Old European Computer gaming

Ok, I consider myself a pretty well rounded gamer. I like stuff on pretty much all types of platforms, nearly all major genres, and all regions. But the one thing I seem to know the least about is the stuff on those old budget computers that were all the rage in Europe before they figured out about real computers. I'm talking Commodore 64, Amiga, Spectrum, and the like.

So I need to rectify this. Now, I've played the basics, at least. The Factor 5, Bitmap Bros, and Reflections stuff, the old Rare games, as well as most of the good stuff that's been ported around like Out of this World, Flashback... the really popular stuff, and a small cross-section of the lesser-known stuff. But I'd like to get into some of the lesser known/underrated games for these systems.

So yeah, any recommendations, discussions, or fond memories welcome.

I was weird. While most people had PCs, my family had a C64 and later an Amiga - hence my interest in this subject.

I've already spazzed out about Extase in the "Required Gaming" thread.

Moonstone is another favourite. It isn't actually European, but the primary platform was the Amiga. It was done by a couple Canadians. It's sort of a hybrid of beat-em-up, RPG, and boardgame. Sort of a modernized version of Quest For The Rings on Odyssey 2, only with the board component digitized. The idea is to collect four keys to gain entrance to the Valley of the Gods. The gameplay involves wandering around and entering areas, killing the enemies present, finding magical items, the requisite keys, and money. It's a fairly fun hack-and-slash reminiscent of some of the old Capcom brawlers, but much more difficult. However, the money found can be used to purchase extra lives and healing. The game is fairly fun on your own, but the real magic is in the multiplayer mode. Four people can compete, trying to complete the quest first. It's really satisfying to lop off somebody's head and take their precious key. There's also a PC port that remains fairly accurate and eliminates the frequent disk swapping.

Apidya is a fantastic shooter for Amiga. The graphics are stunning, the gameplay is great and reminiscent of both R-Type and Gradius, and the music is the best ever composed for a shooter. I think Chris Huelsbeck is the second-best game music composer ever.

The best game music composer ever is Stephane Picq. He did the dynamic music for Extase, as well as composing the soundtracks for many of Cryo's games. I think his music for Dune is his best work. Dune is an interesting game... it's a hybrid of adventure game and strategy, with a very unique art style and the best soundtrack ever. There were ports to a whole bunch of systems, but the Amiga one stands out for the best audio of them all. Too bad space limitations reduced the soundtrack to four songs. There was a CD release of the Dune soundtrack, called Spice Opera. It has studio arranged versions of all the songs in the game, plus a few new tracks. I highly suggest finding it somewhere like Galbadia Hotel. I've had "normal" people (non-gamers) ask me what I was listening to and then request a copy. It's that damn good.

Yeah, I've played Apidya and Dune. And Extase (though I never knew what the fuck I was doing). I will add Moonstone to the list. I guess between Amiga, C64, and Spectrum, I have the most experience with Amiga. I have made a concerted effort to go through and try the games I've heard about. I've probably played like 5 Spectrum games ever, and most of my C64 experience is with Epyx games.

The load times on Amiga games really are a bitch. I wish I was smart enough to figure out how to install games to the hard drive and run them.

Wizball is my favourite C64 game. If you haven't played it, you really need to. It represents everything good about C64 games - great graphics, fantastic music, excellent control, and unique gameplay. You bounce along landscapes collecting drops to make colours... until you get the first powerup and start flying around defender-style. Then it sort of becomes a weird shooter with a nonstandard goal. I probably haven't explained it well, but that's because it's really hard to explain. Just play it - the gameplay is really inuitive.

Newcomer is a modern C64 game. It was released in 2001, and boasts some of the best graphics on the platform. It's an adventure/rpg with a fascinating plot. The gameplay reminds me of Wasteland and Alternate Reality: The City... both of which are multiplatform titles that are worth playing, and happen to be available on C64.

Katakis (AKA Denaris) is a really neat euroshmup by Manfred Trenz. I think he was one of the only Western developers to really understand what makes a shooter fun. The gameplay is very similar to R-Type, but scrolls at a pace that's just a little too fast for comfort and makes the game surprisingly frantic. It's also one of the few C64 games to do both music and sound effects in-game - no small feat when there are only three voices available.

R-Type was also ported by Trenz and boasts the same, but the gameplay is really buggy. Apparently it was ported in six weeks. Still, the port is notable for having the best version of the music. Listen to R-Type's sid, but avoid the game.

