"Chase the elusive cubes that run through the 31 screens of the game, but be careful! Catch only the one that is the same colour or you will lose a life. You will get extra points if you chain cube captures quickly."
This is my all-time favourite video game, the replay value is unlimited because the dungeon is always different every time you play, so essentially you never get the same game twice. Paul Stephenson thought of everything in this game, you even get captured. The variety of deadly animals are great and different weapons need to be used at different times. Also, some are fast and some are slow and some even follow you. The feeling of scarce resources is real, I play this game all the ti...
C64 Game Downloads
Part of the Commodore 64's success was its sale in regular retail stores instead of only electronics or computer hobbyist specialty stores. Commodore produced many of its parts in-house to control costs, including custom integrated circuit chips from MOS Technology. In the United States, it has been compared to the Ford Model T automobile for its role in bringing a new technology to middle-class households via creative and affordable mass-production.[14] Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles have been made for the Commodore 64, including development tools, office productivity applications, and video games.[15] C64 emulators allow anyone with a modern computer, or a compatible video game console, to run these programs today. The C64 is also credited with popularizing the computer demoscene and is still used today by some computer hobbyists.[16] In 2011, 17 years after it was taken off the market, research showed that brand recognition for the model was still at 87%.[5]
Commodore sold the C64 not only through its network of authorized dealers, but also through department stores, discount stores, toy stores and college bookstores. The C64 had a built-in RF modulator and thus could be plugged into any television set. This allowed it (like its predecessor, the VIC-20) to compete directly against video game consoles such as the Atari 2600. Like the Apple IIe, the C64 could also output a composite video signal, avoiding the RF modulator altogether. This allowed the C64 to be plugged into a specialized monitor for a sharper picture. Unlike the IIe, the C64's NTSC output capability also included separate luminance/chroma signal output equivalent to (and electrically compatible with) S-Video, for connection to the Commodore 1702 monitor, providing even better video quality than a composite signal.
Aggressive pricing of the C64 is considered to have been a major catalyst in the video game crash of 1983. In January 1983, Commodore offered a $100 rebate in the United States on the purchase of a C64 to anyone that traded in another video game console or computer.[24] To take advantage of this rebate, some mail-order dealers and retailers offered a Timex Sinclair 1000 (TS1000) for as little as $10 with purchase of a C64. This deal meant that the consumer could send the TS1000 to Commodore, collect the rebate, and pocket the difference; Timex Corporation departed the computer market within a year. Commodore's tactics soon led to a price war with the major home computer manufacturers. The success of the VIC-20 and C64 contributed significantly to the exit from the field of Texas Instruments and other smaller competitors.
Although many early C64 games were inferior Atari 8-bit ports, by late 1983 the growing installed base caused developers to create new software with better graphics and sound.[34] It was the only non-discontinued, widely available home computer by then, with more than 500,000 sold during the Christmas season;[35] because of production problems in Atari's supply chain, by the start of 1984 "the Commodore 64 largely has [the low-end] market to itself right now", The Washington Post reported.[36]
With sales booming and the early reliability issues with the hardware addressed, software for the C64 began to grow in size and ambition during 1984. This growth shifted to the primary focus of most US game developers. The two holdouts were Sierra, who largely skipped over the C64 in favor of Apple and PC compatible machines, and Broderbund, who were heavily invested in educational software and developed primarily around the Apple II. In the North American market, the disk format had become nearly universal while cassette and cartridge-based software all but disappeared. So most US-developed games by this point grew large enough to require multi-loading.
