• Tag Archives C64

  • Leader Board / 10th Frame (Commodore 64)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: RUN – Issue Number 32 – August 1986



    Personally, I’ve never been overly fond of sports simulations and these days those words mostly bring to mine the latest iteration of Madden NFL. However, in the days before EA came to dominate sports games, other companies were producing great sports games as well. Access was quite well known for sports simulations of a certain type…primarily golf.



    This particular ad features both a golf game and a bowling game. Leader Board was perhaps the best known golf game (and later series) for a long, long time. Released on the Commodore 64, Amiga and Atari ST, the original Leader Board was an outstanding example of the genre no matter which platform you played on. Sure, on the 16-bit systems the graphics were a little better but even on Commodore’s 8-bit they were excellent for their time (we’re talking 1986 here). And the game play was outstanding. Leader Board supported up to four players and while realistic as you could expect a golf game to be for the time, it was easy enough to pick up and play that you didn’t need to be some kind of golf expert.



    The bowling game featured in this ad, also released in 1986, is 10th Frame and was as good of bowling simulator as Leader Board was a golf simulator. Despite being long before the motion abilities of the likes of the Wii controller, control with the joystick was still excellent and the graphics were quite good as well. You could play with up to 8 players and 10th Frame even supported league play. I find it slightly amusing that they needed to list “Automatic scoring” as a feature though. If there’s one thing a computerized version of bowling should definitely be able to do it would be to keeps score. 10th Frame was initially only available on the Commodore 64 but was later ported to other platforms including the PC and Atari ST.



    Like I said, sports sims were never my favorite genre and I preferred some of Access’s other outstanding games like Echelon. However, I still enjoyed games like Leader Board and 10th Frame on occasion. Anyone who likes this kind of sports sim should check them out. No doubt, there are other far more realistic and graphically superior games today (especially golf) but these still hold up well in my opinion. You’ll have to grab a disk image and emulator if you want to give them a try though. There aren’t any modern re-releases that I am aware of.



    The ad above is from the August 1986 issue of RUN magazine. All screen shots are from the Commodore 64 version of the game.


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  • Hard Drivin’ (Commodore 64)

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment


    https://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/644490712513183745/kinsie-expectations-vs-reality


    Hard Drivin’ was in many ways a very impressive game for its time. It could also be a lot of fun under the right circumstances. However, as much as I love the Commodore 64, playing this game on that system was definitely not the right circumstances.

    Hard Drivin’ is a 3D racing game developed by Atari and released in arcades in 1989. Similar to many such games you race around a track and must hit checkpoints by a certain time. The uniqueness of the game came from the stunt track option and the advanced (for the time anyway) polygonal 3D graphics as well as force feedback in the arcade version. The stunt track included things like a loop and jumps. Another unique aspect of the game was the ability to race yourself by racing against a ghost car from a previous run. In fact, this game led to a patent on that particular functionality.

    The problem is that this game doesn’t hold up particularly well over time. Even in the original arcade version, the frame rate was not great. It was distractingly low in fact. And while the polygon graphics were interesting for the time, the limited number of courses (only the race course and the stunt course), and lack of detail meant the game became boring pretty quickly. Now take an arcade game with advanced 32-bit processors and an already low frame rate and port it to the 8-bit Commodore 64. What you get is a game that, while it doesn’t look too far off from the original graphically allowing for the relative limitations of the C64, the frame rate is absolutely abysmal. I mean, even on my top of the line circa 1993 486 DX2-66, this game felt slow. On the C64 it’s practically a turn based game which doesn’t work particularly well for racing. Or doing stunts.

    There were other, better conversions of course but even these could only do so much. The real complaint at the time was that home conversions, like the one for the Sega Genesis, while faithfully reproducing the arcade version, didn’t add anything. You were still limited to the same two tracks and lack of competition (except for yourself and the clock anyway).

    I love my C64 but this was NOT the game for that system. If you do want to give Hard Drivin’ a try, you are probably best off using MAME to play the original arcade version. Other than that, you could give one of the 16-bit versions a try. It was available for the Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, Atari Lynx and the Sega Genesis as well as a few other systems. Definitely skip the C64 version.

    This game was quite popular at the time of its release and it spawned a few sequels including Race Drivin’ (1990) and Hard Drivin’ II – Drive Harder (1991). There were a couple other planned but unreleased sequels as well including Hard Drivin’s Airborne and Street Drivin’.

    To give you and idea of what I mean when I allude to poor frame rates, I did a quick search to see if I could find what the actual frame rate was. While I didn’t find anything for Hard Drivin’, I did find a reference to Race Drivin’ on the SNES. The original release had a frame rate of approximately 4 fps. Remember that when you are whining about only getting 30 fps on the latest first person shooter.

    Images above are from the Commodore 64 version.


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  • Computer Direct (November 1988)

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Source: Ahoy! AmigaUser – Issue Number 3 – November 1988

    It seems like in the 1980s there were more mail order places for computer equipment then there are internet sites today. Strictly speaking that’s probably not true but it just seems like today everything is Amazon, Amazon, Amazon (with a little Newegg thrown in). This ad is from a popular (it seemed so to me at the time anyway) mail order business called Computer Direct that sold various computers and accessories.

    Computer Direct was where most of my Commodore stuff came from. While my Commodore 64c itself probably did not come from here, my 1541-II disk drive, monitor, printer, printer interface, my first modem and even a replacement power supply for my Commodore 64 all came from Computer Direct. Their prices were great and support was superb. You could return anything within 15 days for any reason and they offered a 90-day replacement policy. They even provided technical support if you gave them a call. Try getting that from Amazon (ok, their return policy is pretty good).

    Computer Direct’s ads were hard to miss. They were typically a multi-page affair and in bright yellow. This particular ad happens to be from the November 1988 issue of Ahoy!’s AmigaUser but I was still getting stuff for my Commodore 64 at that time. I think Christmas 1988 was when I got a Magnavox monitor (which I still have along with all the other pieces mentioned above) to replace my crappy tiny color TV that you had to smack every once in a while to unscramble the picture.

    I’m not sure whatever happened to Computer Direct. I know they were founded in 1979 and I found ads for them through at least 1993. There seem to be a bunch of businesses out there with the name “Computer Direct” but none of them appear to be related to the original. I think the Internet ultimately put a lot of these companies out of business…at least the ones that could not adapt fast enough.


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