Spectrum or Commodore 64 memories?

Filan · 25-12-2006 03:37PM #1

Thought just occured to me that christmas day during the late 80's/early 90's saw me rise to a menu of 8 bit computer games...occupied me for a large part of my childhood. Didn't become a computer buff in the afterlife but the 64 and speccy do hold a place in my heart. Wondering if any boarders have any thoughts on the same?. Merry christmas to all. Alan

Karoma · 25-12-2006 03:42PM

C64. 80's. Bless.
<o.

Ruu_Old · 25-12-2006 03:54PM

Terminator 2 on the cartridge that went into the back of the keyboard (I think). C64 all the way.

DublinWriter · 26-12-2006 09:31AM

Filan wrote:

Wondering if any boarders have any thoughts on the same?.

I think I wasted the best part of my teenage years copying Spectrum games...boo hiss, home taping is killing music, etc.

I managed to get a modem for my Spectrum around 1989 and hooked it up to the VAX mainframe in TCD and did my Cobol Christmas project from the 'comfort' of my parent's hallway. Very Jurrasic, and I think that was the last time it ever saw the light of day.

A lot of the games that I remembered fondly turned out to be complete bri-nylon pants when I loaded them up on an emulator many years later.

calex71 · 26-12-2006 09:50AM

i had an amstrad 464+, same games as the other systems pretty much.
wasted a lot of hours waiting for the tapes to load not to mention playing the games . I loved the dizzy games.

Pigman II · 26-12-2006 10:18AM

the 64 and speccy do hold a place in my heart

Hell yeah. My time playing with the C64 will always mean more to me than any PC based memory. Not that life has sucked since PC's or anything. I think it's just that PCs have crossed that line and are definetly a part of conventional life (ie work/communication) whereas for me anyway the C64 was purely a machine for dishing out fun fun fun!

Plus I was a kid when C64's were out too so thats definetly going to have an effect

jd · 26-12-2006 10:25AM

DublinWriter wrote:

I managed to get a modem for my Spectrum around 1989 and hooked it up to the VAX mainframe in TCD and did my Cobol Christmas project from the 'comfort' of my parent's hallway.

Cobol? Did they teach that in TCD?

Ay Cee · 26-12-2006 12:33PM

I had a Specky 48k. Ah the memories.
Waiting 5 minutes (Or more) for a game to load just for it to quit right at the end.

Anyone remember Robocop? Where you matched up the face n all that? Battlin' Ed 209?
THe noise of the games loading, the lines running up and down. The monochrome colours which we thought were the business.

Makes ye wonder, what will games be like in another 20 years?!

10 Print "Ay Cee Rocks"
20 Goto 10

olearydc · 26-12-2006 03:41PM

I remember having a Spectrum then moved up to the Amiga

Remember 1 game..(for the Amiga me thinks )...Called Supremacy

It was a war game...build up your fleet..attack..win....build up fleet again for a bigger attack on the next level
Every level you would win, you would get rewarded with a 30sec "Well done" carrot clip at the end....this would of course make you want to get to the next level to see the amazing graphices and stuff!!!

I Rememeber it took me days to get to the end...just wanted to see the end " well done " clip...but the Fecking program would refuse to load, tried everything..played that last bit loads of times, but always refused to play the carrot ...still bugs me to this day!!

Cork · 26-12-2006 06:38PM

Adrew Spenser's (C64) International Basketball and Soccer were the only sports I got.

Great Machaine.

I used order the games via mail order from the UK.

But you could get budget games very cheaply - not the big prices of today.

jd · 26-12-2006 08:33PM

I remember chuckie egg and jetpack(sp?) on our speccie- must be 25 or so years ago..
jd

Princess Consuela Bananahammock · 26-12-2006 08:39PM

Summer games, summer games 2, winter games on the C64.

Speccy colour clash...? Oh, yes! Please!

ve · 26-12-2006 08:51PM

I absolutely adored my Commodore64. The shell in the C64 was a BASIC interpreter so I used to write small programs, to get a ball to bounce around the screen and the likes. That was my first real exposure to writing code and poking with systems. I had so many games in the end.

"The way of the exploding fist" & "IK+" - Excellent Martial Arts games

The "Dizzy" series, was absolutely excellent.

I had a light gun for my C64 also. I had shadow of the beast on cartridge.

I have fond memories of pressing Shift + Run/Stop, and heading off to the local shop for sweets while the games loaded.

Mis-spent youth!, I wouldn't change any of it for the world. I dedicated my Masters thesis (in Software Engineering) to my Mother and in the acknowledgments, I thanked her for giving me a Commodore64 when I was 9.

I think the Commodore64 and Spectrum are machines that played a very important part and are held dearly to many people of our generation.

dazberry · 26-12-2006 09:00PM

Someone gave me a joystick with a "C64 Inside" (tm) from Christmas. Its got 30 games on it - unfortunately most seem to be crap - although it does have the classic Paradroid and Uridium

. It is taking all my willpower to not take it apart

... and yes its starts up with the C64 Basic V2 header followed by Load "*",8,1 and then run - to load the menu.

