All this is to say that there were thousands of games written for the C64, and with no quality control, some were great and some sucked. Also, new games are STILL being written and released for it, albeit on a much smaller scale, but still...
The Movie Monster Game - The lizard was originally Godzilla, but they must have lost the rights to the name. The flickering is when the game is loading from (emulated) floppy disk. Many larger games on the C64 were too big to fit everything in memory all at once, so they would load from floppy disk as needed. Eliminating the loading would require major hacking of the game's code to replace all the loading code. Instead, the emulator just emulates the floppy disk drive, so that they only had to do it once, and then any game can load from a disk image. Interestingly, only cracked/pirated games had that flickering screen, at least as far I know.
Lee - This was originally Bruce Lee, but again, they lost the rights to the name. There's also much more to it than just beating up the two enemies, They're only there to serve as obstacles, and on a real C64, a second player could take control of one of the other characters. You need to collect all the lanterns on each screen and that will open new areas for you to explore. This game is quite fondly remembered by C64 users.
Street Sports Baseball - I don't care for sports game (or sports in general), but I like this one. I like that the players don't all look the same and they have noticeable differences in their abilities. The slow pace of the game never bothered me. As for the many choices at the start, I suppose they could have made an option to jump right into a game, but if it didn't give you the option to customize everything about the teams, other people would have complained.
Summer Games - There was also a Summer Games 2, and if you had both, you had the option of playing all the events from both games. Also in the "Games" series were California Games, World Games, The Games: Summer Edition, and The Games: Winter Edition. I really liked World Games myself. BTW, the graphics for the gymnastics event on that copy are corrupted, they're not supposed to look like that.
Impossible Mission - This game is basically legendary on the C64. Oh, in case you didn't notice, you have a generous time limit for completing the game, BUT you lose time every time you die.
If it's the same World Games that was on the Sega Master System, I really liked that one too. Although all I can remember about it is that it had the caber toss.
It's a shame as I was genuinely excited for this collection to see what I missed out on while I was playing on the Acorn Electron. Maybe I'll add some C64 games to my Pi one day.
The flickering on the Movie Monster game is down to the game unpacking the data as it's loading. Some legit games did this, but it was common on pirated games as it was an easy hack to speed up loading the games and making them take up less disk space. The intro scenes on that game in the cinema are also just there to mask the disk loads, since it's loading in quite a bit of data and the disk drive was notoriously slow.
Gamers of a certain age (50+) learn very quickly to make allowances.. I’m getting this system for Christmas 🎉
The Commodore C64 was available at retail from August 1982 onwards, but only in North America, at least through official channels. It was launched [at retail] in Europe in 1983. It was announced in January 1982 at the CES show in Las Vegas.
Rampage and Samurai Warrior (Usagi Yojimbo), were two of my favourites on the C64.
I made a fairly long video a while ago talking about the C64 with a mate who was heavily involved with the C64 modding scene back in the day. The best bit of the video is when he basically says that most of the games were shit. Still love the system, though. There was a lot more to it than just playing games and the sound system on the machine was awesome for its day. The Amiga was a massive step up and while I never owned one, I did get to play on it quite a bit as the aforementioned mate owned one.
One of the few games I actually really enjoyed on the C64 was HERO. It was fun to play and when I played it recently I found it stood the test of time better than most games on the system. Shame it’s not on this collection.
bruce lee is a great game, worth the cartridge itself.
Heh… I’ve been binging your channel tonight, and I seem to have had all the systems you never played as a kid (C64, Atari Lynx, Mattel Intellivision…). :-)
We would have been playground enemies for sure
The game Lee, the aim of the game is not to beat the men up but to collect all the lanterns, avoid the two baddies if u can or hit them.
Yea I thought that, but I got all the laterns I could see and nothing happened
@@thegamesapprentice some screens will have doors that open when you collect all the lanterns, there is a finish screen
@@thegamesapprentice You didn't play it for long enough then. There's a trap door that opens. Bruce Lee is such a loved game that there are many videos that you can watch about it. I recommend the one from 8 Bit Show and Tell though
Agree, Lee is more of solve the puzzle game then a beat up. I loved this game back in the day.