Elite is a must-play on any platform. I like the C64 version - it retains the feel of the BBC original but adds a few new missions and features. It's certainly a lot better than the Amiga version, which has great graphics but seriously compromised gameplay.

Paradroid, by Andrew Braybrook, is a fascinating game. The goal is to destroy every droid on a spaceship. This requires a lot of strategy, as there are many different kinds of droids, each with different abilities. You have to plan out which droids to take over, which to simply attack and destroy, and which to save for later use after your current one is destroyed. It's an awesome feeling after you finally manage to clear a ship of droids... and then see that you still have a fleet of ships left to clear. I've had this one since I was young, and I have never finished it.

Uridium was also created by Andrew Braybrook. The idea in this game is to destroy several fleets of dreadnoughts. What makes this shooter really special is the fast pace. You will get annihilated if you slow your ship down and try to take your time, so you end up having to keep going at a breakneck pace, desperately weaving between outcroppings on ships while destroying waves of enemies and trying to find the landing strip. There's also an excellent sequel on Amiga that adds a really cool two-player mode and some of the finest graphics on the platform.

Speaking of games that ended up on both Amiga and C64, Gem'X is another, er, gem. Made by the same Japanophiles responsible for Apidya, Gem'X is an interesting puzzle game where you attempt to match patterns of gems by converting gems from one type to another. It's a more complex version of lights out, basically.

And if you think Amiga load times are bad, try a real C64 - the 1541 is the slowest consumer-level disk drive ever released.

Of those, I've only played Elite, and I actually played it on Amiga, so I'll have to check out the C64 one. That's a long list; I have my work cut out for me.

These are probably fairly popular games for the C-64, but I highly recommend the following titles:

Archon
Seven Cities of Gold
MULE
Racing Destruction Set
Mail Order Monsters
Raid over Moscow
Boulder Smash
Beachhead
Skyfox
Bruce Lee
Conan
Summer Games
Heart of Africa
Bop N' Wrestin
Pitfall 2
Pitstop
Space Taxi
Mr Do's Castle
Miner 2049'er
PSI 5: Trading Outpost (one of the coolest spaceship managing games ever! Highly addictive gameplay)
The Bard's Tale III: Theifs of Fate
Jumpman
Loderunner

I'm about 50/50 with those. I love Space Taxi, by the way.

The Last Ninja trilogy ruled(well, maybe not number 3). I recommend starting with the first game, C64 version. They can be frustrating (damn stone jumping) but rewarding.

Dreamweb is one of my favourite point and click adventures. Like most games in the genre, it's on PC too but for some reason it gets ignored by that crowd. Some adventure games like Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess and Future Wars look and sound much nicer on Amiga than on PC.

Virocop (best on AGA Amiga) is a neat overhead view action game.

Wizkid, the Amiga sequel to Wizball, is a weird game mixing several genres.

I love the isometric action/adventure D/Generation. It's on PC too but that version has messed up controls.

Superfrog's a Sonic-type platformer on Amiga (and PC but that's not a good).

Lazy Jones (C64/Spectrum/MSX) was like the Wario Ware of its time. It's still pretty addictive.

DMA's Walker was fun for gunning down the little humans.

If you like Euro action/platformers, Assassin and Lionheart are pretty cool.

Then, there are ambitious games that might not have aged that well(I haven't played them recently) but are worth checking out for the history lessons: Hunter, Hired Guns, B.A.T. series, Zeewolf series, Dungeon Master, Hover Force, Skool Daze, SunDog, and Incentive Software's 3d games.

Zamzara on C64's a cool run 'n gun with brutal difficulty. So is Ruff 'n' Tumble on the Amiga but I'm guessing you have played it based on your sprite quiz.

They're simple but I still love these fighting games: International Karate series, Way of the Exploding Fist series, and Barbarian.

Head Over Heels on Spectrum (and others) is a platform/puzzle/adventure classic although there is nice a PC remake available now. And speaking of Speccy isometric view games other than Ultimate/Rare's stuff, I like Bobby Bearing.

And there's those Spectrum games I mentioned in the pre-Metroid thread not that long ago.

Super Pipeline (I like the first C64 one best) is an arcadey action game where you defend and fix pipes.

Death Chase on Spectrum should have aged like shit since it's a really old 3d-ish game but it's still fun to play.


I think this thread should definitely include American and Canadian-developed games too if you're not very familiar with those computers. It would a shame to leave those out, especially for 8-bit as less games got PC ports.

