One thing that has become apparent to me over the years is that Commodore C64 games, and entertainment software on other 8-bit home computer systems like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, are often abstract and usually quite difficult. At least the ones worth playing fall into this category.
I first realised this some time when I started my University Degree in Enterprise Computing. I was in my early 30s and it was around 2009 or 2010. At the time, I was still writing my weekly column for Micro Mart magazine (published here in the UK by Dennis Publishing Ltd I think, and previously under the Trinity Mirror group). I was one of the oldest people on the course, though not the oldest, and my friend Peter, who is interested in media and a part-time radio host on a local station, had something of a curiosity in 1980s technologies. Though he was probably interested because of Nintendo's enduring name, and was also an avid Apple user then (probably still is), with the latter monolith tech company rumoured to have "invented the personal computer", which we all know is false. The first real personal computer, at least at a consumer level, was the Commodore PET, being by far the most usuable, stable and complete machine of 1977. Right?
Anyway, it was around this time that a truly great ZX Spectrum programmer Jonathan Smith aka Joffa Smiff, passed away. I had met Joffa and even somehow got an interview out of him for Micro Mart. He was an extreme introvert, and I found him to be a complete genius, and thoroughly nice chap. Unfortunately, he had suffered with his mental health and this, along with other factors, lead to his passing at just 43 years old (RIP Joffa). I spoke with his sister shortly after his passing to offer my condolences whilst writing his obituary.
I already knew of some of Joffa's work as he was developing a Spectrum game before his passing, and I had played some of his games in the 1980s and early 1990s. But I'd never played all of his games until then. I can honestly say that I've never seen such consistent quality from a single 1980s games developer. I don't think there was one game that I didn't like, and I still play Hyper Active to this day. But it was his first game, Pud Pud that got me thinking about this question: "how would I explain this game to my daughter?"
For those who don't know Pud Pud, you take control of a flying Christmas Pudding-alike creature which must eat other creatures (which ones you have to figure out yourself) and find 10 other puddings whilst avoid being kissed by the evil Mrs Pud. It's fair to say that this game is a little out there and pretty abstract though not to the level of some Jeff Minter games. I got the feeling that younger game players wouldn't get it; those who have been born into a digitally saturated world, with if not instant but pretty quick on demand digital assets at your fingertips. Many of today's games, especially for younger players, have tutorial modes and on-screen prompts. And waiting to load for more than a few seconds in this world is unusual and may often lead to younger people to grow quickly impatient. In fact a recent television advert has people destroying their wifi routers because everything has to be now, and that's okay in the 2020s. It also shows the throw-away society that we have become in my view.
Those of us who grew up with machines like the C64, we generally didn't have games in an instant. Games consoles would load in seconds, but most people in the 1980s - at least most people in the UK - opted for a home computer for their main entertainment system even if we conned our parents into the myth that "it'll help with School homework" - well in the long run it helped anyway.
Home computers might have been as expensive as an equivalent video games console, but games were usually much cheaper for computers. Doing a quick search the Internet tells me that Atari VCS-2600 games would cost around $30 USD or more, so if we assume that those same games wouldn't have been cheaper than £20 GPB, you could have purchased 10 individual C64 games on cassette for that, thanks to budget publishers like Mastertronics. Also, cassette games were much easier to copy, you only needed a blank cassette tape and a tape-to-tape hifi system.
Anyway, C64 games were limited by the times and technology. Very few games had the luxury of having explainers, so if you didn't read the manual first (and very few of us did) nor the game reviews in various popular publications of the day, you wouldn't necessarily know what you were supposed to do on your first few plays. Magazines would have hints and tips to games, but those were generally published monthly. So if you were stuck on a new game and none of your friends had worked it out either, you'd have to hope that the next issue of your favourite printed periodical would have some hints for you, in the form of hand-drawn maps, or even cheats such as POKEs that would modify the game code to provide for infinite lives, time or other cheats.
