"Epic" games for the Commodore 64

by **Tdarcos** » Sat May 12, 2012 7:18 pm

pinback wrote:I think if you go with a colon, the shit just comes with it!

ROFL!
But I've found one that trumps your Buzz Killington skit:

TV Tropes talks about movies or other media that so many titles in the title that have multiple qualifiers separated by colons that they have a name for it: Colon Cancer

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The full name of my second book is In the Matter of: Instrument of God and the name of my first book is In the Matter of: The Gatekeeper: The Gate Contracts. The sequel to that book is In the Matter of: The Gatekeeper: The Gatekeeper Admits

by **Flack** » Sat May 12, 2012 10:16 am

I was going to make a few of these for you, but this first one turned out horribly.

[youtube][/youtube]

This was played via emulation, with the video being captured by Camtasia.

The video capture worked well. Although there's some slight blurring, it essentially looks accurate -- or accurate enough for a YouTube video.

The audio ... well, there's two issues. The first is, because I was just improvising, there are a ton of "ums" and "uhs" and pauses that make it sound terrible. On the next one I might play the game first and then overdub my commentary track over the top of it afterwards. My brain's not so good at the multitasking.

The second issue is, I was playing the game using the keyboard, and my microphone is sitting on my desk right next to the keyboard, so the mic picked up all the thuds from the keyboard as I was banging away on the keys. I didn't even think about that. On the next one, I will either relocate the mic, or play using a joystick.

This has been only a test.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 7:28 pm

Flack wrote:Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore, died on Sunday.

So now I'm thinking about calling the book "Games so bad they killed Jack Tramiel."

This is the best would-be title so far.

by **AArdvark** » Sun Apr 29, 2012 2:38 pm

This is me waffling again. It seems that I spend so much time in 64 Forever, arraigning the disc images in just the right configuration, that I hardly ever PLAY the games, which was the original goal. I have hundreds of titles now, (something that was impossible in 1988) and all I seem to do is add screenshots or fill in publisher data or fix the spelling, crap like that. Dammit! These are not baseball cards, these are games. They should be played.
So anyway, I threw all the discs in one big folder (none of that alphabetized by folder stuff for me) and renamed the titles that needed it, and there I go. Just like the old days.
No screenshots, just a name on a label.

THE
PRIMARY OBJECTIVE
AARDVARK

by **Flack** » Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:19 am

Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore, died on Sunday.

So now I'm thinking about calling the book "Games so bad they killed Jack Tramiel."

by **pinback** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 9:16 pm

I think if you go with a colon, the shit just comes with it!

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 8:50 pm

I think you gotta go with a colon.

Commodore 64: 32 Great Games, 32 Pieces of Shit
Commodore 64: 32 Classics, 32 Bags of Shit
:Shit

by **Flack** » Thu Apr 05, 2012 7:29 am

If at all possible, I plan on taking a couple of days off of work in the near future and finishing my C64 game review book.

I still need a good name for it. It's going to contain 64 game reviews -- 32 great ones and 32 terrible ones.

The obvious choice was "Heaven and Hell," but I don't love it. The other day I came up with "Wons and Zeros," but I don't know if it's great or either.

by **AArdvark** » Thu Apr 05, 2012 3:01 am

All 7000+ titles, eh? Maybe I'll just review the games in my favorites folder and call it a job well done. Now I have everything I need, I actually have to, you know, play the games first. Setting aside time for that is really the most difficult part of the whole endeavor.

THE
COUPLE MINUTES
HERE AND THERE
AARDVARK

by **Flack** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 6:30 pm

Awesome, glad you were able to get them and get them working! I expect a review of each one of them by the end of the weekend.

There are typically two "GB64" packages that get shared. The first is "all the games," which is what most people are interested in. The other is "all the everything," which includes not only all the games, but all the apps, all the utilities, all the graphics, all the music, etc. I think the last time I saw that one floating around it filled two DVDs.

The goal of GameBase is to gather every C64 program ever released. A couple of years ago I picked up a big lot of Commodore stuff from a guy that was a member of a local Commodore User's Group. Long story short, I converted all the disks to D64 format, made them available on Lemon 64, and found out that a few of them were previously unknown apps. Sure, they sucked, but they were unique and they ended up being added to GameBase 64. Knowing that I found something on a 25 year old floppy disk, rescued it, and added it to "the collective" ... awesome feeling.

So anyway, Vark, about those game reviews ... chop chop.

by **AArdvark** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 5:30 pm

Review continued...

Gamebase 64 gave me a headache trying to configure all the folders and settings. It worked for me eventually, but I feel that software should work for you not against you, especially when it's something as important as Commodore games. this frontend was definitely trying to keep me from playing ACE and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.

two out of five joysticks
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Update on C64 Forever

I grabbed the 2012 version and they have fixed some of the issues I had with the earlier version. Still have to convert the games to RP9, but now they have an improved RP9 editor which is nice.

