Category Archives: Commodore 64

Commodore 64, the popular home computer from Commodore 1982

64 Turns 30

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The venerable Commodore 64 turns 30 this week, having been first introduced to the world at the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

The C64 had a profound impact on two industries.  Not only did its low price ($525 at retail, compared to $1200 plus for the base Apple II model) further Apple’s work at popularizing the computer for home use, the C64 became an incredibly prolific video game platform, on which many future game programmers cut their teeth.

It was a quirky system, especially the enormous 5140 floppy drive accessory, which was nearly the size of the computer itself, about 4 times the weight, and often seemed like it was going to shake itself off your desk while accessing information off 5 1/4″ disks.  Despite this, the Commodore 64 became one of the most popular single computer lines ever, selling over 22 million units.

Although the 64K of internal memory in the C64 seems infinitesimally small, this powerhouse helped change the face of computing.

A Quick Look Back: The Castles of Dr. Creep

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Box art

 

Playing this game again brings back a flood of memories, of me and a buddy playing hours upon hours of it on the C64 back in my high-school days, threatening each other with the laser, cheering each other wildly as we ran the last few seconds down trying to pass a ticking force-field, and racing each other to be first through each door.

Hobbs, circa 2007

The game was designed by Ed Hobbs in 1984, for Broderbund Software.  Broderbund was a powerhouse game publisher from the 80’s into the early 90’s; the list of classic hits from them would be too large to reproduce here, but some gems include Choplifter!, Lode Runner and Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?.  Hobbs himself did Seafox for the company, and later the combat flight simulator Operation Airstorm for Expert Software.

There’s really only one word to describe The Castles of Dr. Creep:  diabolical.  It’s a platform game, but with a heavy puzzle element.  I’m not sure of the plot, but I think it revolves around the eponymous Dr. Creep needing to sell off his 13 castles; perhaps the electric bill for all those lightning spheres got to be too much.  At any rate, players assume the role of a hapless buyer, only out to purchase a fixer-upper with a nice view of the moors, but finding themselves in a battle to escape alive.

I’d employ a housing inspector before I signed on the dotted line

The castles are listed in the menu in order of difficulty, but even the early castles present a daunting challenge, equipped with such amenities as one-directional poles, conveyor belts, the aforementioned lightning spheres and laser guns, teleportation pods… along with the (un)dead tenants who populate the castles such as mummies and Frankenstein monsters, each of whom have different abilities in chasing you down.

Frankies go to Horrorwood

There is a single-player mode, but the game really shines when two people get in front of the computer, making their way through the castle simultaneously.  Most puzzles and traps are designed so that two people working in tandem can greatly shorten the time it takes to make it to the exit door.  What generally ends up happening is one player will man a switch that needs to stay open while the other player makes his way through the screen.  Then the second player must either run through the gauntlet alone, with his buddy cheering (or jeering) him the whole time.  Either that, or you must split up and approach the room from another entrance; in these cases, each player move through their respective rooms alternately, until meeting up again.

I Had Four Mummies

The rooms in Creep make for some hilarious moments; controlling the laser and taking pot-shots as your buddy scampers down the ladder; running like mad to slip by a force field before the timer runs out; luring the mummies towards your friend as he flails helplessly on a ledge.  The graphics are clear and bright, if perhaps a bit sparse with simply a black field as a backdrop, although this can certainly aid in the feeling of isolation the game exudes.

It’s a real testimony to the quality of a classic game when you fire it up nearly 30 years after playing it last, and you start yelling and giggling and squirming in your seat like you did as a kid.  The hallways and pathways of The Castles of Dr. Creep still hold their chilling allure decades later.

Box art for computer game Raid Over Moscow

A Quick Look Back: Raid Over Moscow

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Glancing over our shoulders to the games that were, we see Raid Over Moscow, released in 1984 by Access Software for the Commodore 64. It was released for most of the other major computer systems of the day the next year.

RoM was done by Bruce Carver, for the company he founded in 1982. This game and the terrific Beach-Head released in 1983 would be enough to put Access into the history books. However, Carver and his brother Roger also did the seminal golf game Leaderboard for the C64, likely the first true golf simulation most people had ever played. Not resting on their laurels, the Brothers Carver would take what they learned from Leaderboard and produce the wildly popular Links series of golf simulations for DOS computers, the first game appearing in 1990. When Access was purchased by Microsoft in 1999, the Links series absorbed Microsoft’s Golf games, continuing as further Links games up to 2003.

RoM puts the player in the shoes of squadron commander of a U.S. space station, on shift just as those godless commies decide to start WWIII. Once a launch as been detected, the clock starts ticking towards nuclear annihilation. You must get your pilots into their futuristic fighter aircraft, out of the hanger of the space station, and down to Earth where they match up against the defences of the city that has launched missiles towards North America.

Once on the ground, you enter a kind of Zaxxony mode where you fly through city defences in a psuedo-3D view. Dodging tanks, helicopters and trailing anti-aircraft missiles, you try and deal as much damage to the city before taking on the Soviet control silos.

With the control silo taken out, you rinse and repeat until you get down to just Moscow. One last run through the city, and you come to the Soviet Defense Center. With your bazooka, you must open the door to the reactor while comrades snipe from the walls and a strange UFO-looking tank tracks your every move. Once you open the white door to the reactor and have cleared out the enemy soldiers, it’s in to the reactor base and a duel with the robot maintenance crew. If you dispatch them with enough time to spare, you escape to fame and glory. If you fail to leave enough time to make it back to your ship, your family will be notified of your heroism.

RoM is one of the more compelling games in the C64 library, even though it is a mish-mash of other games such as the aforementioned Zaxxon, and it is sometimes not obvious what you have to do to continue the mission. The graphics are nice and clean, however, and pretty advanced for a C64 game.

Although I often wonder why the U.S. bothers with fighter jets when they obviously have a team of giants that tower over these fighter jets to do their bidding. They actually have to shrink these big guys before they fit in the jets. Where is the efficiency in that? Just strap rockets to the back of those bad boys and let them at it. And another question to leave you with… why are they wearing tap shoes?