• Tag Archives C64

  • Bubble Bobble (Commodore 64)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment


    https://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/189309968241/bubble-bobble-c64-essential-continue-play


    Bubble Bobble was a platform game that was released in arcades by Taito in 1986. You play the role of one of two brothers. It seems that Baron Von Blubba has kidnapped both brothers’ girlfriends and turned the brothers into Dragons. In order to get back to normal and rescue your girlfriend, you must complete 100 levels. Each level has various enemies. You defeat them by trapping them in a bubble and then running into the bubble. Contact with an enemy or with whatever they happen to be shooting at you results in the loss of a life. If an enemy remains in a bubble too long without being collected, he will escape, become angry and move faster. This game could be played with one or two players simultaneously.

    Bubble Bobble received numerous home ports over the next few years including ports for the Commodore 64, Amiga, Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System. A little later it would also make its way to the Game Boy and Game Boy Color.

    Most versions are quite good and the Commodore 64 version is no exception. However, the C64 version (along with other home computer versions I think) did have one annoying bug. Normally the game has 9 continues. However, because of a bug in the computer version you had to press the fire button at precisely the right moment in order to use one. Inevitably, you would make it to some high level only to be treated to a Game Over screen because you didn’t get that button press just right. Fortunately, systems like the Commodore 64 still see a lot of active development and someone has managed to fix this particular bug recently.

    There have also been more recent rereleases including versions for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 as part of the Taito Legends compilation in 2005, a rerelease of the NES version on Nintendo’s Virtual Console in 2007 for the Wii, 2013 for the Nintendo 3DS and 2014 for the Wii-U. The most recent rerelease I am aware of was with the NES Classic Edition in 2016. Any port you choose will be great. However, if you do chose the C64 version, grab the updated version unless you just want the extra challenge.

    bb-shimmer


    📂This entry was posted in Commodore 64 Computer Arcana Retro Games 📎and tagged

  • Compute! (March 1987)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: Compute! – Issue Number 82 – March 1987

    Compute! was, in my opinion, the best multi-format computer magazine of the 1980s. I still preferred the Commodore 64 specific magazines but if you were looking for coverage of multiple computers, this was a great magazine. The March 1987 issue includes:

    Features

    • Commodore’s New, Expandable Amiga 2000: A Hands-On Report
    • New Peripheral Technologies
      • An introduction to Hard Disk Drives
      • The New High-Quality Dot-Matrix Printers
      • The Big Picture: Advances in Screen Display
    • A Buyer’s Guide to Printers
    • Euchre

    Reviews

    • Little Computer People
    • Certificate Maker and Walt Disney Cart & Party Shop
    • Roadwar 2000

    Columns and Departments

    • The Editor’s Notes
    • Readers’ Feedback
    • Computers and Society: Demons and Events, Part 2
    • Microscope
    • Telecomputing Today: Packet-Switching Rule Changes
    • The World Inside the Computer: When Buying a Computer: Don’t Ask Me!
    • The Beginner’s Page: Getting Started with a Printer
    • ST Outlook: Who Is That Man, and Why is He Smiling?
    • AmigaView: The Sidecar Arrives
    • IBM Personal Computing: Two Winners and a Laser
    • INSIGHT: Atari – Corrected File Conversions

    The Journal

    • 3-D Surfaces for Amiga
    • Fixing Atari Revision-B BASIC
    • Custom Characters for Atari XL and XE
    • Applecoder
    • 128 File Viewer
    • Filedump for IBM PC/PCjr
    • DOS Calc
    • Diskcheck: Apple Sector Editor for DOS 3.3
    • 128 Editing Functions for Commodore 64
    • Amiga Banner Printer
    • Using PUT and GET on the PC/PCjr
    • Superplotter

    …and more!


    📂This entry was posted in Computer Arcana 📎and tagged

  • Epyx Fast Load

    Posted on by Azrael Comment


    USA 1985

    https://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/188856766207/retrocgadsusa-1985



    The Commodore 64 in addition to being an excellent computer for its time was also an incredible games machine. The one significant drawback it had was long load times…sometimes very long. Being a computer and using a disk already meant longer load times than a cartridge based video game system but the disk load times on a Commodore 64 were much slower than they should have been for various cost saving and backwards compatibility measures for the VIC-20 that were really unnecessary. Anyway, being a computer with easy programability and expansion ability, this was a problem that could be overcome.

    One of the first solutions to this problem was the Epyx Fast Load cartridge. It sped loading up to 5x and when you were talking load times that could sometimes be measured in minutes or with games or applications that would have multiple loads, this was huge. The Fast Load cartridge simply plugged into your user port and no other effort was necessary to enjoy much faster load times.

    In addition to speeding up loading, it also added a few shortcuts commands. For instance (from memory) typing ‘$’ would give you a directory listing and typing ‘←*’ would fast load the first (or only) application/game on the disk. What was most important, however, was the faster load speeds.

    The Fast Load cartridge was released in 1984. It did have a few downsides. Mainly, it did not work with some copy protection schemes that came later. Of course, this was just another incentive to pirate games or to use pirated versions stripped of copy protection even if you bought the original. Eventually it became common and ultimately virtually universal for fast load schemes to be built into programs. This made the Fast Load cartridge much less useful but at the time it was released it was virtually a ‘must have’.

    The ad above is from circa 1985.


    📂This entry was posted in Commodore 64 Computer Arcana 📎and tagged