Which of the *games had cliff diving? Also was it Epyx that made a mountaineering game?
Another game that could have made my list is Dr J vs Larry Bird. Also Pitstop was fun.
It was World Games that had loads of weird sports.
Weightlifting (Russia)
Slalom skiing (France)
Log rolling (Canada)
Cliff diving (Mexico)
Caber toss (Scotland)
Bull riding (United States)
Barrel jumping (Germany)
Sumo Wrestling (Japan)
Yeah, I spent a lot of time playing Summer Games, Summer Games 2, Winter Games, California Games, and the unaffiliated but still pretty cool Knight Games.
Yes, Epyx released Final Assault a mountaineering game. It was designed by Infogrames.
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list
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Ultima 4 - This game fulfilled the promise of the previous Ultima games. NPC schedules, the passage of time, characters who remember your actions. This game inspired me more than any other of the era.
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Archon - An action-adaptation of Chess that really sunk its teeth into me.
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M.U.L.E. - My buddy and I competing for the prime plots after a meteor strike is a level of pure strategy I have never seen equaled. In particular, when the desirable square is the last one on the sweep. You can wait for it to come up, but then you run the risk of getting nothing. Take an earlier plot and guarantee your opponent will get the good one. What do you do?!
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Curse of the Azure Bonds - Pool of Radiance was pretty great, but this one told a better story with slightly improved mechanics. Having the main character integrally involved in the central mystery was a revelation to me for D&D games. Interestingly, I am now working with one of the original designers of this game.
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Defender of the Crown - I’m not clear why this one hooked me so deeply, but it did. I mastered every segment except the jousting. I was an unstoppable force, conquering England over and over with robotic precision.
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Lode Runner - The most elegant platformer ever made. Why did this series vanish?
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The Bard’s Tale II - An altogether more elegant outing than the original. “Herb is really busy, but he’ll hang out with your party for a while if you need him.”
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Racing Destruction Set - Another of those great local competitive games my buddy and I went deep on. We would make our own tracks designed to push the game’s “physics” system way out of bounds. Piles of mines on a low gravity world at the bottom of a ramp – it could take hours to land.
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Mail Order Monsters - I loved this game. I don’t remember if it support competitive play; I played against the computer all the time. Here is where my moderately fancy joystick allowed me a distinct advantage over the computer because I could reliably move on diagonals. I had max-powered monsters of every variety.
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Raid on Bungeling Bay - Proto Will Wright game. I never managed to beat it, but this was another that gave the impression of a living world responding smartly to my presence and actions.
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same-same :)
I don’t remember what the tape device number was though.
At the risk of sounding unbearably pedantic, I feel compelled to point out that these two innovations came in Ultima V. Great list though.
OMG - How can I have forgotten?
Gary Kitchen’s GameMaker and Pinball Construction Set.
Also, not a game, but this was a “big deal” for me in school as I could make kick-ass reports that no one else could do since the most advance toy they had was PrintShop: GEOS.
- Red Storm Rising
- Adventure Construction Set
- Wasteland
- The Bard’s Tale
- Ultimas
- Raid on Bungeling Bay
- Sid Meier’s Pirates
- Elite
- Auto Duel
- Laser Squad
And Loadstar Disk Magazine. Which had my first ever published article in it. I actually got $25 for it.
Could it be Infogrammes’ Bivouac? It was released outside of France under a bunch of silly names, like Mountain Climber or Final Assault. I am unsure there was a Commodore version though, so that might not be it.
Edit: and now I just read @copeknight’s answer, duh.
BBC Micro top 10
Elite
Kingdom (strategy-lite thing that came with the system)
Repton series (3 if I had to pick one - it’s a variant of Boulderdash)
Rocket Raid (hard as nails side scrolling shmup)
Chuckie Egg (awesome Lode Runner-esque platformer)
Exile
Revs (surprisingly hardcore racing sim, by Geoff Crammond)
Stryker’s Run (side scrolling run ‘n’ gun, by Chris Roberts)
The Way of the Exploding Fist (like IK+, but on the Beeb)
Sabre Wulf (one of Rare’s first games = I was intrigued by it, but also shit at it).