I have to give 64 Forever the winning vote. Now that I seem to own every 64 game known to man (thanks Flack!) I'll burn them all onto a DVD and then convert em so I can start having some 8 bit fun in earnest.

THE
JOYSTICK WORKOUT
AARDVARK

by **Flack** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 4:50 am

Then you should try this link.

NOTE: I had to rename the file extension from .7z to .zip to get it to download for some reason. Once you get it, you'll most likely need to rename it back to .7z and then extract it using 7zip.

by **AArdvark** » Tue Apr 03, 2012 3:12 am

I will give it a try. Never tried newsbin as a source of content. Always used torrents.

by **Flack** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 7:34 pm

Hey Vark, where do you download stuff? Newsgroups, p2p, or ... ?

If you have newsgroup access, you want the Gamebase v8 game package listed here.

Link

What you want is that 670 meg collection, which should be every game in d64 format. If you don't have a way to grab it, I'll snag it and put it somewhere.

by **AArdvark** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 5:57 pm

64 Memories:

Slightly more of a learning curve than 64Forever. You have to manually install the screenshots of the games. The newest collection of C64 games (oxymoron) I grabbed was all in .TAP format which will play just fine but can't be manipulated with DirMaster. Am working on a comprehensive collection that's in D64 format and properly labelled.
This front-end felt like a homebrew application. Like it's not quite done yet.

Two out of five joysticks

by **Flack** » Mon Apr 02, 2012 9:21 am

I think the GameBase front end is pretty good, although I haven't tried too many of the others so I can't really compare them.

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 6:42 pm

But Vark, playing games on a 30-year old system via an emulator IS real life.

At the conclusion of this project, I shall install whatever emulator gets the most joysticks. My fate is in your hands.

by **AArdvark** » Sun Apr 01, 2012 12:30 pm

So as an ongoing Sunday project, I've been trying all the frontends for the C64. What I'm looking for is ease of use, functionality and overall PC feng shui.

So far I've tried :
C64 Forever

It's good. Not awesome but good. It's billed as the mp3 player for Commodore games. Pretty accurate description. My biggest drawback is that it has an annoying tendency to put all the games under the apps tab whenever I rescan the folders for file changes. It should be noted that I have the worst listing of games. Most of them are named something like 'T000000000a. d64'
This means I would have to spend hours renaming disc files.
Probably not happening. Also, the front-end wants to change all the files to .rp9 format. This is both good and bad. Bad because I would then have duplicates of everything, unless I want to delete the original D64 files, which I do not. Add another four gigs of space taken up.

Three out of five joysticks

64 Memories (review later)

Gamebase 64 (review later)

And the perennial favorite: Microsoft icon view folders with Vise file association.

This is just me double clicking on the file icon and having it open in Vise. Good because it just works, bad because there's no eye candy and other front-end related stuff. What's the point of having a shitload of games if you can't scroll through them like Scrooge McDuck in his vault. Plus it's a collector thing, being able to see screenshots and other added info (like the instructions, maybe)

Two out of five joysticks

rest of the reviews in a couple little whiles, got real life stuff to do first.

THE
PRIORITIES
AARDVARK

by **Flack** » Tue Mar 06, 2012 5:13 am

Legacy of the Ancients
[youtube][/youtube]

Times of Lore
[youtube][/youtube]

Alternate Reality
[youtube][/youtube]

Curse of the Azure Bonds
[youtube][/youtube]

Death Knights of Krynn
[youtube][/youtube]

Come to think of it, these may have all been the same game ...

by **Ice Cream Jonsey** » Mon Mar 05, 2012 8:41 pm

Flack wrote:I'd throw Legacy of the Ancients, Altered Reality, and Times of Lore in there for sure. Tass Times in Tonetown, too.

I've never heard of any of those except Tass Times. They are ON MY LIST.

You've also got all the Ultima games, although again I tend to think of these as being more Apple than Commodore releases.

Oh, I got that really cool Ultima IV flash cart for my Atari 800 a couple years ago. It does nothing but play Ultima IV and handles disk spanning. The problem is that my Atari 800 is hooked up to my LCD TV and I ... well, the keyboard is necessary for Ultima IV. I don't have any way to play it where I wouldn't go blind.

Pools of Radiance was great, and there are several other D&D games. Curse of the Axure Bonds was great. There are also a couple of Krynn games that were pretty good.

I got into that series late, on the PC, but yeah, they're great. The Dark Queen of Krynn was basically my ideal woman from age 17 to... er.... well, I'm 37 now.

"Epic" games for the Commodore 64

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