8-bit games are necessarily limited. Playing computer games in those days were something you did for a couple of hours before you got bored and went and did something else. It was very rare for a game to be so captivating that you played it all day every day.

That kind of commitment is common with modern games. They're just so much more entertaining.

Errius wrote on 2024-08-25, 21:43:

8-bit games are necessarily limited. Playing computer games in those days were something you did for a couple of hours before you got bored and went and did something else. It was very rare for a game to be so captivating that you played it all day every day.

That was my experience, We had an Apple IIe up till 1995 and my mid teens and it was only ever a passing interest.
It wasn't till we upgraded to a 486/66 that I really become obsessed. Games like Doom, Raptor, C&C.
Although these days I struggle to play most dos games for extended period of time. Win9x seems to be the start of games that I can play for long periods.

People used to obsess over text adventure games, like the original 'Adventure' from the 1970s. (I remember hearing stories about kids flunking college because of that game). That was a huge market at one time but was pretty much dead by the end of the 80s.

Errius wrote on 2024-08-25, 21:43:

8-bit games are necessarily limited. Playing computer games in those days were something you did for a couple of hours before you got bored and went and did something else. It was very rare for a game to be so captivating that you played it all day every day.

This seems true for arcadish titles. Strategy titles could, but didn't have to fall into this trap. Much depended upon creating or using a mind setting for the game. And this is where manuals came in. Back then, reading was more common. People did read manuals for the complex titles. And the manuals created the images the graphics couldn't.
Programmers also had to learn how to create games that were sufficiently involving without going needlessly complex. Obviously, Sid Meier learned this very well, his debut title manages this already.

Errius wrote on 2024-08-26, 04:20:

People used to obsess over text adventure games, like the original 'Adventure' from the 1970s. (I remember hearing stories about kids flunking college because of that game). That was a huge market at one time but was pretty much dead by the end of the 80s.

I did play "Zork I - the great underground adventure" back in 1982/83 at a radio shark store, where it was on display. At the same time, the university had Rogue and StarFleet on their servers. We didn't flunk college, we locked us in over night. "Returned the Amulet of Yendor from Level 303".

chinny22 wrote on 2024-08-26, 02:30:

Win9x seems to be the start of games that I can play for long periods.

The most outstanding title with this ability for me was Master of Orion (DOS). Who needs sleep?

In general, I would agree that the unopposed C64, while providing endless simple games, provided very few absorbing, legendary games. That time was yet to come.
(Once ST and Amiga were around, some ports made it to the C64)

Part 2: The Atari ST
In 1986, the Atari ST became available and presented a tremendous leap over the C64. Due to the SM124 70Hz b/w display, it would also do fine for screen work. The machine was incredible but had one problem in contrast to the C64. There was much less software floating around.

Again, many titles only caught short interest. But some games were impressive and got played through.

Among the first games I played intensely was Silent Service. Another Sid Meier. I did play several campaigns, but got tired eventually.

Then there was "Sundog - Frozen Legacy". That is the game I associate most with the ST experience. FTL game iirc. I played it all the way through. It was way more immersive than Elite. It kind of was a second life.

I also played two Ultima titles through. But then I lost interest.

In 1988, I bought Interstel's "Empire - Wargame of the century". I played many many matches, on maximum difficulty. That game was a nailbiting challenge. A bit of a 4x type. But it unfolded very slowly.
I also bought a lot of SSI and played through: Roadwar 2000 and Roadwar Europe, Stellar Crusade, Red Lightning and Star Command.
And I fell in love with a 2-player coop arcade shooter (Better Dead than Alien), which my girlfriend and I played to the finish.

The last game that I think I bought for the Atari ST was Populous. It was a bit disappointing, so I never played through.

With the Atari ST, games became more fascinating, with slightly improved color or superb b/w resolution. Often, games could draw attention for days or even weeks.
Still, given that I owned the machine for 5 years, just a few titles became memorable.

One thing is noteworthy though: Not all games were released on all systems.

Errius wrote on 2024-08-25, 21:43:

8-bit games are necessarily limited. Playing computer games in those days were something you did for a couple of hours before you got bored and went and did something else. It was very rare for a game to be so captivating that you played it all day every day.

Depends on the game and the system. Back in the day, I found The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for the Game Boy to be very enjoyable and engaging. And I still like to play it today, on the original DMG-01 when possible (I do have one). To be fair, that game was released in 1993, despite being on an 8-bit system.

Going back to the 80s, I found Elite on the C64 to be very interesting, but I don't think I played it quite as intensely as some of my favorite games from the 90s and 2000s. There were also a few RPGs around that time that other people played (I was too young to care about that genre) like The Bard's Tale which are supposedly pretty good.

On the C64 I loved the gold box AD&D games like Pools of Radiance, Pirates!, Defender of the Crown, Ultimas, Commando, etc. The arcade type games you could only play for a while but the others you could play for a long time. Back in the day I played my C64 on a TV but now I have commodore monitors that look nicer.

