8-bit memories thread!

ShawnRaven

Either this will take off, or it's going to bomb miserably, but in these weird Covid times, I'm hoping for the former.

We don't get enough talk about the 8bits. I love reading this forum but it's really frustrating when it sometimes feels like retrogaming started with the Megadrive.

So time to, not necessarily change it, but turn it around a little.

First 8 bit memories was playing Pac-man on an Atari 2600 in a neighbours place. As a kid, it was was awesome, as Pac was marketed everywhere during the 80s (remember that god awful Pac-Man board game?), but playing it recently enough, it was a shocking port!

My uncle in the UK introduced me to the Vic-20 in 86, I was hooked on games like Pharaoh's Curse for the two weeks I spent there. Donkey Kong on the Vic wasn't bad either.

I got an Amstrad CPC464 for Christmas that year and was so disappointed because it wasn't a Vic-20! Solely on the grounds that I knew how to work the Vic. It wouldn't take me long before I grew to love the thing, still play it to this day.

I was an arcade junkie as a teen in the late 80s. So I remember salivating at the upcoming arcade conversion posters in C+VG and Amstrad Action mags.

The Good: (from the Amstrad perspective)
Robocop
Operation Wolf
Chase HQ
Donkey Kong
Spy Hunter
Tapper
Paperboy (no sound though )
Gryzor
Afterburner
Renegade
Gauntlet 1 and 2
Power Drift

The Bad (and downright ugly!)
Super Space Invaders
Kung Fu Master
Wonder Boy In Monster Land
Quartet
Outrun (don't go there, that sucked on EVERY 8 bit platform!)
Return Of The Jedi
Hard Drivin' (overambitious or what?)

I've rambled on enough for now. Would be good to get some traction though for those who remember life before 1990.

CiDeRmAn

I appreciate the sentiments above, but I think it is a little bit unfair to suggest that the 8 bit era has been ignored in preference for 16 bit.
Certainly, most of the people who post here have posted about a breadth of videogaming topics and history, from rigging up oscilloscopes to play tennis for two to using modern computers to emulate every system imaginable.

I suppose, the 16 bit era brought with it a certainly critical mass of visuals and gameplay complexity that often eclipsed the 8 bit era, but not always.

Certainly most of the games you describe, while running on an 8 bit home computer, were ports of arcade games which themselves were running on 16 bit boards.

We have a lot of owners and fans of the C64 and Spectrum, not to mention Vectrex and MSX, plus the 8 bit handhelds such as Gameboy and Game Gear.

But, yes, lets here the shout-outs for the older gaming loves.

Mine would be

Rockaroids (a modern homebrew of Asteroids for the Vectrex)
Uridium on the C64
Super Mario Land 2 Dx (a hack for the GB Color)
Quazatron on the Spectrum
Galaxians/Galaga, in the arcade
Donkey Kong (if not arcade then the excellent version I have on the Coleco)
Mario Tennis on the Virtual Boy
Defender II (a nice version on the 2600)
Robotron

Retr0gamer

I was never a big fan of the 8-bit micros even though the C64 was more first console. I guess the japanese games of the time appealed to me more. I absolutely adore the NES but it feels very far removed from the 8-bit micros you talk about.

That's not to say that the C64 was a bad computer. I enjoyed a lot of games on it. Creatures was a lot of fun but even on the C64 I gravitated to the conversions of japanese games like bubble bobble and the greatly underappreciated Rodland which had a great C64 conversion or games like Turrican 1 and 2 that were inspired by japanese NES games.

Lemming

I started with the Commodore Vic-20 when I was about 6 years old; my dad bought one for the family although myself & my siblings mostly just played games on it. My 7 year old self attempted to write a game with the most rudimentary understanding of basic and failed miserably. Did the schools "programming" via Logo thing that did the rounds back in the late 80s when I was about 10 and eventually managed to convince my dad to buy a C64 having been introduced to it when a friend & his brother got one and we played with it for hours on end until their mother would turf us outside to play or it was time for them to have dinner, etc.

The only games I really remember from my Vic-20 days are

• Blitz
• Frogger
• Crazy Kong (Donkey Kong basically)
• Lunar Lander
• and a Pac-man variant the name of which I can't recall.

