Wat Ocean C64 Games Would You Recommend?(87-89ish)

[Mark Jones Junior]

I just reinstalled a C64 emulator on my Mac. I fired up 'Athena' and, momentarily, I was back in 1987, sitting up the hall way from Martin Galway, working on 'Gryzor.'

It's amazing how a piece of music does that. And you only have to hear the first few notes and you know the whole thing.

So what would ya recommend me to get? Doesn't matter if the game was crap. If the music was played loads and loads downstairs then that'll do for me.

Watching the 'Cheggars' video and seeing Jon Dunn play his keyboard along to the 'Daley Thompson Olympic Challenge' music did the same thing.

I've already got 'Athena', 'Slap Fight', 'Wizball', 'Arkanoid' I and II, 'Magmax' (can't wait to see that Paul!), 'Renegade' 1, 2 and 3 and 'Rastan Saga'.

[Paulie]

I wouldn't recommend Mag Max (shudder) ;D

Johhny Meegan's stuff was always excellent; Robocop, Navy Seals, Untouchables, Rastan.

Don't forget Vindicator with my funky four channel digi-drums player ;D

New Zealand Story was a nice conversion.

Terra Cresta, Combat School, Hyper Sports, Green Beret where class too.

Pete Baron's Salamander was 'top (OK it was Imagine, but we all know it was the same thing!)

[johnnyboy]

Rastan is utterly dreadful. That was by far the most unenjoyable project I ever worked on. Dave Collier was meant to do it but declined. I almost wept when I heard I was on it!

I liked bits of the Untouchables - especially the baby chase in Central Station.

I rate todays games as so just much better. Proper gameplay curves and all that. Nostalgia is often best left in the past.

[Mark Jones Junior]

johnnyboy said:

Nostalgia is often best left in the past.

So what you doing on here then Johnny? ;D

[Paulie]

Johhny, without wanting to blow smoke up your ass (ooo-err!) - Slapfight was the mutts nuts! OK, it ain't got today's spherical harmonic lighting or BRDFSS - but balls - it still plays like a dream.

(Talking of nostalgia - I finally found an emulatable copy of my first commercial game on the 3.5K Vic20. It did pretty damn well (until Namco sued!) and I always fondly remembered it being a spot on conversion of the then brand new Pacman - I did the code, graphics and everything myself at the tender age of 13... Oh..my..god.. it looked and sounded absolutely friggin' awfull!) Thank god for artists, musicians and designers, and bollocks to my tainted memory!
;D

[Mark Jones Junior]

Yeah Meegan's version of 'Slap Fight' was great! Cracking music too.

[johnnyboy]

Mark said:

So what you doing on here then Johnny? ;D

Just getting my excuses in just in case you even sneak a look at Rastan Utter shite!

[LeeT]

I quite liked 'Mikie' on the C64 (only released on the 'Konami Coin Op' compilation). It didn't get the best reviews in the world, but it was playable enough.

[Paulie]

Mikie was smart - One of Mr Pomfret's I do beleive (and a very funky morphing high score entry system too!) I "borrowed" that idea for Arkanoid 2

[Simon Butler]

But there's just as many sh*te games now.

The new machines, the processing power the polys they can fling around...it's no different from way back when.

The only difference now is that is IS possible to hide a sh*te game with brilliant graphics.

If today's games are so damn good why is the UK development scene dead in the water with little or no chance of ever starting up again?

If you're EA or Sony you're ok...but there will never be another resurgence of new studios.

The writing is on the wall when even Mr UberGod Peter Molyneaux has to close one of his satellite studios and can a project.

Mind you...it makes you laugh though...no-one's bulletproof.

Too many producers...teams that are top heavy, design by commitee and Studios who lose sight of the fact that what they produce is NOT art...it is a toy...something intended to entertain.

