The 100 Greatest Commodore 64 Games

Contents

© Copyright 2021 Tom Crossland.

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Contents

Author's Note

The 100 Greatest Commodore 64 Games

References

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The first C64 game I ever played was 1983's Falcon Patrol by Steve Lee. I suspect this game might have come free with the computer. Falcon Patrol is a side on shoot em up. The player plays the pilot of a jet fighter in the Falcon Patrol squadron. Other jets have to be battled and prevented from bombing the airfields. The player has to use the airfields to refuel and also be resupplied with ammunition. The player in Falcon Patrol has three jets - another is given every 3000 points. Falcon Patrol is a very basic side on scrolling shooter. It has fairly spartan graphics, the scrolling is a trifle jittery, and sometimes the missiles go right through planes without exploding. But to me Falcon Patrol was extremely addictive and very atmospheric. It was very special. The sound effects - especially the refuelling sound – add greatly to the game. Falcon Patrol was my gateway to an incredible range of games right through the peak golden years of the C64.

The list of games that follows is of course subjective and reflects my own personal tastes. Nonetheless, there is still a remarkably diverse and eclectic range of games in this book. You might disagree with a few inclusions (and exclusions!) but that's all part of the fun of lists. One could easily come up with a list of more than one hundred great C64 games because there were thousands of games produced for this machine and many of them were fantastic. By way of example, I could find no room in this list for games like Thrust, Bangkok Knights, Ballblazer, Fight Night, Exile, Curse of the Azure Bonds, and Pole Position. There are simply too many good games on the C64 to include everything.

The C64 did of course have its share of clunkers and terrible games but - happily - we don't have to worry too much about them. This book is about good games. Not just good games but classics of their era. The Commodore 64 was an incredible piece of tech for its time and left a generation with enough happy and nostalgic gaming memories to last a lifetime. Though these games often seem primitive now from a modern vantage point (as we battle our way through the likes of Doom Eternal) this was anything but the case in the 1980s. C64 kids from that decade will never forget pounding those planes with anti-aircraft fire in Beach Head or the digitised cry of anguish in Impossible Mission when you mistimed a jump and fell into what seemed like infinity. Even little games that seemed throwaway and simple like Hunchback II are ingrained in my memories forever.

The C64 was eventually even able to more or less (with a few miss-steps along the way) replicate the arcade experience for home gamers - which might not sound like much today but in the 1980s was a very big deal. To be able to play faithful versions of things like Ghosts n' Goblins and Kung Fu Master in your home was a novelty indeed in the mid eighties. It was like having an arcade machine in your living room. Best of all, once you'd shelled out for the game, you didn't have to put any coins in to play it!

As far as the C64 went, the games to approach with some degree of caution were the licenced games. Companies would get the rights to some popular movie or television show like Knight Rider and inevitably the game they knocked up with said licence would be terrible. That cover art would always lure you in though. Though it's far from the worst game ever made one of my least favourite licenced experiences was Airwolf. A game based on Airwolf! Eighties kids like me couldn't wait to get home and experience some high-tech helicopter action for themselves. What they got instead was a game where Airwolf is trapped in a cave system! Fiddly, frustrating, and nigh on impossible, Airwolf definitely wasn't something I was in a rush to go back to. I remember being dreadfully disappointed too by a game based on Judge Dredd.

Not all the licenced games on the C64 were terrible though. There were some gems hidden amongst them if one was willing to sift through the dross (naturally, Commodore User and ZZAP!64 were invaluable for research before you parted with any of your parents' hard earned money). There are a decent smattering of licenced games in the book which follows. A forgotten classic based on Alien for example and even a fascinating game based on a controversial Liverpudlian pop group.

A common tactic with games companies was to get a celebrity sportsman to endorse their game. So you'd get things like Frank Bruno's Boxing or Alex Higgins World Snooker. These sporting endorsements did not always guarantee a great game but there were definitely some classics. Barry McGuigan's Boxing and Emlyn Hughes Football are two notable examples of the good games in this specific genre. One of the most famous early C64 games was Daley Thompson's Decathlon. Though it didn't make this book I remember the game as being sort of fun but infamous for the dreaded 'joystick waggling' mechanic. To make Daley run faster in the game you had to waggle the joystick from side to side as rapidly as you could. Games like this must have destroyed a fair few joysticks.

Another notorious 'joystick waggler' was Hyper Sports (which is a much better game than Daley Thompson's Decathlon and DOES make it into this book). Years and decades later, I was playing FEAR 2 and encountered a moment in the game where you have to frenziedly stab at the mouse button to have a hand to hand strangling fight with a villain. Talk about Daley Thompson's Decathlon flashbacks! I really hope that mouse mechanic doesn't catch on again.

The golden age of the C64 was the mid 1980s. The machine endured for much longer than that but in the end many people upgraded to the Amiga (which was also fantastic but sadly doomed) or drifted away to other machines. Are C64 games still worth playing today - even if you have all the latest modern releases? My answer to that question is yes! Commodore C64 games are still fun and still worth exploring. Games like Summer Games II, Leader Board and Boulder Dash are still a pleasure to dig out and play.

And there are plenty of other classics too, as we shall see in the book that follows. Shooting games, strategy games, arcade adventures, space flight simulators, sports simulations, racing games, fantasy games, horror games, combat games, boxing games, platform games, and so on. So, without any further delay, let us begin our countdown (in alphabetical order of course) of the one hundred greatest C64 games. Let the nostalgia commence...