At a mid-1984 conference of game developers and experts at Origins Game Fair, Dan Bunten, Sid Meier, and a representative of Avalon Hill said that they were developing games for the C64 first as the most promising market.[37] By 1985, games were an estimated 60 to 70% of Commodore 64 software.[38] Computer Gaming World stated in January 1985 that companies such as Epyx that survived the video game crash did so because they "jumped on the Commodore bandwagon early".[39] Over 35% of SSI's 1986 sales were for the C64, ten points higher than for the Apple II. The C64 was even more important for other companies,[40] which often found that more than half the sales for a title ported to six platforms came from the C64 version.[41] That year, Computer Gaming World published a survey of ten game publishers that found that they planned to release forty-three Commodore 64 games that year, compared to nineteen for Atari and forty-eight for Apple II,[42] and Alan Miller stated that Accolade developed first for the C64 because "it will sell the most on that system".[43]
SSI exited the Commodore 64 market in 1991, after most competitors.[58] Ultima VI, released in 1991, was the last major C64 game release from a North American developer, and The Simpsons, published by Ultra Games, was the last arcade conversion. The latter was a somewhat uncommon example of a US-developed arcade port as after the early years of the C64, most arcade conversions were produced by UK developers and converted to NTSC and disk format for the US market, American developers instead focusing on more computer-centered game genres such as RPGs and simulations. In the European market, disk software was rarer and cassettes were the most common distribution method; this led to a higher prevalence of arcade titles and smaller, lower-budget games that could fit entirely in the computer's memory without requiring multiloads. European programmers also tended to exploit advanced features of the C64's hardware more than their US counterparts.[citation needed]
In 1982, Commodore released the Commodore MAX Machine in Japan. It was called the Ultimax in the United States and VC-10 in Germany. The MAX was intended to be a game console with limited computing capability and was based on a cut-down version of the hardware family later used in the C64. The MAX was discontinued months after its introduction because of poor sales in Japan.[62]
In 1990, the C64 was repackaged in the form of a game console, called the C64 Games System (C64GS), with most external connectivity removed.[75] A simple modification to the 64C's motherboard was made to allow cartridges to be inserted from above. A modified ROM replaced the BASIC interpreter with a boot screen to inform the user to insert a cartridge. Designed to compete with the Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Master System, it suffered from very low sales compared to its rivals. It was another commercial failure for Commodore, and it was never released outside Europe. The Commodore game system lacked a keyboard, so any software that required a keyboard could not be used.
In 1982, the C64's graphics and sound capabilities were rivaled only by the Atari 8-bit family and appeared exceptional when compared with the widely publicized Atari VCS and Apple II. The C64 is often credited with starting the computer subculture known as the demoscene (see Commodore 64 demos). It is still being actively used in the demoscene,[76] especially for music (its SID sound chip even being used in special sound cards for PCs, and the Elektron SidStation synthesizer). Even though other computers quickly caught up with it, the C64 remained a strong competitor to the later video game consoles Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Sega Master System, thanks in part to its by-then established software base, especially outside North America, where it comprehensively outsold the NES.[citation needed]
Because of lower incomes and the domination of the Sinclair Spectrum in the UK, almost all British C64 software used cassette tapes. Few cassette C64 programs were released in the US after 1983 and, in North America, the diskette was the principal method of software distribution. The cartridge slot on the C64 was also mainly a feature used in the computer's first two years on the US market and became rapidly obsolete once the price and reliability of 1541 drives improved. A handful of PAL region games used bank switched cartridges to get around the 16 KB memory limit.
The version of Microsoft BASIC is not very comprehensive and does not include specific commands for sound or graphics manipulation, instead requiring users to use the "PEEK and POKE" commands to access the graphics and sound chip registers directly. To provide extended commands, including graphics and sound, Commodore produced two different cartridge-based extensions to BASIC 2.0: Simons' BASIC and Super Expander 64. Other languages available for the C64 include Pascal, C,[79][80] Logo, Forth, and FORTRAN. Compilers for BASIC 2.0 such as Petspeed 2 (from Commodore), Blitz (from Jason Ranheim), and Turbo Lightning (from Ocean Software) were produced. Most commercial C64 software was written in assembly language, either cross-developed on a larger computer, or directly on the C64 using a machine code monitor or an assembler. This maximized speed and minimized memory use. Some games, particularly adventures, used high-level scripting languages and sometimes mixed BASIC and machine language. 2ff7e9595c
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