The Datasette was 1. Disks were 8-15. No number defaulted to 1.
I had a C64 in the '80s. Pirated 90% of it like you guys, but it was a little different. In the little suburb of San Diego I was living in, we had a shop called the ‘64 and More Store’ that rented C64 games. And copying programs. Yeah. Spent plenty of money mail-ordering blank floppy disks.
It looks like I’m another point in the data of the differences between the east/west sides of the pond (and I gal squarely on the ‘west’ side). My favorite games:
- Mail Order Monsters
- Archon 1/2
- M.U.L.E.
- Pirates
- Racing Destruction Set
- Ultima IV
- Defender of the Crown
- Elite
- Alternate Reality: The City- I don’t think I’ve seen this mentioned in this thread. No real story, just an open-world RPG city to wander around in. I spent hours mapping it on grid paper. Thing was, unlike other games of the era (Bard’s Tale, etc), instead of being 10’x10’ blocks that you moved by, it was step-by-step. Certainly not as fast as DOOM or anything, but it was amazing at the time. Different times of day, weather, etc. Also, being able to trick/talk your way out of combats (and get experience for it!).
I have brothers, so good multiplayer games were a priority.
Honorable mentions:
- My mom played a ton of Tetris
- I purchased Adventure Construction Set right after we got the disk drive. I convinced my mom to get it because ‘it was going to be the last game I’d ever need!’ As a budding eleven-year-old DM, it was everything I’d ever dreamed of.
But it never worked- wouldn’t load for whatever reason. I took it back to the shop, but they wouldn’t return it- it was a fancy place like a boutique, with the nice EA album-cover-style boxes displayed like, well, albums (this was 1986 or so, mostly before CDs were mainstream?). They probably thought I was a dirty pirate trying to scam them. They went out of business a year or so later. To this day, I’ve still never played it
I’m sad no-one has mentioned my favorite game ever, and a rather influential game /developer - Mike Singletons The Lords of Midnight. Basically, it was a open-world strategy roleplaying game with a strategic overlay I haven’t seen since, and which added immensely to the atmosphere.
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Lords of Midnight
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Pool of Radiance (I spent 7 hours trying to kill these damn trolls!)
http://savingthrowshow.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Troll_Ogre_Fight.jpg -
Invasion Normandy
http://www.myabandonware.com/media/screenshots/c/crusade-in-europe-5n/crusade-in-europe_6.gif -
Pirates (This is a game I felt I could play forever at the time, and which started my love of open-ended games)
http://www.lemon64.com/games/screenshots/full/p/pirates_05.gif -
Twin Kingdoms Valley ( I think I spent 100’s of hours on this - At least it felt like that)
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Pitfall (The only game I ever stayed home from school to play
https://www.c64-wiki.com/images/thumb/0/0e/Pitfall_II1.jpg/300px-Pitfall_II1.jpg -
H.E.R.O. (I remember being VERY proud I actually completed this)
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Ghost’n Goblins (I almost forgot this one, but man - What a tough, but wonderful game!)
https://www.c64-wiki.com/images/6/65/GhostsnGoblins_Animation.gif
It blows my mind to think that while we were RPGingly starving on the CPC, our C64 neighbours had access to Pool of Radiance :O
Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins was great – great music by Mark Cooksey too. I once made a bizarre remix of the high score tune.
I’ve been wanting to play Lords of Midnight for years. My recent attempt to run it on an emulator didn’t go so well.
Supremacy was on the C64? Wow, I thought it was later than that. I played it on the ST.
I remember it as an Amiga title, but I also know there was a lot of 8-bit back-porting of games that had originally been designed for 16 bit in those days. (Cinemaware, for example.)
Regarding Lords of Midnight, take a look at the remake made by one of Mike Singletons friends, with his blessing before his death. Its sold on GOG (Linked) and a few other places.
Its a more or less complete faithful remake, with a few modern additions, but no changing of the gameplay at all.
Yup - thats where I played it, and yeah, CInemaware games as well.