Today I got 2 more packages in the mail, and they contained the rest of the Commodore 64 games I had ordered.
The games are Driller, Batman, Shao-Lins Road, Batalyx, Steg the Slug, Fantasy World Dizzy, Revenge II, Voidrunner, Turbo the Turtoise and Xevious/Gauntlet in a double pack.
Three of the games are Jeff Minter games. I’ve heard a lot about him and his software company Llamasoft, but I haven’t previously played many of his games, except for Attack of the Mutant Camels on a PC ROM a long time ago and Space Giraffe for XBLA. So I’m excited to try these ones out! :D The ones I got that were Jeff Minter games were Batalyx, Revenge II and Voidrunner.
I love how most of his games are psychedelic trips containing either Llamas, Goats, Camels, Giraffes or Sheep! The artwork is just brilliant! Just check out Voidrunner:
A Llama and a Sheep in spacesuits! :D
Shao-Lins road I’ve played before in Game Room (the XBLA virtual arcade simulator) and I’m really looking forward to trying it on the C64. The Game Room version though is based on the Arcade version, so it might be disappointing. We’ll just have to wait and see, but anything from Konami is usually kickass! :D
The Batman game seems to be based on the movie where Jack Nicholson plays the Joker. The box was a bit scruffed around the edges, but apart from that everything else is in great condition.
Here’s the other side of the Xevious box, which contains Gauntlet:
I haven’t heard of Driller before but apparently it contains “SOLID 3 Dimensional Landscapes like you’ve never seen before. Thanks to Freescape – it feels like you’re actually there“!! …..wow!
It’s in such nice condition, I suspect that the previous owner hardly played it.. that’s usually not a good sign ;D
Well, that’s the games I’ve gotten today, now I’m off to try them all out! (hoping the loading times will we worth the wait..)
I’ve recently purchased a Commodore 64C with a cassette drive and joystick, but I didn’t get any games with it so I basically couldn’t test it.
I had also never played a C64 before in my life so I had no clue of which games to start looking for, however I got some advice on games to get from the nice people over at Retrocollect.com and then I started Ebay-ing…
The Commodore 64C I got was in quite good condition considering it’s age, but it had a bit of discoloration, but I don’t mind that, it just adds to the retro-feel to it ;D It’s also a Swedish version so it has the Swedish keyboard.
The Cassette Drive (I think it’s called Datassette) was in really nice condition! Compared to the console it had hardly any signs of wear, not even discoloration! Both came with original manuals, in great condition as well, but unfortunately no box..
The Joystick was pretty ^_^ It’s called TAC 2, I’m not sure whether this is something that originally came with the console or not.
So here’s the first bunch of games that arrived, some which I had been advised to get and other that just seemed interesting because of the titles and artwork and I was buying a bunch from the same seller anyway. The games are Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars Return of the Jedi, Subsunk, Castle Master, Ghostbusters II, Bionic Commando, Commando, Hunchback, Monkey Magic, Se-kaa of Assiah, Booga-Boo (The Flea), Ring of Power, Impossamole, Little Computer People, Batman the Caped Crusader, Heroes of the Lance, Dizzy Panic, Buggy Boy, Blasteroids, Barbarian II, Bouncing Heads, 4 Most Cute and 6 Shooter (containing among others Wizball, which someone recommended).
For those of you who don’t know much about C64, the games come on actual cassette tapes. I didn’t know they could program games on those, I thought they were only for music back in the day! It’s baffling to me ^^ There is also games on floppy disks for the C64, but I don’t think I can play those without getting some kind of disk drive to connect to it first..
I haven’t been able to try them all out yet, mostly because of the outrageous loading times! It took me 10 minutes of this:
Then I got to the starting screen and the Ghostbusters soundtrack started playing, and it said “PRESS ANY KEY”, after listening to the song for a bit I pressed a button and was greeted with another 10 friggin’ minutes of a flickering loading screens!
After that finished I got to the story of the game. A still image of some person with what I guess was a ghost attacking, and a text that started scrolling telling the story with the ghostbusters soundtrack playing. At this time I had just been waiting too long so I just wanted to start actual gameplay so I pressed start again… and once again.. 10 minutes of: So after a total of 30 minutes I finally got some actual gameplay. Stage one was so hard I couldn’t beat it.. >_< And every time I failed a screen popped up with a text that read: “You are a worthless slimeball! … but you have 2 more chances, press fire to try again”
That is NOT very encouraging!!! >.<
A game that I really enjoyed though was Commando, mainly because of the extremely groovy and catchy music! :D I recorded it and posted it here for your enjoyment:
I also tried some Star Wars the Empire Strikes back.
It was a space shooter, and the music was a nice impression of the original soundtrack. What I found odd though was that they had those AT-AT walkers from the Snow area of the movie, but they were flying around in space o_O
And here’s Bionic Commando:
This was really cool! And just like in the other Bionic Commando games you can only move upwards by using your grappling-hook-thingy. I made it a couple of stages but then I quit to try other games.