D.

Gaspode · 27-12-2006 01:29AM

I was just discussing the scpecy tonight in my Mums - giving my little brother a hard time - all I got for christmas when I was young was cowboy outfits and guns, but the favoured son gets the sinclair spectrum.
Neverthelass, I learned basic on it and got a real love of pcs from it. Hours and hours just to program a game of hangman into it!
Cool though.
Best game was jetpack by a mile, though there were many others.

mukki · 27-12-2006 01:31AM

i had the spectrum 48k+ it was class, then upgraded to the 128k +2a, how crap was that, it was the very bloody same thing just newer and cleaner, all then new features were crap that ram drive was useless on it, what a waste of £120 .. my confirmation money

wonder will it take another 20 years before we can emulate ps3 games on the pc

best spectrum game was ......

3d deathchase, it was brilliant, and it was voted the best too

i remember your sinclaire magazine, on page 3 it had a count of how many copies were sold last week, and when it dropped below 10,000 i really started to worry, it was gone about 3 month later

DublinWriter · 27-12-2006 07:04PM

jd wrote:

Cobol? Did they teach that in TCD?

Yes. As I said, it was back in 1989 and then were teaching it well into 1995 as far as I remember.

Kojak · 27-12-2006 07:23PM

Ruu wrote:

Terminator 2 on the cartridge that went into the back of the keyboard (I think). C64 all the way.

Oh, I remember that - I used to have that game on tape. I'd have to put it into a recorder type thing and, for some reason, it took about 20 minutes for it to load up. My cousins had the cartridge and it only took them 2 seconds to load up the game.

Also Flimbo's Quest was great, IMO.

sioda · 29-12-2006 12:21AM

Turrican for theC64 timeless classic along with SWIV

Ah the fond memories

ixoy · 29-12-2006 12:33AM

Speccie! Started out with a Spectrum 48K and upgraded it to a Spectrum 48K+ (how professional I felt tapping away at those hard plastic keys!).

Loved trying to peek and poke my way to cheating in certain games as well.

Many classics - Jet Set Willy and the like obviously but others whose name are rusting in my head. My granddad was a big fan of the many many many text based adventure games - "The Golden Apple" springs to mind.

I still have a few cassettes with games on them *digs around*: Masteronic's Space Walk, Spectrum Special 2 (incl. Brickbat, Automatic Morse, Anagrams Against the Clock and many more!), 1984 (nothing to do with Orwell), Horizons (which came with the machine), Kosmos, Chequered Flag, Ship of Doom, The Quill (an adventure game creator!), and some of my own typed proggies.

mukki wrote:

best spectrum game was ......

3d deathchase, it was brilliant, and it was voted the best too

Quite possibly. This is one of the few Speccie games that I played on an emulator and didn't turn off in horror after ten seconds. Can't recall what day I got to but I don't think it was that impressive - only about five or something..

Chuckie Egg probably wins out for me though - great platform design when you bounce around the place. And then the freakiness of the bird leaving its cage in latter levels..

Pigman II · 29-12-2006 12:56AM

Here's my favourite C64 memory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVVtOOZPuGM

Looking at it now it's kinda impossible to convey how mindblowingly impressive this was to me back in 1985, but not an xmas goes by to this day that I don't think of it

trout · 29-12-2006 12:57AM

ixoy wrote:

Chuckie Egg probably wins out for me though - great platform design when you bounce around the place. And then the freakiness of the bird leaving its cage in latter levels..

man ... i loved Chuckie Egg so much ...:D

i had a ZX81, then a 16Kb spectrum, which was upgraded to a 48Kb machine by virtue of a RAM Pack, which if my memory isn't failing me (no pun intended) was actually connected by sticky tape ... after a summer of mowing every lawn in Dublin 5 i saved up for a Spectrum+, which had a real keyboard ... ftw!

there is a scene dedicated to remaking classic speccy games, which ye may find interesting ... it has a remakes of Chuckie Egg, Manic Miner, JetPac and several more ... good fun ... linkeh http://retrospec.sgn.net/games.php

cast_iron · 29-12-2006 05:17AM

Oh the C64....so simple, but so good.

Dizzy series was classic. As was all of the "Codemasters" stuff.

I dug it out there a couple of months back - still going well, though i think most of the tapes are knackered at this stage. I think the tape files are still knocking about on the net somewhere.

Kolodny · 29-12-2006 04:19PM

cast_iron wrote:

Dizzy series was classic. As was all of the "Codemasters" stuff.

