Anyone still play C64 games on an actual C64?

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I'm curious about this, because I don't really know anyone else who plays retro games on their original systems. It's fun to have a break from all the "realistic" games and just eat pellets and ghosts in a maze.

I still play my original systems, but I never had a C64. I don't think they were quite as successful here in the US.

I had the plug'n'play version briefly, but the NTSC version had video problems, so I returned it. There's a new one coming out, but I think they decided not to add composite video support, so I'm not super interested.

I do play games on their original systems, but it's not a C64. As mentioned above, they didnt exactly hit very hard in the US. I knew of them, but I've never seen one.

The big one for me though is the Atari 2600. I've got cartridges everywhere. I do need to get a new unit though... I keep meaning to do that as the old one had an accident recently. Fortunately these things are very common.


I do tend to play things like this frequently. I got tired of all of the "realistic" stuff years ago, and rarely touch those. Graphics alone just dont impress me whatsoever now. Not to mention that type of game tends to be easy and about as deep as a puddle. I either stick with indie games or retro stuff these days. Cant remember the last time I bought a AAA game. Was it Overwatch? I dont know. I didnt stick with that one very long. I think that might have been the last one but that was still awhile ago.

One of my friends had a C64. He brought it out one time, but he could only get a couple of the disks to work. I remember some game where they were scrolling the lyrics to Jumpin' Jack Flash at the bottom.

If you're handy with a soldering iron, those things are super easy to fix if you know specifically what's wrong with it. Someone at Atari Age helped diagnose it for me, I just needed to replace one component.

One day I'd like to get a 7800. It didn't have a huge library, but some of those games were really good. Maybe a Harmony cart or something.

I have a RAM modded 600XL, and I bought a chip to do some SIO2USB stuff, but I haven't tried it out yet. There's some cool games for it, but for whatever reason, I find that some of the arcade ports were just more fun to play on the 2600. Maybe it's just my imagination, or maybe the 2600 teams just had more creative programmers.

Oh, and I bought the Atari Flashback Portable last year. The emulation isn't perfect, but it's hard to complain when you can throw all your favorite games on an SD card and play them on the go.

Ah, that actually reminds me... I hadnt even been using a 2600. I'd been using a 7800 to play everything. I'd been about to order another unit in the next day or so but completely forgot which model I'd been using. For some reason I'd been constantly thinking of it as the 2600. Probably just since it can play 2600 games. But still, the thing looks completely different...

It's a good machine though. It's just as sturdy as the other one. And easy to get. And yeah, the games that are on it are pretty good. Anyone that is a fan of the 2600 would probably like the games on that thing as well... even if there arent very many of them.

Now this is completely stuck on my mind again. This'll bother me until I actually have a new one in my hands. And figure out how the heck I'm going to get it to work on this screen. Ugh, complications.


Also, I agree: Some of the arcade ports are particularly enjoyable on the 2600. Even compared to the arcade originals. One thing I always REALLY loved about it: They always added all of those "game variations". Which ended up amounting to a rather silly amount of extra content for games in that era. Like Space Invaders, which had about a gazillion possible modes. Including the invisible mode, which was entertaining. I love any version of Space Invaders really, have always been a huge fan of the entire franchise, but when it comes to old ports, that one was easily my favorite and even more fun than the arcade version.

Reactor is another favorite... nobody's ever heard of the original arcade machine, but the game still got a 2600 port. Which is fantastic... I highly recommend it. But when I tried to play the arcade version... ugh. I just couldnt do it. The game controlled with a trak-ball, and anyone that has played old arcade games knows how screwy those things can be. It just works out so much better on the 2600. I remember that being the case for Centipede and Millipede too. Those games worked very well on that thing, but they just make my arm hurt when I find the original arcade units. Heck, one of those showed up at a convention I went to recently and I made the mistake of spending a bit too much time on it. Needed pain pills afterwards. And the experience with it wasnt even that good... controls like that are just so awkward and frustrating to me.

A couple of other favorite ports are Mario Bros, and Q*Bert. And Q*Bert's Qubes, nobody ever seems to know what that one is, but it's very good, if moderately confusing. It was even more bizarre than the original game.

Of course some games are the opposite... there's the infamous Pac-man (whereas Ms Pac-man was very good on the 2600) or something like Donkey Kong which was missing half the bloody game (oddly, the NES port was also missing 25% of the game's content... I've always wondered why).

The most wonky port I have though is Spider-droid. There is no arcade game of that name, which is because it's a Froggo game, and thus a super-direct clone of another 2600 game, Amidar, and THAT game was the port of an arcade game by the same name. It took me years to find out about this. Froggo was a stupid company made of jerks, but still, I always go back to that screwy version of it despite that.

Gah, I'll stop ranting now. This type of topic always gets me going a bit too much.

