I just made a major score!

[cessnaace]

I got a call the other day from my uncle in Arkanasas. He wanted to know if I would be interested in any Commodore stuff. Like what, I asked? His reply?

Two Commodore C64's; 2 external drives; a monitor; a printer; a box of games; over 100 Commodore software magazines. He didn't know if any of it worked, but he said he'd bring it down to Florida (where I live) if I was enterested. Do pigs love slop? Do Democrats love trashing Bush? Do gamerers love games? In short, I said ... YOU BETCHA!!!

I'll post a more detail list of what I get, and the shape it's all in, if anyone expresses and interest. :P

[thekeepr]

Thank goodness for relatives...sounds like you'll be C-64 bliss soon. Sounds like your new to the Commodore world too, don't worry about collecting all the games....there are about 12000 or so of them!!!(possibly more). I'm currently standing at 426 games (afew are utility programs though), I have enough bootleg disks that I may be in the 1000's. The graphic's are in the range of...say...the Colecovision or 7800, but still a lot of fun games to be had and played. Hopefully the disk drives fire up and you won't have to take them apart to clean them. Good luck and let us know what "goodies" in the game dept. you got. The Keeper

[Mayhem]

The graphic's are in the range of...say...the Colecovision or 7800

Take a look at these, and tell me the 7800 or Coleco could do this

Put it like this, the C64 had the best graphics of any 8 bit machine and could almost rival the 16 bits in some ways...

[Videogamerdaryll]

Congrats ....

[Jorpho]

How well do those 5.25" floppies hold out over the years?
________
Outdoor black

[thekeepr]

The Commodore disk that I find these days still have data intact...hard to believe after all these years. Of course magnetic media's worse enemy is....a magnet, or something with a strong magnetic field nearby, and to some extent, time, and moisture does'nt make matters help either. I think storing them vertically helps too, not a pile of them laying flat over time does the disk much good. A cool, dry, place to store them would be ideal, not all disk are treated this well. Heat and high humidity are a disk destroyer.
The disk drives I find in the wild, too, seem to be built like Sherman tanks...at least they weigh that much!! After some cleaning they work pretty well...have had a few that did'nt work...but normally they "come alive" with power up and prompting of the computer. I need to order a disk alighnment program so i can fix a few I have that do the head "chatter" thing.
I was a liitle off on my graphic descipition...thanks for the pictures to clear that up Mayhem....now if you could describe which games are illustrated, I'd be happy!!! The Keeper

[Flack]

Great story, I got my first C64 from an uncle as well.

As far as the floppies go, I have boxes and boxes of disks which have been stored just about as poorly as you can imagine. Piles of diskettes crammed into cardboard boxes which have been stored in attics and garages, being shuffled from house to house over the past 10 or so years. Last year I bought an SX-64 (the portable/luggable version of the C64), and much to my surprise I had a 95% or so success rate with my old disks.

One good thing about Commodore games was since the C64 used the Atari style joystick, the games weren't hard to figure out without instructions. Occasionally a game would use the space bar for a second button (I think that threw grenades in Commando, for example) but that's about as complicated as it got. For the most part, it was load and run!

One project I worked on for a while was transferring all my old Commodore disks to the PC by using one of those Star Commander cables. For the most part, what I found was even though the disk images would work on C64 emulators for the PC, nothing was as good as the original.

Flack

[Jorpho]

Hmm. Perhaps the low data density makes the disks hardier than all these 3.5" floppies that die on me.
________
POLISH RECIPES

[Mayhem]

I was a liitle off on my graphic descipition...thanks for the pictures to clear that up Mayhem....now if you could describe which games are illustrated, I'd be happy!!! The Keeper

From the top...

Turrican
Armalyte
Last Ninja 3
Uridium
Defender of the Crown
Creatures 2
Mayhem in Monsterland

All bar one of these were from Europe... it only partially explains why people don't think the C64 could do as much as it could. The other reason is people in the US went over to NES/Sega in the late 80s and missed out on some really gems in the C64 library, many of which are shown above.

C64 scene currently is 90% Europe based... I know US collectors and players, but most are over my side of the pond. It is also why most of the images online for games are PAL not NTSC. Having said that, a lot have been "fixed" so they run perfectly fine on either standard... would be great if current software could be like that too

[The Unknown Gamer]

You just made a major score on a trully great computer. Commodore 64
according to G4TV was the prototype for what computer gaming is today,
and I totally agree. I just want to add the 5.25 floppys aren't totally impossible to find. I have come across some sites that had new ones for sale.

[WiseSalesman]

Put it like this, the C64 had the best graphics of any 8 bit machine and could almost rival the 16 bits in some ways...

Even with seeing the screenshots, I might have to disagree with this, but still, you're right, those are pretty amazing. Hell, I haven't seen it in motion, so maybe that would make me change my mind, as I know virtually nothing about the C64.

[le geek]

C64 scene currently is 90% Europe based... I know US collectors and players, but most are over my side of the pond. It is also why most of the images online for games are PAL not NTSC. Having said that, a lot have been "fixed" so they run perfectly fine on either standard... would be great if current software could be like that too

I have to agree with Mayhem in that the C64 holds its own quite well with the 8-bits. Particularly many of the Disk games. Turbo Outrun was pretty awesome on the C64 in both graphics and sound. I guess I'm one of the odd ones in the US that went the Commodore route instead of NES and Sega as a kid. Although the C64 sold quite well over here in its prime. I got an Amiga in the late 80s (Still have my 2000HD) and many of it's best games were only released in Europe as well. Wizkid may be the most bizarre game not made in Japan...

Cheers,
Ben

P.S. I still plan on beating Cannon Fodder someday...

[icbrkr]

[quote="Mayhem"]

The graphic's are in the range of...say...the Colecovision or 7800

Creatures kicks ass! I need to go load up a copy, it's been awhile

Brian