What recent games are you all playing? I love firing up the old classics but I've been playing a lot of more recent releases. Zeta Wing, Zeta Wing 2, Lester, H.E.R.O. is Back and Good Kniight (a great version of Ocean's Hunchback). Night Knight is a brilliant platformer as is The Bear Essentials. So many great new games to play. 🤪 itch.io has been a great resource for new releases for several platforms and my library seems to be growing daily 😂

I know it’s a little simplistic but I think you can break the commercial life of the C64 down into 3 distinct timespans: 1982-1984 the early years. Dominated by US software appearing on 16k carts and disk. Games had simplistic graphics and sound on the whole but could be innovative. Playability was king though. There were many conversions of arcade games of the time which the 64 could handle pretty well. Many UK software houses were in their infancy a lot were producing unofficial clones of the same arcade games. There were a few mainly multi format magazines containing type in listings with a section devoted to games rather than being games based. 1985-1987 Commercial Peak. Commodore launched the 128 & 64C. US software was in full flow many multi disk games started to really push the level of depth from a game. In Europe where tapes were prevalent started to show what could be achieved with a single load game. Turbo loads sped up the loading time of games. Graphics improved massively with shading and bas relief starting to be used. Musicians like Rob Hubbard & Martin Galway started to make the SID sing. Arcade conversions were still popular and the 64 was still capable of delivering a decent version of most coin ops but newer 3d arcade games were starting to prove more of a challenge. Budget games started to make an appearance at first they weren’t great at first but some really good games started to appear around 1986 many rivalling full priced games. Games magazines were popping up everywhere with many devoted to Commodore machines or just the 64. The Commodore 64 and Spectrum were the best selling computers in the UK. 1988-1993 The twilight years. The 64 was no longer the king of the castle as far as Commodore was concerned with the advent of the mainstream Amiga 500. In Europe particularly 16 bits was where it was at and the 64 became the lower budget option. In the US PC gaming was on the rise. In many cases the 64 version of games may have been a cut down version of the 16 bit version, often an afterthought and arcade conversions in many cases were often beyond what the 64 was capable of. Of course there were exceptional cases. Budget games and re-releases at budget price became the biggest selling games. But despite this developers could still produce some fantastic games many of which coming from Continental Europe. Some of the 64’s most technically impressive games came from this period. Music also continued to expand with the SID being pushed to its limits. Commodore and 64 mags had a lot of Amiga content with the 64 often playing second fiddle.

The US release of Lancelot maybe the worst. (My family had that blow up dinosaur used as a dragon by the way, lol)

Which games came with the most memorable artwork? With graphics being quite simplistic back in the 8 bit era the artwork on games did a lot of the heavy lifting in giving you an idea of what a game was all about. I always really liked the artwork on the early Electronic Arts releases such as Archon, Realm of Impossibility and Murder on the Zinderneuf.

Back in the day there was no more fun to be had than getting one or more mates around to play on the 64. There was no better feeling than taking on your mates head to head. Which were the best 2 player (or more) games for the 64? I’ll start with a couple of great 2 player racing games. First is Rally Speedway. This was released in 1984 by Commodore. And written by John Anderson. As a one player game is pretty good allowing you to race in a time trial around the track trying to beat your best time. Where the game really shines is in 2 player mode. This is the ultimate risk/reward game in that you have to get far enough ahead of your opponent to get a full screen ahead and your opponent would get a 10 second time penalty. Unfortunately the closer you get to the edge of the screen the less you can see corners and obstacles coming up. The handling is perfect allowing you to drift around corners (depending on the setting) performing some amazing cornering. The options on the title screen include the top speed achievable, normal, wet or icy roads and invulnerability. A race with a top speed of 100 mph on a wet road is about the perfect setting for an amazing 2 player experience. You can aim to push your opponent off the track only ending up missing them if they braked and hitting a house next to the track, or get nearly a screen ahead only to not see the corner coming up and hit a tree. It’s so much fun. It also has a really good selection of tracks and even a brilliant course designer allowing you to save your own tracks to disk! This game was obviously an inspiration for later games like Micro Machines. It may not look much but this is a real hidden gem and if you haven’t ever played it I would thoroughly encourage you to do so. The next Pitstop II needs no introduction. This is the best pole position type 2 player race game. I spent many hours playing head to head on this game against friends. You could play it as pure out and out racer beating you opponent to the line or target their tyres forcing them to crash or have to make a pitstop while you make the call as to whether you have good enough tyres and enough fuel to skip the Pits allowing you to get ahead. Great times. It has so much Epyx polish and was so far ahead of games like the C64 conversion of Pole Position.