I havent seen the Flashback portable. I'll have to check that out. Is it the sort of thing where you can actually add more games to it? I'm not familiar with any of the Flashback things.

It's been a long time, but I do still have my C64, and it may come out to play again someday. It has done periodically over the years in the past.

I never heard of a C64, but I remember my old Mac Performa. That thing lasted a long time. Old games and the After Dark screensaver. Good times.

I agree. Games from the 80's up to about 2004 (that's my point where quality didn't matter anymore) didn't count on "realism", "DLCs" and "checkpoint every 7 seconds" to keep people playing them.

I've only played the 2600 a few times. My favorite game on that system is Berzerk.

Yes, this one lets you put ROMs on an SD card.

They're fairly cheap on Black Friday, or you can get one from Bed Bath & Beyond with their 25% off coupon like I did. I think Meijer has a bunch, they seem to be easier to find this year than last year. But I would check out some reviews first, because they're not perfect, but for me it still beats the really slow Stella ports for the DS.

I played quite a bit of C64, some of the games were really bad. I remember the C64 Contra being pretty good, the Commodore would accept Sega controllers.

Was a big CBM fan during my 80's childhood, but if you asked me 2 yeas ago, no. But now, it happens from time to time. Yesterday i played International Karate.

Got an SD2IEC micro "1541" drive that i used with original C64, C64 II, C64 G (import from Germany) and a C128D (that was designed to include a C64 mode and a CP/M machine). I also use the Vice emulator. Still waiting for spare parts (A revision 250425 motherboard from UK) for one of the "breadboxes", and i need to fix the video output with lumafix on most of them.

But i'm mainly interested in Amigas and the actual systems themselves and not games as much. It is insane how you can upgrade them with simulated "68060" FPGA accelerators that clamps onto the processors (Hence the name "Vampire accelerator"). Today i can fit 1 GB memory in my A4000 and have up to 1 TB diskspace on compact flash/micro SD drives that replace normal ATA/IDE drives, there is even USB support and network adapters. For the C64, there is a cartridge that comes with a WiFi network card and a micro SD adapter!

Stuff one couldn't dream of in the 80s/90s.

I have a bunch of C64's and play on them from time to time but I'm more of a ZX Spectrum man myself.

EDIT:
Well it's not so often that I find out about other retrocomputing enthusiasts, not outside the proper circles that is, so I decided to come back and write a bit more about it.

I have three real C64's. Two breadbins, one C64c.
I don't like the real 1541 drives so I don't have one. I use the machines with the awesome 1541-Ultimate II and there's a SD2IEC I bought prior to acquiring the U-II.
Added to that I own a 1530 C2N tape drive.

With regards to C64, I don't collect media such as tapes and discs.

I don't know exactly which 1541 I have, although I think it's the one people called "The Toaster Drive" because that's how it ejects the disks, sometimes requiring a butter knife to remove the disk. I've only had to do that once, thank goodness. I know that the Commodore I have is the C64-C. I also have a modem for it, which I don't think I have much use for.

I would like to learn how to repair my C64, in case someday it decides to quit.

There are many people on youtube that do repair of C64, but the most informative i have found that focus on repair and rarely stray from the subject are these two:

Jan Beta
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCftUpOO4h9EgH0eDOZtjzcA

GadgetUk164
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRBWJ9JeJ3Q8ssn_ibii-Cg

I recommend getting at least the schematics for the C64 (if you know some basic electronics) or the the diagnostic cartridge to give you some basic pointers where the error is. There is also a dead-test cartridge that is used if you can't even get a picture, they are quite cheap and go for around £14/$16 on ebay.

I never grew up with one, but I kind of prefer the Spectrum as well. I think the biggest selling point, for me, is that the Nintendo DS has more than one really fantastic emulator for it, whereas C64 emulation on Nintendo's handhelds has been pretty dodgy.

Also, seems like a lot of really great C64 games are just lazy Spectrum ports, albeit with some nice SID chip music added in. Or Atari 8-bit ports. Or Apple ][ ports with more colors...

I don't know if I could deal with the real hardware, though...I can't imagine a tape drive being much fun at all =) I mean, besides the fact that I'm in NTSC-world.

The vast majority of US release C64 games were on floppy disk. The 1541 and its variants were a lot cheaper in the States. The increased file storage meant that the US game library took a very different turn to the European one. Most of the American C64 users I've come across tend to branch out to the PAL library (they don't seem to be content with the US library) and I would say that you need to be a fairly hard core import gamer to pull it off; the ZX Spectrum would be even harder although I have seen American Speccy users on YouTube.

The tape drives are actually quite pleasant to use. They can take a bit of time to load but some game developers made up for it with lots of neat tunes and demos to keep the user occupied (some loaders even have a mini game that runs while the main game is loading). Some people devote their whole lives to exploring C64 tape loaders.