Some of those not listed already by gamevet:

Pharaoh's Curse
Necromancer
Zenji (just as good on Coleco, though)
Montezuma's Revenge
Mr. Robot (I spent so much time with the level editor)
Project Firestart
Aztec Challenge
Drelbs
Serpentine
Shamus
BC's Quest for Tires

Some of those games are a bit different on Atari 8-bit than C64 so both are worth checking out.

A good bunch of quality games on these computers are arcade ports, too. I won't bother listing most of those but they certainly added to the variety of the systems back then whether it was Up'n Down on C64, Toki on Amiga/ST or Rastan on IIgs.

I'm probably forgetting many of favourites but I think I listed enough for now. :)

I have indeed played Superfrog, IK, WotEF, Hunter, Ruff n Tumble, Head Over Heels, Barbarian, Shamus, and BC and enjoyed them all. I need to play Hunter more, because it seems amazingly ahead of its time.

It seems like I'm not as completely in the dark about these systems as I thought. I'm realizing I played more than I remembered, especially on C64, but I still have a loooong way to go. I will post impressions as I plow through some of this stuff.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

but I still have a loooong way to go

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I wouldn't feel bad. I had around 650 games on the C64 back in the day. I thought I knew the system well until the internet smacked me in the face and told me there are over 15,000 games on it. I'm sure most of them suck but I still find good games I haven't played before through emulation.

I'm also a big fan of the Atari 8-bit computers now. I used to think there wasn't much reason to play them if you had a C64+Atari consoles but I love the unique style of a lot of its games' versions.

NeoZeedeater named a lot of cool games that I missed, though I was trying to restrict myself to games that are either exclusive to or clearly superior on C64 and Amiga. I must disagree on the Last Ninja games. I thought they were horrible uncontrollable messes only partially redeemed by the excellent graphics and music.

Impossible Mission is a great game, though I'd be surprised if you haven't played a version of it by now. It's apparently coming to Wii VC.

Cybernoid 1 and 2 are nearly impossible, but they're still fun. Some of the best music on C64 as well - Jeroen Tel is awesome. The ports sucked, but be sure to listen to his arrangements of Afterburner and Outrun.

Ghetto Blaster is an interesting game. It takes a while to understand how the street layouts work and the actual goals of the game, but it's fun once you get the hang of it. Groovy music, too.

Monty On The Run is a typical stupidly hard nonscrolling platformer. With the best music on C64.

Centauri Alliance is a first-person party-based sci-fi RPG. It's a lot of fun, and includes the strange ability to import characters from Ultima and Wizardry games. The combat system is a hex-based affair vastly unlike many other RPGs of the day.

Mercenary is a really deep and complex nonlinear first-person adventure game that uses the same vector style as Elite. There are two sequels on Amiga, using filled polygons instead of vectors but retaining similar gameplay: Damocles and Mercenary III: The Dion Crisis. Damocles was apparently going to be ported to PC with even better graphics, but Novagen went out of business before it could be completed.

Le Mans is a simple Monaco GP clone made by HAL... the same HAL that later created Kirby. There are a lot of similar games on other systems, but I can't think of a better blob-dodger on C64. It supports the 2600 paddles for analog control.

I don't like Spectrum. I think the graphics and sound are an absolute mess, and the gameplay suffers because of the limitations of the machine. That said, there are two Spectrum games that I love: Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge. They're complex strategy/RPGs that are absolutely huge. They came out on C64 as well, so I thankfully don't have to use a fucking Spectrum or emulator to play them. PC versions were also included with the third (and PC-only) Lords of Midnight game - the only redeeming feature of that mess.

The 1v1 character battles in GI Joe for the C64 was the awesomest two player game back in the day.

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Originally Posted by bVork

I don't like Spectrum. I think the graphics and sound are an absolute mess, and the gameplay suffers because of the limitations of the machine.

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I do like the Spectrum but yeah, it's not in the C64's league overall although it did tend to have smoother 3d games (look at stuff like I of the Mask or Fat Worm Blows a Sparky). The Amstrad line offers more stuff I want to play than the Spectrum since so much good Spectrum stuff was ported near perfectly to C64.

Speaking of Amstrad, last night I completely forgot to list CPC games that are either exclusive to it or noticeably better than the other versions. Here are some of those:

Cosmic Sheriff
Frost Byte
Dan Dare III
Psyborg
Equinox (not the same as SNES game)
Bactron
Demon's Revenge
Future Knight
Bunny Bricks
Xyphoes Fantasy
Burnin' Rubber
War Machine

I plan on dusting off the old C-64, and looking through the couple thousand games I have, to see if I've missed anything.

