/vr/ - Retro Games

>>3450953
Anything on Atari 2600

Street Fighter II on the C64. For the love of crumb cake, how were you going to convert an arcade game with six buttons on a one button stick?

>>3450959

That's unfair. Atari 2600 games don't look nice, but they always run smoothly. If you want a bad port, you need to look at home computers.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDGiE4wu07w

>>3450963
>filename
kek

A lot of later C64 games like Strider were awful. That was like using a Ford Pinto to pull a trailer from a Peterbilt.

All of those Data East ports done by Quicksilver were uniformly bad.

>>3450959
The Double Dragon port is pretty impressive for what it is.

Every single arcade conversion on 8 bit consoles and before. Even of the 16 bit generation consoles only the Neo Geo managed to have good arcade conversions.

>>3451223
>Every single arcade conversion on 8 bit consoles and before.
You shut your mouth

>>3451226
>can't be used with the NES version of the NES
Makes perfect sense when you think about it.

You can feel the spite of the programmers seething through the controller when you play it.

>>3451237
Kek. Well said, but
That game was awful in the arcade as well

>>3451060
Pac-man is pretty bad.

C64 Paperboy is awful.

>can't even be bothered to include the music for the arcade game
>instead they replace it with some different OC donut steal tune

>>3450953
C64 Double Dragon is up there with Atari 2600 Pac-Man in the arcade conversion Hall of Shame. But then, almost every home conversion of DD was a pile of fail and AIDS.

Most vector games still scan as "futuristic" despite their primitive graphics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHUToeQykp0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tEgk4-5T-U

>>3451223
>nes arcade conversions of DK, DK Jr, Pac Man, Dig Dug
>bad
Ayyylmao
Contra and Lifeforce were better on NES as well.

>>3451237
The games was terrible no matter the conversion.

>>3450953
Dear god. I remember buying this for my C-64. The game was so fucking bad the developers actually apologised for it in the instruction manual.

There was another C-64 port years later. It was absolute shit too.

>>3450963
Yeah that's bad. Micronics is responsible for that, they did that fuckawful ghosts n goblins port too.
>>3451337
That's a decent port and the music is rad.

>>3451452
>doesn't even include the ability to throw papers at enemies to knock them out

>>3450953
And yet, this port still has the two player co-op mode which the NES does not.

>>3451465
Exactly. But the NES version has an 'awesome' vs mode.
And when you're used to the arcade version, the NES version is a piece of shit. It's terrible.

I don't know about the c64 version though. How is that compared to the NES version?

raiden trad on snes and MD
fireshark on MD
daisenpuh on MD
they are like totally different games built from scratch

>>3451281
Pfft... I would like to see you say that to Southside Jim's face.

>>3451223
>Neo Geo
>16 bit conversions
>playing SamSho, Fatal Fury, or AoF on anything that wasn't MVS

ayyyyy

>>3451483
>I don't know about the c64 version though. How is that compared to the NES version?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFJHOz3TSgg

You tell me.

>>3451226
>>3451234

I've been wondering this for awhile. What the fuck is the mattel version of the NES

>>3452007
I don't understand the rationale for eating up all the sprites with stacked hi-res overlays like that.

Most of those late 80s-early 90s arcade conversions on the C64 were uniformly rubbish.

Not an arcade port, but The Human Race from Mastertronic. I am not making this up--the first level is completely impossible to beat because your character moves so slowly that he can't dodge enemies at all. I used a trained version that makes you invincible, so I played through the entire game but none of the later levels were any fun at all.

Where to start? For one thing, 99% of Ocean TV/movie tie-ins on the C64. Or CRL, they never made a good game. Or Grandslam. Or Elite (the company, not the game). Or Gremlin. C64 has a MASSIVE list of stinkers.

Nemesis the Warlock (Martech), this must be one of the worst UK titles on the C64 after Miami Vice (Ocean).

And how about that Epyx Barbie game?

>>3452078
Frankie Goes To Hollywood

>>3452092
Nothing wrong with that game, you just didn't "get" it.

>>3452012
The NES version sold in several parts of Europe... like Italy

I'd be interested in seeing the good list anyways, might be something Europe-centric that really should go in there. Unless this is a more personal take on the games...?

I think if you made a top 10 worst C64 games list, it would be 90% European games while if you made a top 10 best list, it would be 90% US games.

>>3452115
Not at all. Both the US and Europe had good games and bad games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyVSx-IJBZA

Need I say more?

>>3452115
Street Fighter II definitely. Along with Hard Drivin', this is a port that probably should have never been attempted.