I’ve only been able to try out about 8 games so far, and today I got another bunch of 6 more games, and I’m still waiting for 10 more to arrive:
The games were Bubble Bobble, Dizzy, Camelot Warriors, DJ Puff, Rainbow Islands and Rick Dangerous.
I bet I forgot some, but right now those are all that spring to mind.
So here’s 7 things about mE!
1. I’m from Sweden
2. I have 2 cats
3. I really really love the Castlevania series
4. I never had any games when I was little :(
5. I do remember my brother kicking my ass in his NHL 94,
. he was 13 years older than me! NO FAIR!
6. I’m currently completely obsessed with retrocollect.com
7. I’ve played the piano for 22 years.
Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum is a game i picked up dirt cheap on Ebay, and I hadn’t heard about it before. When I was sitting and trying out the lot of around 30 something NES games I had ordered I got stuck playing Dash Galaxy since it was so much fun!
At first the gameplay strikes you as very stiff, but after a while you realize that it’s supposed to be like that and that the stiffness of the controls just adds to the challenge of the game.
The objective is to reach the tip of the Spaceship. You do this by entering different stages in different rooms. You can also find warps that will sometimes take you a few rooms ahead, but also send you back a bit. It’s trial and error, you basically need to find the correct route to take you to the last stage. This is what the different rooms can look like:
The tunnels lead to different stages and you can move around blocks to clear a path. There are also forcefields which kill you unless you have a key that opens them or a bomb to blow them up. In room 24 you will find the last stage which is the tunnel in the bottom left. Also if you stay in a room for too long your oxygen will run out and you will die. This is the same in each level, you have an oxygen meter which decreases even faster if you get hurt by enemies.
The stages have various design and backgrounds, and there’s several different types of enemies and obstacles. The music is very catchy, you can hear the songs and watch some of the gameplay in a video I put together here:
Here’s a what a few different stages look like:
The final stage looks like this:
This final stage is a bit tricky since the blue blocks are icy and slippery and whenever you make a long jump in between them you slide a bit without being able to stop, so you need to time the jump precisely.
I managed to beat them game today ^_^ While attempting to do a speed run. It took around 9 minutes I think.
Here’s a video of my speed run in case you need help trying to beat this game:
It’s a great game with great music, challenging but fun! I suggest everyone should pick it up, since it can be found really cheap on Ebay :D
I went to Gothenburg this last weekend to visit some friends of mine, and I received a belated birthday gift from a dear friend of mine <3 Something I’ve been looking for for quite some time now actually! A Game & Watch! Donkey Kong II!
Except for some scratches on the top and a little orange sticker on the bottom it’s in quite good condition ^_^
It’s Multi Screen and super pretty! I used to have an old orange one, the first Donkey Kong for Game & Watch, it was my brothers, but it disappeared :(
Now I just need to go find some batteries so I can play it :D
And if this wasn’t enough I also got a Game Boy Color brand new in original box :D
This is actually the only Game Boy console I didn’t previously own (except for the 3DS, which I will get eventually). I thought about buying a Game Boy Color several times, but never did, cause I could always play those games on the GBA. So now I’m really happy to finally have one in my collection :D
At my last retro gaming event a friend thought I should get a game called Gain Ground for the Sega Mega Drive. He said it was a great game. The only one I could find at that time on Ebay was a japanese version, so I bought it, and while I was at it I checked out the sellers other auction.. and then I couldn’t restrain myself!
I ended up buying 12 Japanese Sega Mega Drive games! :D And the packages arrived today ^_^
In the shopaholic-rush that I get sometimes.. I accidentally bought a game I already had.. Fantasia >_< which is stupid hard! Though this is the Japanese version instead of the PAL, perhaps it’s better.. but I doubt it! I also got Cyber Police ESWAT and of course the Gain Ground that I set out for ^_^
I also got Insector X, which I guess is a sequel to the Famicom game with the same name. I recently got the Famicom version and I liked that game so I just supposed it would be even better in 16-bit! :D King Colossus and Senjo no Oukami II also seemed interesting, I just watched brief youtube videos, and I basically buy anything that is platforming, puzzle or shooter ^_^
Magical Taruruto-Kun is a popular series on the Famicom, so bought it cause I recognized the name. Junction seemed like a cool arcade/puzzle game, kind of like Marble Madness but kind of different, I can’t tell whether it will be amazingly cool or just awful until I try it out though ^^ Phelios I had been wanting to get on several occasions and this time it was just reasonably priced ^_^
And last but not least Shiten Myooh, Midnight Resistance and Time Dominator. I just HAD to get Shiten Myooh because of the funny name and cool box art ^_^ and Midnight Resistance looked kind of like Contra, can’t wait to try that out! Time Dominator looked like a total ripoff from the Sonic games! Really fast and similar graphics and gameplay.. hmm..
Well I just wanted to share what was in the mailbox today, now I’m off to try them all out! :D and try to figure out how to capture those friggin’ screenshots with COLOR! ;P
Retro Video Gaming 