Why do I mention all of this? Well, after my recent overview THEC64 Collection 1 for the Evercade I found a video from an upcoming YouTube channel which had some pretty pejorative and I think unfair veiws on the collection. The reviewer starts out by stating that he never had a Commodore C64 and all of the games on the collection were new to him. Fair enough, but in this particular review, he ranked the game "Lee", which is actually "Bruce Lee" as 13th out of the 14 games, in other words one of the worst on the collection. More on this later.
To be fair, this guy is of a younger generation. For various reasons, even games that I wasn't good at back in the 1980s (which was most of them), I'd still replay again several times after my first try. Maybe there was something that I'd missed as I hardly ever read the manual for any software. Each binary game world was an exploration and sometimes I'd actually progress a little further. Even if that didn't happen, I could listen to the music, or wonder how the programmer made that happen inside a television screen. As I was a programmer first (albeit BASIC), seeing different game ideas was as fun to me as playing them. Also, I didn't have games on tap, I might only get one new game a month. Something less frequently. And loading times would be at least three minutes, or ages as I thought back then. So if I was going to wait for something to load, I wouldn't want to switch it off after my first go, would I?
All of this nuance, this exploration, having patience and so on, something that is in my gaming DNA if you like, tends to be lost on younger game players. This lack of patience likely started in the 1990s, when machines like the Amiga started to become more common, with its pretty fast disk loading and relatively good amount of storage per disk, and powerful processor with pre-emptive multi-tasking capabilities. But more so with consoles. Cartridges could not only allow for more instant loading, but meant the game could be as big as the developer or publisher wanted it to be. Activision was one of the first to make a game seemingly exceed the capabilities of the host hardware with Pitfall II for the Atari VCS-2600, and this certainly happened with many Nintendo titles on both the Famicom/NES and Super Famicom/SNES.
So back to Lee, how could this be the second worst game on this Evercade collection? Well, the reviewer in question made some assumptions because it isn't instantly obvious that this isn't just a beat-em up with some platforms to navigate, and some lanterns to collect. A lack of patience, lack of exploration, and no background reading, meant that he abandoned this game before even opening the trapdoor on the second screen in. He didn't see the expanding gameplay elements, increasing difficulty and puzzle elements to the plaforms and so on. The review doesn't get much better from there, and again I see the same issue repeated in each subsequent overview of each of the titles included. Things aren't always instantly obvious especially to someone with nearly no experience with the C64 or its entertainment software. Although it's not all bad, some extra play time and a bit of background research would have helped ranking the games more accurately, especially if you're not going to persist with exploration.
As the YouTube reviewer in question has a negative feeling towards THEC64 Collection 1 for the Evercade, it turned into a bit of a pile-on by either people who don't like the C64 platform, or (I suspect) those who don't have anything good to say about Retro Games Ltd, because in some parts, you are one of the Kool Kids if you hate RGL. Because reasons.
One of the commentators in the YouTube comments section even went as far to suggest that the 1988 release of Impossible Mission for the Sega Master System was better because it was made by a "professional software development house" that "streamlined" the gameplay. I don't have a problem with the suggestion that a Master System game is better than the C64 version that it is based upon. It's the implication that Epyx in 1984 wasn't a professional software development house. Epyx probably had some of the very best video games designers and developers in the whole world in 1984. By the end of 1984, Epyx had published around 20 games including Impossible Mission, Gateway to Apshai, Pitstop and Pitstop II. I can vouch for how good these games are, and I'm sure many people will agree with me on those four titles. Its not just that these are great titles, but in 1984, each game would have been amazing. Add in that the video games industry wasn't yet 10 years old if you count from the launch of the VCS-2600, and that the C64 was only just 2 years old with many of its secrets yet to be discovered. This guy may be a Sega fanboy, but possibly also one of the RGL haters.
Anyway, that's my rant over. But it's worth noting that if the C64 platform, or for that matter any other 8-bit platform, is unfamiliar to you then often the games worth playing are difficult, sometimes abstract and many times unforgiving. Some games are limited by the way that the tile mapping works, for instance, or the limitations of sprite multiplexing, and there are other quirks that you'll get used to. But if you have a bit of patience, and maybe do some exploration, or some background reading, it'll all be worth it. Probably.
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