>>3452115
Nonsense, there's plenty of bad US games on the Commie. Of my personal top 10 C64 games, 9 are European and only one is American.

>>3452135
I guess you don't know very many American games because there's very few European devs that can touch EA, Origin, Microprose, LucasArts, SSI, and Broderbund.

Of course there were bad US games too (like all those Quicksilver Data East arcade ports), but the UK had infinitely more shovelware starting with the budget titles from Mastertronic, Hi-Tec, Bubble Bus, etc. Those companies cranked out low quality games like sausages.

>>3452148
Don't forget Activision.

>>3452154
And Synapse.

>>3452154
Activision's run up to about 1986 was great, but in the latter part of the 80s, they started sliding downhill quite noticeably. Galactic Games, Galaxy Force, Knightmare, Ghostbusters 3, Enduro Race, these don't compare with their 84-86 output.

>>3452148
Fair enough, maybe you personally don't like Rockstar Ate My Hamster even though thousands of others did. It's no different than C64 Top 10 lists which always include Sid Meier's Pirates! even though that game is boring tripe.

When it came to text adventures, Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9 were more than a match for Infocom. Like the other guy said, Activision declined after the mid-80s and several of their better games had European origins anyway. Origin were really an Apple II-centred company and not all of their C64 games were that good and even the good ones had nightmarish load times. I've tried out practically every Synapse game and they're just the same monotonous arcade platformers you'd get from any one of 10 UK devs. Drelbs, Slamball, and Sentinel are fine though.

It's quite obvious to me that you're in love with your big disk multiload games and IMO it's no different than otaku who insist everything Japanese is innately superior to Western stuff and maybe you're also as an American biased towards the game genres that were popular there like CRPGs and simulations.

>>3452187
Continued...

Broderbund was a mixed bag. Karateka, Wings of Fury, Lode Runner, Centauri Alliance, Raid on Bungeling Bay...all classics. The less said about their other games, the better. LucasArts? Sure, Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken were classics. Nobody I think would argue that, but their other games like Koronis Rift and Eidolon weren't that great. Ballblazer is fine. Labyrinth was a joke.

Anyway, the games I love are arcade-style games, a genre that American devs usually fared poorly in especially in the later years of the C64. All the great arcade conversions were done in Europe and all the games that really pushed the hardware like Creatures and Turrican were European. They weren't just splashy tech demos, they played fantastically as well.

Of course, that doesn't mean I dislike CRPGs or simulations. I can name quite a few classics on the C64 like Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Conflict in Vietnam, and SSI gold box games.

So please don't act like I'm not versed in the C64's NTSC library.

>>3452007
No music and you have to play as a nigger...

>>3452248
Not to mention those sfx when you punch someone.

Here's the good list as it stands. I still need to cut it down to 32 titles, and there are 50 more I could add. I guess my caveat would be that I don't necessarily think that these are the best 32 games, only that they are 32 great games. Like I said, whatever gets the shaft this round will probably end up in "Volume 2" ...

Archon
Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior
Bard's Tale, The: Tales of the Unknown
Bounces
Bruce Lee
Buggy Boy
California games
Defender of the Crown
Elite
Friday the 13th
Ghostbusters
Impossible Mission
Jumpman
Kikstart
Last Ninja
Law of the West
Little Computer People
Lode Runner
M.U.L.E.
Maniac Mansion
Mayhem in Monsterland
Montezuma's Revenge
Nebulus
Paradroid
Park Patrol
Pirates!
Racing Destruction Set
Rally Speedway
Realm of Impossibility
Sentinel, The
Seven Cities of Gold
Skate or Die!
Space Taxi
Toy Bizarre
Ultima (3 or 4)
Uridium
Wasteland
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders

I'm not really sure which list to put Friday the 13th on. It's so bad, it's good!

>>3452259
All those games and not one SSI gold box? Come on, you can't have C64 without that.

Also I would lose Little Computer People; it's not really much of a game, although I guess you could see it as a precursor to The Sims.

>>3452259
There's a few surprising entries there and I wouldn't be shocked at the bias towards NTSC games assuming you're American. I understand what you say about "Friday the 13th", it really is dog doodah to keep it mild. Maybe for the sake of sanity, it should be in the bad list.

I'd go with Ultima 4 over 3 and include either Maniac or Zak, but not both. Maybe drop Elite as well. It's not bad, but it's far from the best port of that game. Last Ninja II is also preferable to the first game.

Games not listed I'd consider would be Bubble Bobble, Mercenary, Project Firestart, Alter Ego and Armalyte.