I also have an Amiga, but most of what I have has been done better on the PC, or its been ported to consoles. I will say though, that Golden Axe on the Amiga, looks much better than the Genesis version. There's only one problem though; the game freezes up at the final boss. :(

Reading through several of the UK Amiga magazine, there was high praise for Cannon Fodder. I believe there is also a Jaguar version of the game, but I've played neither.

I've waded through about 40 titles and came up with 2 that are notable.

Have you tried Broderbund's Spelunker?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelunker_(computer_game)

Interplay's Borrowed Time, is a graphic adventure game that was highly praised back in the day. The title appeared on both the Amiga and C-64, plus several other formats.

http://home.flash.net/~rayearle/Bfiles/BrwdTime.html

Spectrum is no doubt a piece of shit piece of hardware. There are... workarounds to emulate them with new graphics and such, though.

http://www.emulatronia.com/emusdaqui...nightlore2.gif

I never did see why the Euro-kids were so into thier speckys.

I still to this day laugh every time I see an Apple II as well.

Nothing beats a real C64 for these games though. The Emus never get it right. Load times are horrific, so either get a epyx fast load off ebay, or get one of these when they start selling them again..

http://jderogee.tripod.com/project15..._How_to_order:

its the "1541-III" a SD card based drive emulator you connect directly to a real C64/128.

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Originally Posted by bVork

And if you think Amiga load times are bad, try a real C64 - the 1541 is the slowest consumer-level disk drive ever released.

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true that. ,8,1 :tu:

C64 disk load times were not a problem with this [edit - Wildkat beat me to it, I somehow missed his sentence]
http://content.answers.com/main/cont...x-fastload.jpg

I don't know why the limeys loved the awful cassette format.

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I still to this day laugh every time I see an Apple II as well.

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At least the Apple II has the excuse of being much older. The Spectrum came out the same year as the C64.

Cassettes were really cheap. And loaded even slower than disks. When I played cassette games, I'd often plan it so that I would start the loading, go eat dinner, and then come back and play.

Too bad the fastloader doesn't work with some of the more creatively programmed C64 games - it often runs into errors designed to annoy would-be pirates.

Slightly off topic, but this is the most ridiculous piece of code I've ever seen for C64. 3D voxel fly through in 4k.

http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=24450

There are some batshit insane C64 coders out there. Ever seen Future Crew's legendary PC demo Second Reality? Well, a group ported it to C64... http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1216

Yep seen that (the original and the C64 version). Crazy stuff.

Green Beret (Rush'N Attack) on C64 is a great arcade port done by Imagine- but it's a LOT harder than the arcade version. The soldiers with guns get more trigger happy in this one, and the jump-kick soldiers appear sooner IIRC. I was able to clear the arcade version for 3 loops once, but considered myself lucky to even finish the first stage of the C64 one.

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Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater

Dreamweb is one of my favourite point and click adventures.

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You are my brother from another country.

Here's another one: Exile (no, not that lame Falcom game)

It originally came out on BBC Micro in 1988. It was quickly ported to Acorn Electron and Commodore 64. In 1991, a version with enhanced graphics was ported to Amiga. Finally, in 1995, AGA and CD32 versions were released with even better graphics but compromised gameplay.

Exile is very similar to Metroid. You have a huge nonlinear subterranean world requiring very specific abilities to progress through it. What makes Exile different is the style of puzzle. Most of the barriers in Exile require physics-based solutions and item usage. Grenades can blow up doors, frogs can be traded to imps for torches, vials of water can extinguish flames, etc. Unlike a lot of games, you cannot die in Exile - you're teleported back to the last point you chose to remember. However, you can hopelessly screw your game up early on if you don't solve a few puzzles with the limited equipment you can acquire. After a while, it becomes really hard to get permanently stuck, as the world is so open that there are many opportunities to acquire the items you need.

Personally, I prefer the Commodore 64 version. It has slightly better (but still not very good) graphics than the BBC Micro original, great control, and a dark atmospheric feeling not present in any other version. I don't know how to explain it, but the completely black backgrounds and the dark art make the game feel just as lonely as the first Metroid - only without peppy music to lighten the mood. The first Amiga port is decent (and has spectacular pixel art), but the control doesn't feel as nice. The AGA and CD32 versions have uglier (but more colourful) art and a smaller viewing area that makes figuring out where to go much more difficult.