Impossible Mission was ported to 8 systems, including the Sega Master System. The worst port was for the Atari 7800, as it can't be completed. A homebrew port for the 7800 fixed that and is called Possible Mission. There were over 11,000 games released for the C64 worldwide over its lifetime. In fact homebrew games are still being made for it. I DO have a C64.
Blast will be releasing more Evercade collections for other micro computers like the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. The C64 is an 8-bit console, while the Atari ST is 16-bit and the Amiga is 32-bit. They both have large game libraries as well.
Alleykat was primarily a racing game, you have two flight modes one for speed and one with more firepower, have too worry that the manual didn't explain any of that. With the exception of Alleykat and Stormlord the collection seems to be of some very very early US c64 games, hopefully they get licences for some of the later UK titles too.
It seems like either he didn't read the instructions for some of these, or the cart came with very lacking instructions. Iridis Alpha is a great game, for instance, but the instructions are absolutely needed to understand what's going on
Thanks for this review. I agree that these are really bad games and I've been a gamer for many years.
The only game I owned in the 80's for the C64 was the wonderful Impossible Mission game and nowdays there even more excellent titles for this platform. Do not bother purchasing the mini versions of the VIC20, C64 or Amiga.
I had a c64 as a kid and the dest games by a mile were the Dizzy games. If Dizzy ain’t on it, I ain’t interested.
You might wanna avoid my Oliver Twins collection review then. I didn't go easy on the Dizzy games.
I'm going to get more enjoyment out of this video than I do out of owning the C64 mini. Although, to be fair, I got a fair bit of entertainment out of making my own youtube video, _complaining about_ the C64 mini. ;-)
Haha yes if you like hearing someone slag off the C64 this one is for you. It's a shame as I've since looked into it and there were some classics that I'd love to have seen on here. Mainly the 3 I show in the opening blurb
I've seen your video. What were you even trying to say in that video? I couldn't make sense of half the things you said, other than TheC64 Mini is crap according to you. All that stuff you said about curiosity and nostalgia didn't make sense. Do you realise there is a full sized version of TheC64 with a working keyboard? I had it and I love it. Loading and playing games on TheC64 is not that hard really, as long as you understand what you need to do you should be able to use it. Yes there is some trial and error when it comes to loading external programs on the unit, but it's not as bad as you seemed to be suggesting. TheC64 isn't perfect, and I had no interest in the mini version because it didn't have a keyboard, but I think the full sized version is pretty good and I do enjoy using mine. Also, why did you turn off comments on that video? Why? I really don't like it when people do that.
That's funny. I was going to ask if you had considered the C64 Mini but you already answered. I enjoy the mini consoles and would strongly consider both the C64 Mini and the A500 Mini as I think their included games both seem at least interesting but so many reviews bash the included joystick and gamepad so I think I'll continue to pass on both.
The price is the main thing that puts me off the amiga mini
@@thegamesapprentice yeah, if the included library was bigger or if the control pad got better reviews I could more strongly consider it but at its current price it's just not for me.
I feel sorry for your friend who subjected to having one! They were definitely an awful set of games, bubble bobble and silk worm were good but that’s about all i remember, rest in pieces c64
The C64 had a ton of great games. Archon 1 & 2, Elite, Destroyer, Realm of Impossibility, Ace of Aces, The Train: Escape to Normandy, Barbarian, International Karate, Skyfox 1 & 2, Demon Stalkers, Project Firestart, Lode Runner, and more.
New games are still being written and released for it.
Footnote: you will _probably_ prefer the version of _Impossible Mission_ made for the Sega Master System. I'm sure you can imagine -without even trying it- how a professional software development house would have streamlined the game for play on a mainstream console. There is also an Atari 7800 version (you could probably get a hit video out of contrasting the three). Footnote to a footnote: Sega's _Zillion_ (i.e., Zillion 1, *not* Zillion 2) is very clearly "inspired by" Impossible Mission, and is _probably_ more enjoyable in every way.