>>3452259
This is a good list other than maybe Elite, which is best played on some other system, also I would add Castles of Dr. Creep.

And no, I don't consider Level 9 and Magnetic Scrolls as good as Infocom (the British humour in their games is great, though). A couple of good Scrolls games are Fish and The Guild of Thieves. Level 9's highlights are Snowball and The Worm in Paradise, those could be included in a good list.

Here's the retooled good list (Elite removed per your suggestions):

AD&D (Hillsfar, Pools of ?)
Alter Ego
Archon
Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior
Bard's Tale, The: Tales of the Unknown
Beach-Head II: The Dictator Strikes Back
Bounces
Bruce Lee
California games
Defender of the Crown
Ghostbusters
Impossible Mission
Jumpman
Kikstart
Last Ninja II
Law of the West
Little Computer People
Lode Runner
M.U.L.E.
Maniac Mansion
Mayhem in Monsterland
Montezumas Revenge
Nebulus
Paradroid
Park Patrol
Pirates!
Realm of Impossibility
Sentinel, The
Skate or Die!
Space Taxi
Toy Bizarre
Ultima 4
Uridium
Wasteland

That's 34; need to cut 2.

>>3452212
>Anyway, the games I love are arcade-style games, a genre that American devs usually fared poorly in especially in the later years of the C64. All the great arcade conversions were done in Europe

Err, did we even do _any_ arcade conversions on the C64 after 1984-ish? I can't name any US-developed ones from the later years of the C64 except those shitty Quicksilver Data East games.

>>3452284
>>3452281
C64 Elite may have not been the best version of the game, but it was probably the best version Americans got to see.

>>3452291
Did the Amiga Elite ever get released in the US? I know obviously we didn't get the BBC, Acorn, or NES versions.

>>3452302
It did, but they colourised the game and it lost a lot of its character as a result.

>>3452065
Human Race is a fine bloody game. You shut your mouth. I had an original, non-cracked copy of HR, *Beat* all 5 screens, (cheated on screen 3 with a trackball; you kinda have to to save your knuckles), and highly dig the Ron Hubbard music.

As for terrible C64 games, I'd go with Cohen's Towers, Mr. Wimpy, Frog Master, and that cartridge version of Congo Bongo.

Of course two very underated classics are Portal (activision) and Star Fleet 1 (interstel), I would replace one of those with The Sentinel, which is an OK game, but not as deep and enjoyable as the two first mentioned.

>>3452285
I'd personally drop Mayhem in Monsterland. I don't believe that was even sold in shops; it may have been mail order only and it came out in 1993 which the C64 and even the Amiga were all-but dead. They probably sold 100 copies.

>>3452321
All the same, might we then exclude late Atari 2600 titles like Double Dragon?

Besides, Mayhem is a brilliant game and they did sell at least a few thousand copies.

>>3450953
C64 Double Dragon is so bad that you'd have more fun going out in the street and having a real fist fight.

Worst list:

Frenesis (Mastertronic)
The last V8 (Codemasters)
All Domark James Bond games
Anything by Martech (with the exception of Mega Apocalypse perhaps, it's fun for 5 minutes, and hey Samantha Fox Strip Poker in black and white (Artworx even managed a far better Strip Poker three years earlier))
Wizardry (The Edge...awful UK version)
Brian Bloodaxe (The Edge)
Garfield (The Edge)
Quo Vadis (The Edge)
Risk (The Edge)

Come to think if it, did The Edge make _any_ good games at all?

It's a funny thing with UK game developers; you can just name the company and realise that virtually their entire catalogue was garbage.

>>3452334
Licence To Kill was pretty good, other than that I agree about Domark James Bond games.

RISK by Edge was good I thought. So was Bobby Bearing (a Marble Madness like adventure game) and Inside Outing. But that's about it. Fairlight was a decent port but ran slowly. Strangely enough the Spectrum versions of some of those games were quite heralded and they are decent titles; guess the ports just sucked.

Martech had Crazy Comets and Mega Apocalypse (both by Simon Nicols), and Equinox. Uchi Mata wasn't a half bad judo game either. And then there's Zoids... it's a marmite game, some people got it and played it to death, some people didn't. I love MA btw Tom, it's better than Mad Planets and a real challenge later on. One of my favourite shooters on the C64

I don't want to just bash all UK games; for example, Thalamus never released a dud or System 3 for that matter, but the important thing you notice is that both of those companies released only a small number of games, but with much more focus on quality and craftsmanship, quite unlike Mastertronic who just churned out games assembly line style.

Same with Magnetic Scrolls and Level 9; they had small catalogues but with much higher quality per title. Gremlin Graphics had a few good games.