The game takes a while to learn, but it is definitely worth playing. A word of warning if you plan on playing the C64 version: the disk version has never been cracked properly. It uses a really interesting form of protection that will remove random items from the game's world, making the game impossible to complete. Only the tape image (in .tap) format is playable, and only on the CCS64 emulator.

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Originally Posted by bVork

Here's another one: Exile (no, not that lame Falcom game)

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It was a Telenet game. And it was good :)

I like the Exile computer game, too. I haven't played the C64 version, just the two Amiga ones. I should check it out.

Also, this thread needs more people participating. Even if the number of people who owned these computers is abnormally low here, people can always try stuff on emulators and give their thoughts.

One problem is that everyone knows about the best games. I could write pages on the genius of Turrican 2, but I assume everyone has played it.

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Originally Posted by bVork

Here's another one: Exile (no, not that lame Falcom game)


The game takes a while to learn, but it is definitely worth playing. A word of warning if you plan on playing the C64 version: the disk version has never been cracked properly. It uses a really interesting form of protection that will remove random items from the game's world, making the game impossible to complete. Only the tape image (in .tap) format is playable, and only on the CCS64 emulator.

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I have a cracked version, but I haven't tried it out in ages. I guess it wouldn't matter, since the game can't be beaten with that form of protection.

Ok, I've been playing a lot of the games reccommended on this thread.

Commodore games are fucking hard. I can't make it 3 screens in Zamzara. Is there something I'm not getting? Like how to duck? Wizball is also a bitch and a half. And Last Ninja

I'm having better luck with Amiga games. Virocop is fun

All C64 game are impossible... the only one i actually remeber beating was Bruce Lee.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

Ok, I've been playing a lot of the games reccommended on this thread.

Commodore games are fucking hard. I can't make it 3 screens in Zamzara. Is there something I'm not getting? Like how to duck? Wizball is also a bitch and a half. And Last Ninja

I'm having better luck with Amiga games. Virocop is fun

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There's no ducking in Zamzara as far as I remember. Last Ninja is hard until you memorize the best spots on the ridiculous jumping parts; the combat and adventure elements aren't so bad. I hope they add save points to the upcoming LN compilations.

I think there's a tendency for old European-developed computer games to be more difficult than American ones.

Aside from the difficulty, I'm curious what you think of the games you played.

I can't even get far enough in Zamzara to have an opinion. I can't shoot the first enemy without losing half my life because my bullets go right over him unless I walk in front of him. I don't even get it. I'm clearly missing something.

I kinda like Wizkid. It's an odd game, but I think I could get into it. I'm still feeling out Wizball, but I like the Amiga port better for that one, so far.

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Originally Posted by Frogacuda

I can't even get far enough in Zamzara to have an opinion. I can't shoot the first enemy without losing half my life because my bullets go right over him unless I walk in front of him. I don't even get it. I'm clearly missing something.

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You can jump over it and shoot it in the back.

I tried that (and that is how I've been getting past him) but I couldn't get close enough to do that without it shooting me in my knees, so I still take damage every time. I'll go back and try again.

EDIT: Ok, I can get to level 3 now. Starting to get the hang of it. Purdy graphics for the system, like the style and feel. Still retarded hard though, and there are parts I can't figure out how to do without taking damage.

Short video here, on the 25th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum's release.

Launch in stand alone player:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/new...25_16x9_nb.ram

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/default.stm

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Originally Posted by Mikey

Short video here, on the 25th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum's release.

Launch in stand alone player:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/avdb/new...25_16x9_nb.ram

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/default.stm

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I didn't like that show one bit. You'd be better off checking out BBC's 'micro live' on youtube:
http://youtube.com/results?search_qu...&search=Search

did any of you guys play booga-boo or bugaboo on the C-64? that game was a bastard... figuring out the jumps while the heat-seeking wasp-thing was coming down on you was a bitch... and it would quickly end with making the jump and getting killed by the wasp or missing the jump... sliding down a couple levels and getting killed by the wasp.

I found Booga-boo pretty frustrating although it was pretty unique given the flea theme and being one of the early side-scrolling platformers.

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Originally Posted by dakidski

I didn't like that show one bit. You'd be better off checking out BBC's 'micro live' on youtube:
http://youtube.com/results?search_qu...&search=Search

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Excellent. I didn't know these were on Youtube.