THE 100 GREATEST COMMODORE 64 GAMES

ALIEN (1984)

Label: Argus Press Software, Designer: Paul Clansey

Alien is an adventure/strategy game based on the classic 1979 film by Ridley Scott. Though it might appear simple on the surface this is a surprisingly sophisticated game that was way ahead of its time. The music is famously creepy (that opening theme is both jaunty and sinister to remarkable effect) and one might argue that purely in terms of atmosphere and tone this is one of the most faithful of the many games based on the Alien franchise. The game features all the characters from the film and takes place just after the alien has hatched and broken loose on your ship the Nostromo. The look of the game is a top down view of the layout of the ship. Using commands you move the characters around with the aim of killing the alien.

There are various ways you can kill the alien - like trapping the creature and blasting it out of an airlock. You have a number of tasks to achieve (capturing Jones the cat is rather pesky) and you have the added trouble of not knowing which one of the crew is the duplicitous android working for the sinister company in charge of the ship. The identity of the android changes with each new game just to make sure you never know who the traitor is. The android will attempt to sabotage the player's strategy to defeat the alien. Each time the game starts one of the crew is randomly killed by playing host to the creature. It's nice that the game subverts your knowledge of the film to keep you guessing. By the way, I love the box with this game. It looks like a mini VHS case and has a nice booklet with photographs of all the characters from the film.

The first part of the game is quite slow and gives you a chance to get hold of enough weapons for your characters so they can fight back against the acid blooded xenomorph.

The tension amps up once the alien enters the fray and it is genuinely spooky and scary when the game informs you that one of the characters is under attack. When this happens a graphic of the alien fills up the screen. You could argue that this game is actually the grandfather of the survival horror genre. The AI in the game is impressive for the era (characters might refuse a command if they are nervous or feel under threat) and no two games of this are the same. This is a fascinating and complex early C64 strategy game and fairly unique. There's nothing quite like it really.

The flaws in the game are the garish green screens which map out the Nostromo and also the fact that dispensing commands can be cumbersome and not exactly swift - which obviously doesn't help if you need to do something quickly! This game won't be everyone's cup of tea but it deserves a small cloud in C64 heaven. If you like strategy games and are a fan of the Alien franchise this can be a rewarding experience. Though the games don't last long it is very difficult to kill the alien - which does at least give the game more playability and make it more of a challenge.

Alien is sort of game that will divide opinion (I suspect a lot of kids in 1984 probably loaded this up and couldn't make nor tail out of it and so moved swiftly onto something else) but if you like immersive strategy games and the Alien franchise you should find this an interesting experience. You wouldn't say that Alien was a truly great game but it is an ambitious and clever one and left a big impression on me.

Alien is a game which illustrates how atmosphere is a fundamental part of computer games - especially ones that inhabit the horror genre like this. The fact that this game was was an acquired taste was illustrated by the spread of reviews of received. Some found it a challenging strategy game that would keep you engrossed with weeks and others found it a dull looking game which lacked action. Ultimately, it was all in the eye of the beholder. My own view is that Alien - for all its flaws - is a fascinating and atmospheric game.

ALIENS (1987)

Label: Electric Dreams, Designer: Mark Eyles

Aliens is based on the classic 1986 film sequel Aliens. In the game a remote planet has been colonised by humans. Unfortunately it is also host to dangerous aliens. The survivor of the first encounter with these dangerous alien creatures - Ellen Ripley - leads a team of individuals to go back to the planet and check the human base for survivors. The player controls the team members: Ripley; soldiers Gorman, Hicks and Vasquez; Bishop the android; and corporation representative Burke.

The player in Aliens can see the base through a camera on the team members helmets. The player moves the characters through different rooms in the base. Doors are locked, sealed or blown up. The Aliens move through the base leaving organic material - that creates face hugger creatures which attack and impregnate the team with an alien. Aliens and organic material can be shot and destroyed but ammunition is limited and the player must visit the armoury to be resupplied. Members have an energy bar and have to rest to replenish it. Crew members are sometimes captured by the aliens and must be rescued. The control room - for heating and lighting - must be defended. The aim is to guide Ripley to the Queen's chamber to destroy the Queen Alien.

C64 film tie ins were too often awful with companies simply trying to cash in on a licenced property and throwing out a game as soon as they could. They were usually some awful side scrolling platform game/shoot em up but Aliens is good movie adaption and at least tried something new. The gameplay in Aliens is a good representation of the film's plot. and the graphics are very good, again suiting the style of the film. Unfortunately there is no music for this one though. There are a series of suitably eerie sound effects though - such as the alarm that sounds when an alien is near.

The game is quite tough but fun to play. It is addictive and gets quite tense when crises start to happen. There is a great atmosphere from the film and the aliens are nicely depicted. One might argue that the game becomes a little samey in the end with the lack of variety in the backdrops but this is an interesting attempt at what is essentially a very early sort of first person shooter. C64 owners would have been impressed by the look of Aliens and if you fell for the immersive atmosphere of the game then it was an interesting and even spooky experience. This game is not perfect (and can be frustrating) but you can see that a lot of effort has gone into it.

Another official Aliens game was made (by Activision) in 1986 - the Activision going for a mini-game sort of approach with contrasting levels. The Activision game has some nice illustrations of scenes from the film and begins with a fairly impressive (for the time) sequence where you have to pilot the dropship to the surface of LV426. After this there is a bit too much of moving around corridors with little stick men Colonial Marines. This section of the Activision game is a lot less polished than the Electric Dreams game. There's a very basic shooting section after this and then you take on the Alien Queen in Ripley's power-loader in what is a fairly decent looking last section. The Aliens game by Activision is pretty average on the whole compared to the Electric Dreams one but C64 or Aliens completists should probably check out both games because the second one definitely has its fans too.

ARCHON: THE LIGHT AND THE DARK (1983)

Label: Free Fall Associates, Designer: Jon Freeman, Paul Reiche III

Archon: The Light and the Dark is one of the undisputed early classics of the C64 and a unique game with a genius concept. The concept is basically chess but with an arcade gameplay component. The