Interesting, I'm a big sega fan but haven't heard of Zillion. I'll have to check it out. Master System is a bit of a blind spot for me, I had one growning up but not for long
I'm pretty sure that Epyx was a professional software house; many of its developers would have been amongst the best in the world in the early 1980s, many were likely multi-platform developers. I don't know about the developers for the C64 version of Impossible Mission, but for a computer that was only 2 years old, and an industry not yet 10 years old if you count from the Atari 2600, it is a very good production with slick graphics and great gameplay.
I'm also not sure about the Sega Master System, but if it was like Nintendo's Famicom/NES, some games may include additional hardware in the cartridge to improve the console's capabilities and therefore make for a better production (in fact, Activision already did this with the Atari 2600, with Pitfall II being a prime example). I'm not saying this is the case with Impossible Mission, but the 4 years later SMS version may have been better, and also the games market had matured another 4 years too.
@7:01 this kind of software instability is really worrying! I had to return my Evercade VS and get a refund because of a total system failure, just due to sloppy software coding (in the cart, in the firmware, or both). Do you know any other (professional) operating system that can implode after a software update? And no, you can't say "Windows 3.1". It's hard to recommend anyone buy into the ecosystem when you've seen evidence of these problems -and, yeah, it doesn't help that the cartridge data is rewritable!
Yea I feel Evercade should be better out of the box. The Alwas Awakening /Cathedral dual cart won't even work on the handheld if it's not updated, and you can only update it by hooking it up to your computer which some people won't be able to do.
Lee is Bruce Lee and it was an extremely popular game.
I think this is a pretty lazy review video. I get that you don't understand Jeff Minter games, to be honest, neither did I a lot of the time when I were a lad. Jeff's games were certainly a bit far out.
Although it's healthy to hear pejorative views on retro and especially Commodore C64 games, I would still recommend playing the games for longer, or doing a bit of background research on each game that you're reviewing where that is possible first, or as you're playing. It's going to make an interesting blog though.
Would have been nice if the Jeff Minter game worked for longer than 10 minutes. If it ever gets patched on the VS I'll probably revisit it.
@@thegamesapprentice That's a QA fail unfortunately.
(1) I appreciate hearing another human being admit/affirm _how unremittingly awful_ the C64 library is (although, you have to admit: it's home to some amazing music/soundtracks), (2) I think the only exceptions to the rule are multi-disk games (with complex keyboard controls) that would have required a significant amount of programming to be made playable on a modern console (with minimal delays for "insert disk 2, side B", and pop-up menus for keyboard usage). My own video on the C64 includes some images of _Alice in Wonderland_ for the C64: an example of a game that I *could not get working* on the C64 mini, due to these complexities!
Those games are in no way the greatest games on the C64, I know you are reviewing a retail compilation. I suggest you do some research on C64 games and then try them with some emulation instead of bashing a complete system over 14 games on a compilation
Any negativity at the C64s expensive is aimed at whoever chose to compile and release this collection under the C64 name. When people buy this game they're not going to have Tr00p3r telling them these aren't the best games on system, nor are they gonna go away and do some research. They're gonna think "wow, C64 was pretty rubbish". I represent those people
@@thegamesapprentice you have taken those 14 games from that compilation and presented them as if that compilation was the greatest there was on the system. And then gave a review on the system instead of that compilation
I was just reviewing this cart. You even said you knew I was reviewing a retail compilation.
For me, I don't really see the point. Either play the games on original hardware if you've got it, or just play on emulator. Seems silly to pay all that money for a cartridge when you can play them all just as well for free on an emulator.
I covered the reasons in my introduction to Evercade video. Personally though, being able to switch between handheld and TV with little fuss is a big appeal as well as discovering games I've not heard of before.
This is not a good compilation. Especially when you can play much better ones free, using emulation, by downloading .D64 files! But a lot of your problems were because you were comparing 8-bit games from the mid 80s to games you played on console 10/20 years later. This is why you complained about UI's, speed of game, "user-friendliness", etc. You even said a mid 80s game was original, then mentioned a game that came out years later and then said "so it's not really original". If you came out first you ARE original, whatever comes later!
Well yea of course I am, this compilation was released in 2022. Some games age well, other don't.
The Commodore C64 have so much of good Games, but on this collection have maybe one good game, the rest is shit
Yea it's a shame, hopefully they'll put out a better collection in the future. Maybe that one was just to gauge interest