I remember Harrier Jump Jet (at least that's what I think it was called) negatively. Game needed the 16kb memory expander module and my 6 year old self couldn't even figure out how to take off from the carrier :pac:

With the C64; I went absolutely nuts with it and a large collection of tapes and cartridges, on top of inheriting (courtesy of having bought the C64 2nd hand) boxes full of floppy disks filled with 10/15+ games each. But simply put, you name it, I probably played it. If I had to try and make a list it'd be something like:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Turrican 1/2
• Creatures 1/2
• Commando
• 1942
• Bubble Bobble
• New Zealand Story
• The Untouchables
• The Last Ninja 1,2/Remix,3
• Boulder Dash 2
• IK+
• Way of the Exploding Fist
• Impossible Mission
• Hacker 2
• Platoon
• Dizzy
• Wonderboy
• Silkworm
• Arnie
• Gauntlet

I have to stop there because I'd just keep on listing games. A couple of friends had other systems like the Spectrum or Amstrad 128k, one had an Amiga 500 later on and I have vague recollections of a neighbour having an Atari 2600 or a 5200 (think it was the latter), and of relatives producing that really old table-tennis toggle/bat game once. But most of my 1980s were commodore vic-20/C64 influenced.

o1s1n

Retr0gamer wrote: »

I was never a big fan of the 8-bit micros even though the C64 was more first console. I guess the japanese games of the time appealed to me more. I absolutely adore the NES but it feels very far removed from the 8-bit micros you talk about.

That's not to say that the C64 was a bad computer. I enjoyed a lot of games on it. Creatures was a lot of fun but even on the C64 I gravitated to the conversions of japanese games like bubble bobble and the greatly underappreciated Rodland which had a great C64 conversion or games like Turrican 1 and 2 that were inspired by japanese NES games.

I'm in the same boat as yourself on this one. I've great memories of playing the Atari/Speccy/c64 and then a bit later on to the likes of the Amiga - but on reflection, European/American games of the time just didn't have that spark that Japanese games had.

Japanese design tended to be better and more refined. Better animation and game mechanics. Better overall vision.

I get the impression that the designers just put more work in when it came to honing their skills. The European/US stuff has a bang of bedroom coder to it in comparison.

ShawnRaven

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I appreciate the sentiments above, but I think it is a little bit unfair to suggest that the 8 bit era has been ignored in preference for 16 bit.
Certainly, most of the people who post here have posted about a breadth of videogaming topics and history, from rigging up oscilloscopes to play tennis for two to using modern computers to emulate every system imaginable.

Apologies if it came off that way, it wasn't intended to. But I don't really see a lot of 8bit talk anytime I waltz in, unless it's brought up in the form of a mini. It was meant as an observation and not as a criticism.

I suppose, the 16 bit era brought with it a certainly critical mass of visuals and gameplay complexity that often eclipsed the 8 bit era, but not always.

Certainly most of the games you describe, while running on an 8 bit home computer, were ports of arcade games which themselves were running on 16 bit boards.

We have a lot of owners and fans of the C64 and Spectrum, not to mention Vectrex and MSX, plus the 8 bit handhelds such as Gameboy and Game Gear.

Fair points, although I did state that some of my own favourites were arcade conversions. That's why I got the ball rolling with those. I've plenty of original / unlicenced games that I could bring up. Deflektor by Gremlin/Vortex stands up as one of them.

But, yes, lets here the shout-outs for the older gaming loves.

Mine would be

Rockaroids (a modern homebrew of Asteroids for the Vectrex)
Uridium on the C64
Super Mario Land 2 Dx (a hack for the GB Color)
Quazatron on the Spectrum
Galaxians/Galaga, in the arcade
Donkey Kong (if not arcade then the excellent version I have on the Coleco)
Mario Tennis on the Virtual Boy
Defender II (a nice version on the 2600)
Robotron

Shout out to Galsga on the Game Boy as well. Such a fast conversion on that little machine, but it's not easy on the eyes at the speed of the aliens come at you!

ShawnRaven

Lemming wrote: »

The only games I really remember from my Vic-20 days are

• Blitz
• Frogger
• Crazy Kong (Donkey Kong basically)
• Lunar Lander
• and a Pac-man variant the name of which I can't recall.

I had forgotten how good Frogger was on the Vic-20 actually. I burned countless hours on that when I was 10 in 86. One of the beauty things of naivety at that age not knowing how old the machine was. Didn't care, a fun game was a fun game.

With the C64; I went absolutely nuts with it and a large collection of tapes and cartridges, on top of inheriting (courtesy of having bought the C64 2nd hand) boxes full of floppy disks filled with 10/15+ games each. But simply put, you name it, I probably played it. If I had to try and make a list it'd be something like:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Turrican 1/2
• Creatures 1/2
• Commando
• 1942
• Bubble Bobble
• New Zealand Story
• The Untouchables
• The Last Ninja 1,2/Remix,3
• Boulder Dash 2
• IK+
• Way of the Exploding Fist
• Impossible Mission
• Hacker 2
• Platoon
• Dizzy
• Wonderboy
• Silkworm
• Arnie
• Gauntlet

I played a LOT of those too on the Amstrad. Hacker II drove me insane though, I had no idea of 1) what to do in the game to begin with and 2) what the hell I was doing. Shadow Of The Beast was the same, all I seemed to be doing in that game is wandering around aimlessly!