I have the mono and color ST monitors with my 1040st and the last game I played on it was probably 1942 arcade shooter.

Unknown_K wrote on 2024-08-26, 09:19:

On the C64 I loved the gold box AD&D games like Pools of Radiance, Pirates!, Defender of the Crown, Ultimas, Commando, etc. The arcade type games you could only play for a while but the others you could play for a long time.

Yes, if I had kept the C64, I would have played Silent Service or AD&D etc on it as well. But moving to Atari ST required to sell the C64 equipment. Too expensive and too valuable to have two.

My own actual memories of using a C64 consist of playing a few games and messing with BASIC while visiting a family member whom happened to own one. 😀 I could ramble about other systems which I and/or my parents owned though. 😉

ux-3 wrote on 2024-08-26, 11:29:

Unknown_K wrote on 2024-08-26, 09:19:

On the C64 I loved the gold box AD&D games like Pools of Radiance, Pirates!, Defender of the Crown, Ultimas, Commando, etc. The arcade type games you could only play for a while but the others you could play for a long time.

Yes, if I had kept the C64, I would have played Silent Service or AD&D etc on it as well. But moving to Atari ST required to sell the C64 equipment. Too expensive and too valuable to have two.

I sold my C64 gear to get a 286 during college. I think it was around 2002 or so when I started stocking up on C64/128 gear again.

What I find awesome for my 8 bit favorites is an old android phone with a slider keyboard, can fire up an emulator and button mash to my heart's content. It kinda sucks for XT though, using F keys, escape, control is a bit funky, whereas most 8 bit emulators don't have as many keys and can map them sensibly to the 4 row kb.

One affliction I have carried forward from ye olden days, is the roguelike Game of Moria... it's crack... I have never found a version for a phone I like though so usually running it on DOSbox or the XT portable or something.... though it's better on a 286+ (quite a bit of calculation and keeping track of monsters/items on a level so it can bog down and takes a couple of secs or more when it's gotta generate anything, run speed can be slow too) ..... these days I mostly only play it when I'm officially sick in bed 'coz at least then someone checks in and brings food and drink once in a while 🤣

One thing to keep in mind is that most of our attention spans were drastically different back in the day. I'm too young to have grown up with a C64, but I could certainly play a crappy DOS game for hours on end as a kid. I think age had a lot to do with it, as well as my limited number of games to play. I definitely wasn't a play for a couple of hours and go do something else type of kid. Rather, I would play until my parents told me to quit and do something else. That being said, they always limited my computer time, so I might have gotten bored more easily if I was allowed to play as long as I wanted.

I've gone back and played a lot of the games from the 80's I grew up on, and like others have said, many of them I thought were cool at the time just didn't have a lot of "replayability" unless you were bored. There were very few games I spent hours playing, comparatively speaking, until the NES hit the market.

What's funny, I owned a lot of software for our VIC20 and C64, more than any other platform at the time, but I have much clearer memories of my TI-99/4A than the C64, even though the TI-99 was inferior in every way, with a smaller library, but it was my first computer (not a family computer) and that's probably why it stands out in my memory, that and I always thought the TI just looked so much cooler. I got it as a gift from my uncle in 1981 and, like I said, wasn't a family use computer, buy my own, so it got a ton of use. The Commodore machines were for everyone until they were eventually delegated to my room.

Looking back, I went down the text adventure wormhole for a while and loved it, but I can only think of a few games that I really invested a lot of time in across those platforms. The same can't be said for our Atari VCS, I spent countless hours playing Pitfall, Asteroids, Adventure, PacMan, and many others. I was addicted like so many other kids of the era. In terms of computer games, a few that jump out are...

• Parsec, loved it probably becasue I loved Defender, I was always chasing high scores and loved the speech! (TI)

• Star Trek Strategic Operations. Being a trek fan, I lost many hours of my childhood to this game, and again, loved the speech!

• Tunnels of Doom. I thought this game was so cool at the time! (TI)

• Microsurgeon. The game just fascinated me and I spent many hours playing it. (TI)

• Adventureland. I remember spending a lot of time on this one as well. (TI)

• Munch Man and TI Invaders. Both clones, and I loved them both! (TI)

• Lunar Lander. Again, chasing those high scores. (Vic 20)

• Ghostbusters. I was obsessed with the movie and game. (C64)

• Wizard of Wor. I got this one from a friend and spent many hours playing it. (C64)

• Lode Runner. I think everyone played this one. (C64)

• Little Computer People. I was obsessed with this "game" and it ran for days on my C64. I thought it was SO cool at the time, and still do.

I better stop there, the more I think about it, the more games that come to mind. I go back from to time and play every game in the list, just to take a trip down memory lane, and I still find myself enjoying them.

