Some of these are definitely C64 classics - Creatures caught my eye, rated 96% in Zzap!64 magazine. But I also note other classics, California Games, Gribbly's Day Out, Chip's Challenge and of course Impossible Mission (famous at the time for its speech synthesis: "Another visitor! Stay a while... staaayyy forever!"). I never played Monty Mole or Monty On The Run, but had always heard of them.
I don't think I played much Iridis Alpha, but Jeff Minter (aka Llamasoft) was a legend of the C64 scene & indie gaming in general - his latest 2017 game is central to the latest Nine Inch Nails video clip [1].
Re:The C64 Mini Computer
by bump-ladel on Friday September 29, 2017 @02:08PM
(#15367599)
I think there is a big difference between the popularity of games in Europe and the US. I grew up with a C64 in the UK, and a lot of these games were considered classics here 85-90ish.
I played a ton of C64 games and the only two that ring a bell are California Games and Impossible Mission (the latter was excellent at least for the time). Some that I remember spending a ton of time on: Ultima IV and V, Legacy of the Ancients, Jumpman, Hacker, Pirates, the old AD&D "gold box" games...
California Games and Impossible Mission are really classic C64 games. Others are pretty unknown to me too and I had a lot of C64 games back in the days.
A bunch of these were also Spectrum hits: Heartland, the Monty Mole series, and Everyone's A Wally are some stand-outs. California Games got converted to pretty much every platform around.
Cybernoid / Cybernoid II too, I remember playing those on my 48k Spectrum.
Infinite lives if you redefined your keys as "YXES" on the original, and as "ORGY" on the sequel. Once done you'll hear an audio confirmation and you can reset them to whatever you like.
20+ years and I still remember those!
Is this a representative selection of titles from the era?
I would be very interested if there was any correlation between home computer brands and automotive brands. Commodore was marketed in the UK in a way that brings to mind Vauxhall cars (GM).
It is too late to do the data now but in my mind Sinclair was more like Ford UK and Acorn more like a properly engineered German marque, e.g. Mercedes.
Much like you would never put G.M. parts in a Ford but you could put a Ford or GM engine in some other car, e.g. a Lotus sports car, it seems that there were reasons beyond hardware limitations for why some titles never crossed over. Only Commodore users got certain sub-genres, e.g. those text adventure things.