I was so addicted to all the Dizzy games! Gloriously simple graphics and puzzle solving. I even submitted a hand drawn map of Fantasy World Dizzy to Sinclair User but they published someone else's (far superior) one - I was gutted!

deman · 07-01-2007 01:12PM

Man it's been a lot of fun reading this thread. The arguements between schoolfriends on which was best, Spectrum 48K or C64. I was a Speccie myself, and luckily a lot of my schoolfriends were too, so it was highly important to have a double deck tape recorder

Favourite games were
- Chuckie Egg (of course)
- Jet Set Willy
- Manic Miner
- Jet Pack (I got too good at this game and spent about 5 hours on it once without losing all my lives)
- Attic Attac
- Sabre Wulf
- Football Manager
- Football Director (later on the Spectrum 128K)
- Dan Dare
- Tir Na nOg (weird)

Flukey · 10-01-2007 01:49AM

My first computer was a Spectrum 48K. It is still up in the attic. The wire from the power adapter to the computer was always very thin, compared to the cable on the plug side, so it got easily worn. The great old rubber keyboard with curious words like Peek and Poke on it, amongst many others. In the years that followed, as I began to really learn about computers, a lot of those strange words became familiar and made sense. I've been using computers a long time now, but it all started back with my good old Spectrum. Happy days (and nights)!

As to games, I had loads. I've still got a list somewhere which I must try and find. You've all that FIFA 07 and the like nowadays, but in its day there was nothing to beat Matchday.

Amazingly, you can still play now, on you're very own PC. Unfortunately our modern day PCs do wreak havoc with the speed of it a bit, but have a go, for old time's sake: Matchday 2

Kolodny · 10-01-2007 11:12AM

I must admit, this thread made me so nostalgic I had to download a Speccy emulator. Been having great fun over the last couple of evenings playing the games of my mispent youth. And I'm actually quite amazed that I can stilll remember where all the really well hidden gold coins are in some of the Dizzy games after all these years!

Flukey · 12-01-2007 01:23AM

OK, I knew I had it somewhere. Here, amongst the games that I had for my Spectrum, may be some memories for you. Some were freebies off magazines, some paid for, some were terrible and some were classics. So, in no particular order:

WAY OF THE EXPLODING FIST
ARKANOID
MATCHDAY
MATCHDAY II
CHEQUERED FLAG
JET-PAC
SUPER SOCCER
SHOCKWAY RIDER
180
PSSST
COOKIE
HEAD OVER HEELS
FLIGHT SIMULATION
WORLD GAMES
10TH FRAME
WINTER GAMES
OUT RUN
ENDURO RACER
CHESS
BACKGAMMON
REVERSI
AUF WIEDERSEHEN MONTY
THE THINKER
PEOPLE FROM SIRIUS
PLAY FOR YOUR LIFE
ROAD RACE
SURVIVOR
RED DOOR
EXPLORER
MANTRONIX
QARX
SIDEWISE
WORLD CHAMPIONS
MOVIE
MOLEY CHRISTMAS
TRAP DOOR
DALEY THOMPSON'S DECATHLON
BATTY
PLATOON
BASKETBALL
PROFESSIONAL SNOOKER SIMULATION
DUSTIN
ORBIX THE TERRORBALL
ALIEN EVOLUTION
STAR RAIDERS II
WORLD CUP FOOTBALL
BRUCE LEE
STRIP POKER
ARMY MOVES
INTERNATIONAL CRICKET
BLIND PANIC
MICROPOSE SOCCER
LEADERBOARD
INTERNATIONAL RUGBY SIMULATOR
FOOTBALL MANAGER 2
FOOTBALL MANAGER 2 EXPANSION KIT
ZOLYX
THE GORDELLO INCIDENT
FORMULA 1 SIMULATOR
SKATEBOARD CONSTRUCTION SYSTEM
TETRIS
ADVANCED LAWNMOWER SIMULATOR
DREAM WARRIOR
VATMAN
FLASHPOINT
ROBOCOP
N.O.M.A.D.
NIGHTMARE ON ROBINSON STREET
FALCON PATROL 2
A HARVESTING MOON
KAT TRAP
BULBO THE LIZARD KING
SIM CITY
OPERATION WOLF
PAPERBOY
PIPE MANIA
ARCADIA
SNOOKER
POOL

irishgeo · 13-01-2007 12:09PM

the long nights playing soccer manager and euro boss until all hours of the morning. my mate used to leave my house at 7am after a marthon session of playing the above games.

the days of waiting for games to load.

think ill download a emulator.

dazberry · 15-01-2007 12:43PM

In the latter days of my Spectrum playing I discovered a game called Colony which was at the time great fun.

The thing about the game was that there was no save option, so you'd always have to start from the beginning (unless you had some snapshot yoke which I didn't). Played it recently on an emulator and get a huge score by snapshotting my progress as I went

FYI: The fake C64 startup screen as mentioned in the link is attached

trout · 15-01-2007 01:10PM

i can't believe Starquake hasn't got a mention yet ... best game ever

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0004873

i just spent the weekend playing this on a real spectrum ... will try and post pics when i get home this evening

Spectrum or Commodore 64 memories?

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