Rainbow Arts, a German company, lots of games on C64, most of them very bad, but a few classics too, my fave being Rock 'n Roll, an excellent puzzler (But only to be enjoyed on disk). Katakis is also excellent.

>>3452187
Also calling me a disk snob is a little insulting since common sense would dictate that you can't have a serious computer with a bleeding cassette drive. Yes, disks were more expensive than the computer itself, but they're mechanical devices so Moore's Law doesn't apply to them.

Besides, how can you do serious work on a computer with a tape drive? You can't do word processing, you can't keep mailing lists, write newsletters. Yes, I know a few autists did that stuff on the Spectrum but less said about that the better.

How else would you play the Epyx "Games" series? You'd have to be silly to want the cassette releases of Summer Games II or Winter Games. Or how about Little Computer People, which was converted to tape for the UK market. They had to cut half the game out. Even more horrifying, Defender of the Crown. Yes, this was released over here on tape with half the thing missing. Unbelievable.

As for US companies mainly releasing strategy/CRPGs, I think companies like EA kept the balance quite well. EA did Patton vs Rommel, Bards Tale II and Starflight, at the same time they did Caveman Ugh-lympics, Demon Stalkers (excellent Gauntlet clone), Project Firestart, Skate or Die...etc.

I always wanted to try out MIM but I'm American and it won't work on an NTSC C64 at all.

>>3452370
There's a cracked version online that's been converted for NTSC and also fixes some bugs in the original. Enjoy. But be forewarned that all Thalamus games are almost inhumanly difficult.

>>3452367
Yeahyeah I know the UK had way too expensive 1541 drives, but they didn't have it all that bad. If you saw what the price of a 1541 in Germany was, you'd cry.

I think a lot of the UK C64 being tape based had to do with the predominance of the tape-based Spectrum; that was the lowest common denominator platform there and it didn't make sense to support disk formats which would exclude Spectrum owners.

Thanks guys for making this a better thread than the one OP started

Attack of the Mutant Camels on the C64 was a disgrace compared with the Atari 8-bit version.

Forbidden Forest is quite horrifying. Also Robocop 2. What the fuck was that?

Just how many games did Mastertronic develop using Activision's Game Maker anyway?

>>3450953
decent bandname

>>3450959
Bullshit. The 2600 conversion of Space Invaders was actually better than the original, with color graphics and over 100 variations like team play, invisible invaders, moving shields, etc.

Ms. Pac Man actually succeeded as an arcade port too, as it was programmed by GCC the company who hacked Pac Man to create Ms Pac Man in the first place (as part of a deal with Midway after they were caught selling Pac Man hack kits).

>>3452446
It wasn't Game Maker, it was some other such tool of UK origin. Anyway, here's Bionic Granny, one of the most infamous British C64 games of all. This game is so bad it redefines bad.

Any shmup where the enemies only move in a sine wave pattern should qualify.

Afterburner and Chase HQ are both bottom 10 for both C64 titles and arcade ports in general. Although honestly even the original arcade Afterburner was rubbish.

Footballer of the Year
Back to School
Airwolf
Speed King
Roadwars
Rygar
Rastan
Bombjack 2
Enduro Racer
Miami Vice
WEC Le Mans
Crazy Cars 1, 2, and 3
Everyone's a Wally
Joe Blade

The A-Team, dear god, The A-Team.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuEhKxyZw-M

This...this is a commercially released game, not a BASIC type-in from a magazine.

>2 playable characters instead of 3 like on the arcade version
>no multiplayer
No wonder Streets of Rage beats it in every way (so does Final Fight on the Sega CD, desu)

>>3452549
Final fight 2 and final fight 3 have co op.

>>3451223

I'm going to have to go check but I'm pretty sure the NES did a pretty good job with stuff like galaga.

>>3452475
>Game is equivalent to about $7 today
It was the modern equivalent of a weird Eastern European Steam game.

>>3451465
The SMS version had the two-player mode, as a kind of consolation prize to Sega owners.

>>3452148
>Those companies cranked out low quality games like sausages.
They had teenagers shit stuff out in BASIC and send it in for some pocket change.

>>3452679
That kind of game development didn't happen in the US after the video game crash. In the early days, a lot of computer games were made by amateurs, yes, but even then, devs had some quality standards. For example, Doug Smith's original Lode Runner prototype was rejected by Broderbund for being too crude, so he had to work on it and improve the sprite animation.

-

>>3452475
Most of those budget Mastertronic games look like VIC-20 stuff, but higher resolution.