GregHowley.com

Playing video games on my Commodore 64 as a kid was a major formative experience for me. That's why I was so excited earlier today when I learned that the Internet Archive has an emulator for Commodore 64 games that will run in a browser. I tried it out briefly with Blue Max, and it looks like it works!

This being the case, I've got to share a few of my favorites.

Forbidden Forest - I remember spending hours in my room, practicing sloowly turning around and trying to get that one perfect shot off right into the face of the phantom in a later level before the skeleton could run up and put a spear through my head.

Autoduel - Still has to be one of the best vehicular combat video games ever. It let you design your own car, placing armor on whichever side, or the undercarriage, and then outfit it with different guns, mines, oil slicks, whatever. Then you'd duel with it. You could build a “rabbit” and put all your armor on the back, and a flamethrower back there too, then plan to have your enemy chase you. Or you could put a gun just on your right side, and drive counterclockwise circles around your opponent.

Just that in itself was pretty amazing. But Autoduel was an RPG. You could fight in the arena, then accept missions to deliver packages from town to town, which was often a dangerous journey because there were road bandits. Personally, I always just took a bus to Atlantic City to gamble, then built an awesome car from my winnings.

Archon - The 80s had a lot of Battle Chess variants, but Archon was always my personal favorite. Each player would have pieces that could move in various ways, but when one landed an another, it didn't just take the piece - instead, they fought. And some pieces were very much better than others.

The front row - goblins or knights, depending on whether you were playing the light or dark, were simple. Melee weapons only, and low hit points. But the back row was interesting. Djinni could steer their projectiles. Phantoms would actually steal your life. The attack of a Phoenix was that it would turn into fire - it could only hurt you when touching you, but it became immune to everything when it was fire. The Doppelganger would become whatever piece was attacking it. In the 80s, it was my Neuroshima Hex.

Later, they had Archon 2, which was a very different, but also very fun game.

Mail Order Monsters - This game let you build and customize a monster, then take it through a fight very much like those in Archon. If you won, you could take your winnings and upgrade your monster, buy it better equipment, make it stronger and faster. It was for real one of the best Commodore games ever.

Druid - Druid was super difficult, but very fun. Years later, I can still remember the theme music, and could likely hum or play that entire song by heart.

Skate or Die - Probably the one that you've never heard of. It had a lot of similarities to the Summer Games / Winter Games series, but it was all skateboard stuff. Thrashing with Lester. I played the crap out of this.

Raid on Bungeling Bay - What a great game this was. You're a helicopter, and you have to bomb factories, shoot tanks and ships, and watch out for those damned jets. Also, make sure you get back to the docks occasionally to bomb that destroyer, because if it gets built, it's going to mess you up.

Jumpman - Even in its day, the graphics for Jumpman weren't impressive. But it's one of the most creative Mario clones I've ever seen. Each level was completely different. Some were puzzles. In some, the button made you shoot a gun or throw a spear instead of jump. In one, a clone would be generated 10 seconds after you started, and follow your exact path - if it touched you, you'd die. The uniqueness of the levels - and the fact that you could set them to random - is what made the game great.

Wizard of Wor - More of an honorable mention than anything. On a PacMan-like map, you move around and shoot monsters.

BC's Quest for Tires - Do you remember that old Sunday comic strip B.C.? There was a video game based on that.

I left out the long-play games like Bards Tale, Pool of Radiance, Ultima, and Adventure Construction Set. But playing a few of these in a browser takes me back.