ShawnRaven

o1s1n wrote: »

I'm in the same boat as yourself on this one. I've great memories of playing the Atari/Speccy/c64 and then a bit later on to the likes of the Amiga - but on reflection, European/American games of the time just didn't have that spark that Japanese games had.

Japanese design tended to be better and more refined. Better animation and game mechanics. Better overall vision.

I get the impression that the designers just put more work in when it came to honing their skills. The European/US stuff has a bang of bedroom coder to it in comparison.

I'll shout unfair for European on this. UK yes, but for the 8bits, some really great stuff came out of France and Spain with the likes of software houses such as Loriciel and Dinamic who brought out the best in the Amstrad and C64. Games like After The War, Astro Marine Corps, Skweek, Tennis Cup II, Army Moves, Navy Moves, Game Over 1 and 2.

I get the bedroom coder comment though. U.S Gold (particularly Tiertex) produced some complete garbage for all 8bits, especially for the Amstrad as they coded for the Spectrum and ported over to the CPC because the hardware was similar (except the Spectrum had a bigger video RAM size which meant the Amstrad versions moved slower), shafting the CPC guys in the process.

Tom Mann Centuria

ShawnRaven wrote: »

I'll shout unfair for European on this. UK yes, but for the 8bits, some really great stuff came out of France and Spain with the likes of software houses such as Loriciel and Dinamic who brought out the best in the Amstrad and C64. Games like After The War, Astro Marine Corps, Skweek, Tennis Cup II, Army Moves, Navy Moves, Game Over 1 and 2.

God the Spanish knew how to make difficult games! Lovely looking but hard as nails.

The French company Infogrames 8 bit stuff is a bit of a hobby of mine, I like collecting that (love the square jewel cases!) . They released a very playable Sim City for the Speccy which was no mean feat.

Tom Mann Centuria

This might be of interest.

The 8-BIT WARS, via @Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyremic/the-8-bit-wars?ref=android_project_share

New documentary, already hit it's target. He did a couple of Spectrum docs which weren't bad. A bit meandering at times but interesting enough to dip in and out of.

Lemming

o1s1n wrote: »

I get the impression that the designers just put more work in when it came to honing their skills. The European/US stuff has a bang of bedroom coder to it in comparison.

ShawnRaven wrote: »

I'll shout unfair for European on this. UK yes, but for the 8bits, some really great stuff came out of France and Spain with the likes of software houses such as Loriciel and Dinamic who brought out the best in the Amstrad and C64. Games like After The War, Astro Marine Corps, Skweek, Tennis Cup II, Army Moves, Navy Moves, Game Over 1 and 2.

I get the bedroom coder comment though. U.S Gold (particularly Tiertex) produced some complete garbage for all 8bits, especially for the Amstrad as they coded for the Spectrum and ported over to the CPC because the hardware was similar (except the Spectrum had a bigger video RAM size which meant the Amstrad versions moved slower), shafting the CPC guys in the process.

Elite systems, Gremlin Graphics, Ocean, Firebird, System 3, Thalamus, Virgin Interactive, Codemasters, Rainbow arts; all UK companies with solid title stables; some titles with quite profound legacies. The above list of companies were responsible for titles like Bubble Bobble, Elite (yes, you read that right), Commando, the Last Ninja Series, and Creatures among a quite a list of others.

Tom Mann Centuria

Highly recommend A Gremlin In The Works for a book about Gremlin Graphics, it's real quality. Fusion Books about Ocean and US Gold are not as good, but still a decent read.

Firebird responsible for some of the greatest games ever made for 1.99 or 2.99. Rebelstar, Rebelstar 2 and Chaos.

RobbingBandit

Some of my most cherished memories are of playing these games on my NES

Faxanadu
Super Spike Volleyball
Digger T Rock
Marble Madness
Bionic Commando
Probotector
California Games
Snake Rattle and Roll

Retr0gamer

Theres some really good stuff in the 8bit micros and the bedroom coder was a curse and a boom. There was a lot of very experimental games on the micros that would never get made for a Japanese console including a lot of early 3D stuff.

It's just my own tastes skewed more towards the Japanese side which were very tightly designed and focused games.

