This page is a tribute to those great games I played years ago on my trusty ole Commodore 64. I actually have had more than ten favorites, but usually only one or two at a time. So here they are, in a quasi-favorite order. Long live the Commodore 64!
M.U.L.E. is a great multiplayer game for up to four people! Aquire land; develop your plots for food, energy, smithore, or crystite. Buy and sell goods, scratch and claw your way to the top. The game of greed, but all in good fun. I wonder if it would be good for educational purposes in economics... I've actually been First Founder against both computer and human opponents. Longing for this game after I sold my 64 was what brought me into the Internet. Can't wait for Net-MULE!
Mail Order Monsters is an awesome one or two player battle game. Choose between several morph types, enhance traits, equip with devastating weapons, and pit your creation against either human or computer opponent. Battle worlds vary and can be ruins, water, desert, forest, or mountains. The morphs fare better in the environment they are equipped for. I had a lot of fun with this game. In fact, it was the first game I ever bought!
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Elite is an exciting 360' 3D single player game set in space! Travel from one solar system to another, battle space bandits, Thargons; buy and sell goods for a profit, save up for better equipment. It starts out pretty tough since the only weapon you start with is a puny peashooter pulse laser. Will I ever be able to save up enough to get that military laser? Kinda like my allowance (yes, I am gainfully employed and still I'm on an allowance, i.e. a budget). Haven't yet completed this game.
Ultima III -- Exodus is a single player game that sets you as an adventurer in an imaginary world. You must form a party of four before you journey to explore the countryside, towns, castles, dungeons, and even a secret underground realm accessible on by water... Talk with people to get clues, battle packs of monsters, gather weapons and equipment. The game is mostly a top-down view except when you visit a dungeon, where you are presented with a primitive 3D perspective. All battle scenes are top-down and are turn-based, making it easy to move all the members of your party with some sort of strategy. Quite a fun game that had me going for months, which I have actually finished! I just finished playing it again. Now on to Ultima 4!
Ultima IV -- Quest of the Avatar is a single player game that, like U3, sets you as an adventurer in an imaginary world. The game starts by quizzing you about your virtues to see what sort of character would best represent you in your quest to become an Avatar of the eight virtues. Form a party of eight by asking the appropriate people to join you at different points in the game. Explore the countryside, towns, castles, dungeons, talk with people to get clues, give to the poor, battle packs of mixed monsters, gather weapons and equipment. Also like U3 the game is mostly a top-down view except when you visit a dungeon, where you are presented with a primitive 3D perspective. All battle scenes are top-down and are turn-based, making it easy to move all the members of your party with some sort of strategy. Another fun game that had me glued to my 64 for months, but I never completed it on my original 64. Yay! I've completed U4! Started playing on on PC64/DOS 8/30/98 and finished it 12/28/98. Hmm... What will I play next? U5? Maybe I should try my hand at Wasteland...
Legacy of the Ancients is an RPG like Ultima but smaller and more cheery. The object is to neutralize the evil Wizard's Compendium. You start off in the Galactic Museum, then visit towns, dungeons, a castle; roam the countryside and waterways. You need to return to the Museum to gain levels. Gem-coins grant you access to the museum display monitors, some of which are portals to other places. In towns you can buy food, armor and weapons (trade, too!), spells; visit the bank and loan companies, and even gamble playing blackjack and flip-flop to win gold! You can also earn gold by delivering mail to faraway towns. Some towns provide training facilities where you actually play games to increase your skills. Plunge into the dungeons to find the rare gem-coins for portals. This was one of the games I purchased years ago but only recently completed on an emulator, thanks to Charles Tyson for writing a PC64 friendly loader and Joel Logan for his LOTA page.
Raid on Bungeling Bay is a single player top-down view game of you in a helicopter as you skim across the surface of a small planet. Your mission is to bomb all the factories and protect you carrier from attack. Small boats on water, tiny tanks on land, and tenacious planes in air harrass you from all sides. The game gets tougher as you destroy more factories. Watch out for that enemy battleship! The only way to outrun those pesky homing missiles is diagonally. Yup, I've won this one, but man it was intense!
Archon is a battle between the light and the dark for the power points on the board. One or two people can play. There are knights, orcs, unicorns, basilisks, genies, shapeshifters, elementals, and other fanciful creatures, each possessing their own unique abilities. Light fares better on white squares while the dark favors black squares. Some of the squares change colors, gradually shifting from lighter to darker shades and then back again, possibly giving advantage to the side that closely matches it's shade. I've never had the opportunity to play this against a human before, but I did beat the computer on several occasions!
"Come now, a visitor. Stay a while... Stay forever!" Impossible Mission sets you in the underground stronghold of the evil Elvin where you must search for puzzle pieces to assemble a passphrase. "Destroy him, my robots!" Basically you hop around the platforms in the different rooms avoiding the nasty robots while trying to gather clues. Call headquarters with your modem to see if you are assembling your puzzles correctly. It's a single-player game that I was able to win a few times!
Raid Over Moscow is like a bunch of games all rolled into one. The basic gist of it was to blow up Russian stuff before the U.S.S.R.-launched missiles hit the U.S. The first "mini-game" you had to get your ships out of the hangar. Hit spacebar to enter the hangar, joystick up to accelerate, fire button to elevate, and F7 to open hangar doors. Then you guide your squadron to the attacking city and play a Zaxxon-like game. Next blow of the towers of the launch site. *Then* you gotta shoot the doors in Moscow of the neat-looking building until you find the white one, killing all the enemies and tanks before you can move on to the next screen. Finally you have to destroy the cooling robots for a nuclear reactor by bouncing a flying disk off the back wall and hitting the back of the moving robot -- it's tough! I have beaten this game and escaped only once or twice!
In Realm of Impossibility you descend into the depths of the various compartments of hell to gather keys and crowns. Avoid the various nasties like snakes, zombies, giant hopping spiders, and weird spheres. You can drop crosses to stop them in their tracks or cast various spells to freeze or confuse them. It's a sort of side-scrolling game that presents a pseudo-3D perspective -- what is that word? -- "Orthogonal"? "Isometric"? ;-) Anyway, look at the pictures and you'll see. Yup, I've beat this one, too!
Space Taxi is a cute game for up to four players. Fly around obstacles in scenes that change from level to level as you pick up and discharge passengers. Your tip depends on your speed and smoothness of ride. Don't be fooled when I say the game is cute and colorful -- it can be downright maddeningly difficult! What a relief it is to hear your passenger say "up, please" so you can go to the next level. Don't know how far I've gotten in this game, although I know I've completed the Morning Shift.
Fix It! is a clever puzzler game for one player. It describes itself as "a collection of brain teasers" and as "a brain teaser construction set". The object is to get the bolt in the right form, through the various pipes and converters, into the box. This was another game that I purchased but never really got into even though I liked it. Guess it was hard to compete with Ultima!
Master of the Lamps is a single-player game where you are a prince attempting to recover the pieces to your stolen crown from an evil genie. Fly through space tunnels on your magic carpet while listening to some pretty catchy tunes. When you arrive on the other side you must match the tune (on gongs that have different notes) that the genie plays. The tunnels get increasingly difficult to traverse and the tunes longer for you to match. Gets pretty tough! I've never able to win this one. Actually I've never even seen the big showdown at the end!