Hello my friends. This week we have everything set up for our Commodore 64. So, let’s get some gaming done, have some nostalgic fun, maybe a cuppa in a very special way and re-live my all time favourite computer system from over 40 years ago!
Let’s explore and welcome back ☺️
First we are going to play the very first Commodore 64 game l ever saw when l got my system that Christmas of 1982.
As mentioned in my “Three Blind Mice” blog entry from June this year, it’s:
Radar Rat Race.
Wow, this is taking me back to that amazed child in 1982. Remember, this was coming off me only using the Philips G7000 games console before l got my hands on the Commodore 64 which l talked about in “jingles and it’s a keyboard, l guess?” blog entry from May of this year.
And Radar Rat Race is still as addictive and playable as it was back then with that ever repeating “Three Blind Mice” 8 bit melody. This was one of the original launch line up games which came on cartridge back in 1982.
We talked last week about collecting for retro consoles and computers. If ever there was a game that l would like the original cartridge, instructions and the box, it would be this title as it was my first experience with a Commodore 64 and part of my personal gaming history.
This might be a good time to mention that my gaming experiences with the system back in the 80’s would have been limited.
My parents and grandparents would buy me games for Christmas and Birthday’s for example and l would save money doing odd jobs and a paper round as well to buy my own games.
But it was the availability of titles. A lot of the “high street” stores like W.H Smith’s for example would carry micro computer games but they had multiple selections for as many computers as they could.
This meant that individual makes maybe had a few shelves in a store dedicated to a particular system depending on popularity of that computer in the U.K. at the time.
This was as the hay day of the bespoke owned micro computer shops and mail order catalogues which we have talked about before in the blog entry “Keep it quiet, keeping up with Commodore” from May of this year.
Even then, these amazing shops were located in the big cities and not in your more small local suburban shopping areas so you maybe got to go to them once in a blue moon.
Also, you had to consider finding out about the titles originally. This was where magazines articles and friends were key. Maybe you saw something amazing in one of the many Commodore 64 publications.
If you really lucked out, a friend would already have a game you were interested in that you could borrow, or they might recommend or go around to their place to play before buying it yourself.
Ultimately sometimes you were going in blind and just relied on game cover art or perhaps screen shots on the packaging to make you part with those pennies.
Or perhaps it was a game of a huge film or TV show you loved but, that could work against you. Let’s look at two examples of amazing film and TV shows that where made into bad games 😬
Airwolf.
This was a hugely popular TV show from the 80’s. Very much in the same vain as Knight Rider, Street Hawk and Blue Thunder. Amazing vehicles with awesome gadgets and technology that most boys at least wanted to either, fly, drive or ride.
So, a C64 game where l get to fly the most advanced helicopter in the world at home? absolutely and boy, what a disappointment. Looked cool, nice theme music but the game play was awful and ultimately was a let down.
Ghostbusters.
Possibly one of the most iconic Sci-Fi/Horror/Comedy movies of the 80’s and as a kid l was all over this film and it’s still a fantastic movie to this day.
When l found out there was a Ghostbusters game for the C64, it was just an instant purchase for me, how could it not be?
That start up screen, the synthesised voice screaming “GHOSTBUSTERS!” and the funky theme tune from the film with the words and the little karaoke ball bouncing along in time.
And then…..well, it was rubbish 😔 and it didn’t matter what micro computer or console you had, any version was terrible with the C64 game being one of the better looking and sounding ports.
Now, as a caveat to whether you got a great game or a turkey like these two, you played them, you played them to death. Why? because you may not get another game anytime soon.
For months, 6 months, a year and unless you had friends you could borrow and swap titles with you had what you had and you made the best of it.
This is why the magazines, friend recommendations and playing games before you brought them was so very important, pre internet.
There was another trick up my sleeve when l was a young boy, making the connection that arcades where the places that some games started out at and got made for home micros.
Once again, you needed to get lucky and if your family was off on holiday to the seaside or anywhere with an amusement arcade and, it was a decent arcade.
Remember the little note book l would use for making notes of the pictures l took?, well that also doubled for writing down the different machines in the arcades that l played.
I will do a whole blog entry regarding amusement arcades from the 70s, 80s, and into the 90s as there are some crazy stories to tell and some amazing games over the years. It’s also interesting how places like these changed over the decades.
Anyways, let get back to the games on the C64 and take a look at two l would have never played if l hadn’t seen them in those seaside arcades first.
Bubble Bobble.
What a fantastic conversion from the arcade to the home version this one was on the Commodore 64. The music is great, the graphics and gameplay really use the system to its full potential and it’s highly addictive.
Ghosts n’ Goblins.
I do love this game and for the time on the C64, it looked and sounded amazing. Countless hours of frustrating but addictive gameplay and this had that “l’ll just give it one more go” factor which is exactly what you needed.
There was also games that were not from the arcades of course, but gained notoriety via word of mouth. More importantly by the kids that played them and how the word got around in schools and everyone seemed to be playing these games.
International Karate +.
As Paul, (who is one of my regulars to the blog), commented last week, games like International Karate + and also Bruce Lee were extremely popular as were the Hong Kong martial arts movies at the time.
I am pretty sure that most boys of a certain age in the 80s were playing these types of games, watching the movies or attempting to make nunchucks,(or Nunchaku?), in the wood work room at school and trying to karate chop your friends lol 😂
Barbarian.
I remember this one very well and once again it seemed to be on every micro computer system in the 80s most notably the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC.
This gained notoriety for the combat, the animation and you could be-head your opponent which was extremely violent for a computer game of this time period.
Uridium.
Most of my friends had this excellent game back in the 80’s. This was the go to horizontal shooter with super smooth graphics and that lovely about turn animation for your ship to allow you to go in both directions.
Games like this would explode in popularity with titles like R-Type by Irem which would come out a year after this and l often wondered, (when l am not thinking about the Roman Empire of course), whether they took some inspiration from Uridium.
Let’s have another cuppa and finish off the blog entry for this week.
From just the eight games we have explored today, there was so much variety in the 8-bit micro computer gaming space during its dominance. This wasn’t just exclusive to the C64 and it was truly amazing what programmers could do with 16/32/48/64 kilobytes across all the different makes and models of home computers.
People often talk about the “golden age of computers games” and to be honest that’s subjective to the decade you grew up in. For some it’s these 8 bit micros and consoles.
For others, it was when we moved into the 16-bit era with the likes of the Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Super Nintendo and the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis.
As the decades moved along from tapes, floppy disks and cartridges we went into the world of CD, DVD and Blu Ray based systems.
The Sega Saturn, the Sega Dreamcast and Nintendo’s N64 and Game Cube all jostled for their place against the new comers from PlayStation and Xbox and we moved more into console gaming.
Any of these decades or systems could be considered as the golden age of gaming.
There is no “one size fits all” answer and that’s awesome. We all have our favourite titles from different systems across multiple decades and l for one appreciate the past and revel in what the future brings for gaming in general.
Next week we move into October so, it might get a bit spooky, who knows? 🎃
As always, thank you so much for reading todays entry, your likes, comments, shares and general interest in the blog.
Let’s explore together again next week ☺️
We don’t tape the top 40 
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