Bit unfair on US developers as well. They were mostly awful on console. Japan has a name for games that translates to ****ty western game. However the best US developers were doing amazing stuff on PC and in the arcade at the time and not console.

ShawnRaven

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

God the Spanish knew how to make difficult games! Lovely looking but hard as nails.

The French company Infogrames 8 bit stuff is a bit of a hobby of mine, I like collecting that (love the square jewel cases!) . They released a very playable Sim City for the Speccy which was no mean feat.

Concur with Dinamic. I managed to finish part one of After The War to get the code for the second part, spent 6 minutes loading it from tape and then got decimated within a minute! )

I spent a lot of time on Sim City in 1991, it was one of the last games for the Amstrad that I rented out of the old Computer City in Cathal Brugha Street (where The Living Room is now).

Infrogrames also gave us The Inheritance, which was really playable. I really must re-play that again sometime. It's interface alone for the 8bit was insane.

ShawnRaven

Lemming wrote: »

Elite systems, Gremlin Graphics, Ocean, Firebird, System 3, Thalamus, Virgin Interactive, Codemasters, Rainbow arts; all UK companies with solid title stables; some titles with quite profound legacies. The above list of companies were responsible for titles like Bubble Bobble, Elite (yes, you read that right), Commando, the Last Ninja Series, and Creatures among a quite a list of others.

Interesting story about Elite, US Gold had a major hatred for that label (nicknaming them the chip shop due to it's location being above a chippy), but US Gold were primed to get their first Coin Op Deal with Capcom and Elite snagged it at the 11th hour, which I'm actually quite happy with when you consider the jobs Elite did with Ghosts N Goblins, 1942, and Commando. Compare those to the hack jobs US Gold did with Capcom between 88-89!

Weren't Rainbow Arts a subsidiary of US Gold? Along with Epyx and Go?

ShawnRaven

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

Highly recommend A Gremlin In The Works for a book about Gremlin Graphics, it's real quality. Fusion Books about Ocean and US Gold are not as good, but still a decent read.

I enjoyed the Ocean Software one, but the US Gold one actually put me to sleep. Too many interviews and not enough substance. Thankfully, the book on the Oliver Twins brought Fusion back in my estimation.

Lemming

ShawnRaven wrote: »

Interesting story about Elite, US Gold had a major hatred for that label (nicknaming them the chip shop due to it's location being above a chippy), but US Gold were primed to get their first Coin Op Deal with Capcom and Elite snagged it at the 11th hour, which I'm actually quite happy with when you consider the jobs Elite did with Ghosts N Goblins, 1942, and Commando. Compare those to the hack jobs US Gold did with Capcom between 88-89!

Weren't Rainbow Arts a subsidiary of US Gold? Along with Epyx and Go?

Not quite correct regards Epyx, US Gold were their European publisher.

No sign of US Gold in the mix for Rainbow Arts though. Looking up their history they were bought out by a couple of other companies over the years before ending up under THQ. I also got mixed up in my last post; they [Rainbow Arts] were a Germany company, not UK.

ShawnRaven

Lemming wrote: »

Not quite correct regards Epyx, US Gold were their European publisher.

No sign of US Gold in the mix for Rainbow Arts though. Looking up their history they were bought out by a couple of other companies over the years before ending up under THQ. I also got mixed up in my last post; they [Rainbow Arts] were a Germany company, not UK.

Aye, I thought there was a link between the two alright. Loved Winter Games and Summer Games 1, but 2 was abysmal. California Games was preached by all the kids as one of the best on the C64. Played it a couple of years back when I got my C64 and it's quite enjoyable, but the Amstrad version was so miserable. Not one of the events were enjoyable sadly.

Go! definitely published some Rainbow Arts stuff in the late 90s. I recall Bad Cat having both logs on the box art. But it might have been short lived. RA churned out some amazing games for the 8bit micros but Bad Cat wasn't one of them! X-Out, Turrican 1 and 2 though pushed the Speccy, the C64 and the CPC versions to the limit. Each and every one of them playable.

Think I finished Turrican 1 back in the day, 2 was as tough as nails!

Shapey Fiend

I got a Mega Drive around launch when I was 8 so memories of the stuff before that are a bit hazy at this point, aside from arcade machines, which I was totally obsessed with.

I definitely enjoyed the C64 a lot. The games I recall most are Spy Hunter and Kendo Warrior, which took me a titanic effort to finish. Our machine broke after maybe a year and a half and the guy at the shop was a cowboy wanted mad money to repair it which was disappointing. I might have learnt how to code on the thing.