But they all get a bug up their collective asses over polygons and then some f*ckwit walks in and waves a tatty sketch around of some big breasted bird with guns the size of Morris Minors and they all get a woody and say "Brilliant!!!Let's make a game about that!!!"
And they do...and it either bombs and the studio shuts or better still, the studio shuts before the game is ever finished.

At least games got finished back then and didn't waste millions of pounds and people's time and work.

I've worked at so many software houses where I've walked in one day one and just looked around and thought..."oh f*ck...you're doomed!"...and they are.

I even worked with David Braben and he's supposed to be a certified genius..."we've got real birds in our game" was the very first thing he said to me.
what? you shove em through the A drive into your PC and they somehow end up on the game?
NO?
Then you haven't got real birds in your game then have you, you jerkass!

We've got real physics.
have you?
Are there a collection of planets and gaseous clouds revolving around your pc with stars and nebulas? Are people drawn towards your pc by the gravitational pull?
No?
Then you haven't got real physics you penguin!

Todays games are filled with smoke and mirrors and the actual gameplay experience is as wafer thin more often than not as those in the 8 bit era.

The window-dressing and the pointless FMV that precious few people actually waste their lives watching take forever to produce and add months and countless millions to what could have been a cheaper and faster developed title.

The dialogue and scripting in said fmv is written by some 29 year old spotty faced virgin called Darren whose Quakename is Fenris Bloodfang and who wears a matrix coat even on the hottest days of the British Summer.
His desk is groaning under the action figures and back issues of Akira and the Art of Lord of the Rings.
In his spare time he is an Elven thief with boots of far-stepping and a class seven sword...(the W must be pronounced.)
His pockets are filled with 12 sided dice and THIS is the ideas man behind Knobsoft's latest AAA project.
It is a clumsily cobbled mishmash of Tolkein, Anne Rice and Buffy the Vampire slayer who he secretly dreams about and to this day still cries because it finished.

These are the people who hang around our industry and have turned it into a ghost town...them and the talentless ne'er-do-wells who...realising they have no propensity to anything remotely creative but are desperate to be part of the great and wonderful fiesta that is the Games Industry decide to be producers....more of them later.

GTA is an Ocean multi section game...the type of thing we got pilloried for.

Tomb Raider is Prince of Persia...and Prince of Persia is a badly cloned version of itself that obviously took forever to produce because some dumbass said "wouldn't it be good if he kicked up sand everywhere he went?"
WHY?
Does it add to the gameplay experience?
NO?
Then leave it out.

Awfully sorry but today's games are no better and in some instances a lot worse than the games of yesteryear...they're just bigger louder and more colourful. The amount of gameplay has not increased or improved.

The industry is run by suits who think licenses are the way of the world and as we know only too well...they just ain't.

Then you have your producers.

Ye Gods and little fishes...glorified postmen taking bits of information from one place to the next and not one of them sharing the same information as another.

You could teach a monkey to do a producers job. Useless jobsworths who are usually failed coders, artists or musicians who can't hack it anymore but are reluctant to disappear and do us all a favour...they hang around and dance attendance at their superiors heels.
Not one of them could get laid in a monkey whore-house with a sack of bananas.

anyway...that's me off my soapbox for the time being...
no doubt I'll be up there again sometime.

Can't even remember how this rant got started and couldn't be arsed to look.

back to the pixels.....
;D

Just remembered what this was all about. C64 games.
Scarabeus. Heartland. Impossible Mission. Sacred Armour of Antiriad.

[Mark Jones Junior]

Now THAT's why I so wanted Simon to join us here! ;D

[LeeT]

Its like the whole industry is reversing back to 1982!

[Paulie]

...Fuggin hell Si, I nearly pissed my pants, that was a master Butler rant!

I've worked with so,so,so many of the designers/script writers that you just described.

My sides hurt! ;D

[elmer]

A masterful rant which, unfortunately, seems pretty accurate.

Buy that man a beer (and some anti-depressants).

[JamesHiggins]

Indeed; Simon - it's like having you back across the partition.

Bill - this site is playing havoc with our productivity. Elmer get back to work