Many times I questioned a decision and late found that I was right in the first place

I have often through of trying to get a used c64 off ebay. But then I think, that's okay as long as I realize that's it's a total waste of time, that no one would ever even see much less use any programs that I write.
Same thing with the DOS computer I got rid of. Sometimes I think of trying to re-build, but then I think why.

The C64 may have been advanced for the time, but it many ways it was very limited. I spent a LOT of time on it and got pretty good at assembly. The sprite graphics were great, but 8 was just not enough. And things that we take for granted today, like even display a picture in even 256 colors, forget it!

I pretty frequently use my 8-bit consoles and computers to play games, and am actually impressed by how fun and deep a lot of these old games are. It's an absolute pleasure to just start a game up and be on your way playing it, instead of sitting through cutscenes, exposition, endless slooooow voice acting, and the like.

My absolute favorite genre is RPGs (they are basically all that I play), and many on the 8-bit machines are among my personal favorites. Phantasy Star, Dragon Quest II/III, Final Fantasy I/III, and Mother are all 5/5 games on the 8-bit consoles; while Ultima III-V, Might & Magic I/II, the Gold Box games, the Phantasie series, and Wizardry I-V are all some of the best RPGs ever made and all run on 8-bit computers.

I'd easily rank Wizardry V, Might & Magic: Book One, and Pool of Radiance in my top 5 games of all time, and this isn't nostalgia on my part, as I've only played through them within the past few years.

ncmark wrote on 2024-08-28, 23:56:

The C64 may have been advanced for the time, but it many ways it was very limited.
I spent a LOT of time on it and got pretty good at assembly. The sprite graphics were great, but 8 was just not enough.
And things that we take for granted today, like even display a picture in even 256 colors, forget it!

Oof, the C64.. I do have sort of a love-hate relationship with it, similar to CGA. 🙁
I'm also suspicious of its glorification, since I'm not a fan of cults and fanaticism in general (hi Linux!).

Personally, I think that graphics aren't everything, also. The C64 has other strengths.
The C64 has a large library of software, for example, including text adventures.

Speaking in defense of the C64,
it also has a fine community which many of them are electronic hobbyists.

That's why there's a lot of vintage electronics equipment for it:
Eprom programmers (Dela etc), RTTY interfaces (Bonito), RS-232 adapters and Packet Radio software (Baycom, Pakratt) etc.

In some way of another, C64 development reminds me of the good old DOS days with QuickBASIC 4.5 and Turbo Pascal 6/7.
Alas, it's easier to find C64 fans than DOS lovers these days. C64 is perceived as retro-cool, while DOS is lame. 🙁

So it might be worth it to overcome ourself and look past the C64's poor graphics and memory and build a bridge to the C64 community.
Because at the heart, we're participating same hobby.

PS: About 8-Bit games being repetitive.. It depends maybe, as usual. I could play the NES for hours when I was little.
The Japanese had some higher-end 8-Bit systems based around the Zilog Z80. PC-88, MSX2..

And strictly speaking, the IBM PC with CGA was an 8-Bit system, as well.
The 16-Bit instruction set of 8088/8086 didn't change a bit.

From a hardware point of view, it was just another Z80/i8080 style system.
Even the i8088/i8086 support chips were originally made for i8080. So it's really an 8-Bit PC.

Edit: To really be able to admire the C64 maybe requires going back in time and comparing it to its older sister, the ViC-20.
Compared to the VC-20 and its specs, the C64 was very advanced indeed. The difference felt as big as that of Fairchild Channel F vs NES, maybe.

Jo22 wrote on 2024-08-29, 17:40:

In some way of another, C64 development reminds me of the good old DOS days with QuickBASIC 4.5 and Turbo Pascal 6/7. Alas, it's […]
Show full quote

In some way of another, C64 development reminds me of the good old DOS days with QuickBASIC 4.5 and Turbo Pascal 6/7.
Alas, it's easier to find C64 fans than DOS lovers these days. C64 is perceived as retro-cool, while DOS is lame. 🙁

So it might be worth it to overcome ourself and look past the C64's poor graphics and memory and build a bridge to the C64 community.
Because at the heart, we're participating same hobby.

Imho, the C64 catered to a different game audience. The C64 offered arcade galore while the PC did offer more extensions of classical wargames from SPI/Avalon Hill into the digital domain.

In 1991, I sold all my classical computers (c64, ST, Amiga and XT) to buy a 386. Looking back tells me, that from then on, impressive, immersive games would shake hands. When I look back today and play what I used to love in the 80s, this is very apparent. Playing Empire from 1988 is somewhat tedious, while playing Master of Orion from 1993 is still elegant fun on a long train ride. Something happend in between. Imho, the transit happened in 1990, when VGA games combined with Soundblaster audio, 2MB ram and 16 MHz AT speed. And then it took of.