The next console I got was the Atari 2600 and I played it a ton but it was pretty bloody dull after you'd had a C64. Kung Fu was probably the best game I had. Unfortunately a lot of the other games we got were pretty pish like Roc N' Rope. If I'd known anybody with Pitfall I'm sure I'd have been happy enough but none of my buddies had anything great either as I recall. Every kid had Centipede and that was about it.

ShawnRaven

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

I definitely enjoyed the C64 a lot. The games I recall most are Spy Hunter and Kendo Warrior, which took me a titanic effort to finish. Our machine broke after maybe a year and a half and the guy at the shop was a cowboy wanted mad money to repair it which was disappointing. I might have learnt how to code on the thing.

The next console I got was the Atari 2600 and I played it a ton but it was pretty bloody dull after you'd had a C64. Kung Fu was probably the best game I had. Unfortunately a lot of the other games we got were pretty pish like Roc N' Rope. If I'd known anybody with Pitfall I'm sure I'd have been happy enough but none of my buddies had anything great either as I recall. Every kid had Centipede and that was about it.

Spy Hunter was a challenge on the C64 I thought, very close to the arcade out of all the 8bit computer releases though. Spy Hunter on the CPC was too easy, it also suffered some bugs, like crashing when going in/out of the water and your car/boat mysteriously disappearing, often never to return!

I only got to play Pitfall properly for the first time earlier this year when I got my hands on an 800XL and an SD reader for the thing. Also still one of my favourite platforms to play Pole Position on too.

CiDeRmAn

Super Spyhunter on the NES/Famicom is incredible, quite different from the original arcade game and a whole heap better than the actual Spyhunter sequel, Spyhunter II arcade release.
Check out the way the roads/rivers curve!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwmmgX1c_qY

Tom Mann Centuria

I'm enjoying some of the old NES stuff they have on the Switch. Never owned one bitd so the novelty factor is definitely helping me enjoy them more.

ShawnRaven

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

Super Spyhunter on the NES/Famicom is incredible, quite different from the original arcade game and a whole heap better than the actual Spyhunter sequel, Spyhunter II arcade release.
Check out the way the roads/rivers curve!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwmmgX1c_qY

How the hell have I managed to miss this one?
I guess it was pretty difficult to drag me away from Rad Racer between 91-93. The speed of that was insane!

Chris_Heilong

Spectrum when I was 5 years old, I still remember Ant attack, cookie, horas goes skiing and of coarse Jetpack. They were my early days, During Primary school I made a friend who had a nes and that changed my world, Megaman, Mario, Double dragon 2, Probotector, Gradius and Bionic Commando were all so good and on a different level to what I had seen on the Spectrum and later Commodor 64. Japanese games were all I was interested in and that did not turn around until maybe Doom changed my mind in the 90s and I realized western companies could also make something good if they tried.

80s Synth Pop

A magazine comes in the post every few weeks called Retrogamer. It always has a developer interview and sometimes from the 8 bit era.

The common theme in these 8 bit interviews is the developer being just out of school or still in school and learning to code making the games for a few pounds. The amstrad cpc games were usually rushed spectrum ports as the code could be quickly re-used but didn't take advantage of the CPC hardware. If you were lucky the same developer would get to work on several games of the same genre, like say driving games. After the 3rd or 4th game the engine would be pretty good. Obviously no NDA's back then if they could re-use the code for another game with another company.

This was pretty hard core coding in assembly language for a kid to learn. Can you imagine a kid nowadays only used to consoles and tablets doing this?

Retr0gamer

Even today's coders trying to code in assembly. Today's code is so much easier and you have so many resources that you don't have to worry so much about memory. Most languages have garbage collectors that manage memory which would have had to be coded manually.

I've heard that in most companies there's often a few very old guys from the UK that work on low level engine stuff that has to be made efficient and coded at a low level in assembly and often they are old school spectrum and other home console coders. Nobody else knows how to code efficient assembly but them.

ShawnRaven

80s Synth Pop wrote: »

The common theme in these 8 bit interviews is the developer being just out of school or still in school and learning to code making the games for a few pounds. The amstrad cpc games were usually rushed spectrum ports as the code could be quickly re-used but didn't take advantage of the CPC hardware. If you were lucky the same developer would get to work on several games of the same genre, like say driving games. After the 3rd or 4th game the engine would be pretty good. Obviously no NDA's back then if they could re-use the code for another game with another company.

David and John Looker were the kings of that. They produced Elektraglide for the Amstrad for English Software, then reused the code for Super Cycle for US Gold later that same year.

They did it again in 1988 when they took the code for Road Blasters (a coin op conversion done for US Gold) and used it for Nigel Mansell's Grand Prix by Martech.

All were great games too by the way. If it ain't broke, ya don't fix it!