Lookin’ Back #3 – Commodore 64

It’s time for Lookin’ Back, your weekly dose of retro goodness.  This week, it’s the turn of perhaps one of the most well known systems in the history of gaming, the Commodore 64.  Well, I had to write about it sooner or later, didn’t I?

The C64 was the biggest selling personal computer unit of it’s time, shifting more than 30 million units, with over 10,000 pieces of commercial software released for it, released on cassette tape (remember those?) cartridge and floppy disc.   I owned one of these as a kid.  Memories of going down to Toys ‘R’ Us and getting games by Mastertronic in the plastic, black cases.  Good times.

The C64 had good graphics day, and was a lot of fun.  Rather than go into details over the specs of the system, instead I’d like to talk about a few of the memorable games that I enjoyed.

 

SNARE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been  trying to remember the name of this game for months, and I finally found it today.  This was kind of a puzzle/shooter hybrid.  You piloted a ship around a maze in which there were other ships trying to kill you and you had to find the exit by hitting switches, navigating narrow pathways and destroying enemy switches.  Each level had sets of coloured tiles which had different effects on your ship, and also each level had some sort of environmental condition that affected your ship in some way.  Such as a gravitational pull which prevented you from jumping, or some sort of pressure which meant you could only travel at half the ships maximum speed.  I remember it being really challenging, almost frustratingly so at times.  I seem to remember there was a storyline involving a man who had died and left his fortune in a labyrinth with people gathering to try and find it.

 

SPLIT PERSONALITIES

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another puzzle type game.  In this, you had to make a picture of a famous personality by moving pieces of the picture around.  There were various obstacles such as cracks in the walls which, if you slid a puzzle piece into it, immediately sent that puzzle piece back in the opposite direction.  There were sliding doors in the middle of the walls with which you could throw puzzle pieces into and store them for later use if they were getting in the way.  A truly excellent game, and I enjoyed it immensely.

 

WIZBALL

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now here was a bizarre game.  In Wizball, an evil wizard had drained all the colour from the world, and you had to ride around in a giant ball collecting drops of paint with your cat, trying to build up weapons and gain better control of the ball as you go.  This game had some good controls and the difficult curve was quite smooth, with the increase in difficulty being gradual, and getting hugely tough towards the end of the game.

 

 

CREATURES 2 : TORTURE TROUBLE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The second in the Creatures series by the Rowlands Brothers AKA Apex Computer Productions,  you played a character called Clive who had to save his kids from a variety of evil torture contraptions designed to kill them.  This was a bloody hard game, and indeed a bloody game, as the deaths that the kids came too were somewhat gruesome for those days.  Such as them falling in a pool of acid and their little skeletons bobbing out of the acid.  Or them getting squashed by a giant crusher.

 

So, there are just a few of the games I enjoyed.  There were others like Mayhem in Monsterland and Head Over Heels, but I already discussed them in my Retro Top 10.  Ah, I want to play Split Personalities right now!

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