Back in 1999 when I sold my Firebird, I used some of the money to buy a large set of Commodore computer stuff from a guy who was looking to clean out his garage. A couple of Commodore 64’s, a Commodore 64C (new style case) and a Commodore 128, several 5.25″ diskette drives (and a 3.5″ drive woo!) two dot matrix printers, a couple serial modems (300 baud!) and a ton of software. Unfortunately, I never really had anywhere to set it up, so all I was ever able to do was buy a cheap 80 column Commodore monitor for it and do some quick tests. It all appeared to work, so it all got stashed in the basement.
For seven years. 😮
Now that I finally have a “desk” set up in my old office, I decided to dig out the C-128 system and some of the drives to see what disks actually worked. Dragged up the monitor and the system, then went looking for the box of cables. I could not find it. A giant box full of power cords, serial and printer cables, some cartridges, and at least one memory storage device was gone. Best guess, it got thrown away two years ago when we had 1-800-GOT-JUNK come and take a bunch of stuff away. So I jumped on eBay to see what Commodore cables are going for, and managed to find a power supply for $19 and tso drive cables for another $10. Power supply showed up a few days ago, and the drive cables arrived in today’s mail. 😀
Right now I have a Commodore 128 system with two 1541 disk drives connected (one of them has a switch on the back to change the device number from 8 to 9.) I have been going through the boxes and piles of disks to see what actually works – some of these things are dated 1984, so it surprises me that the disks I have tried out actually work.
Looking at some of the manuals gives me two thoughts. First, the manuals for a lot of the software are cheap printouts. No graphics, no glossy color covers. Looks like someone just typed it all into a word processor and printed it out, then stapled it together. Truly the age of low budget. Second thing is, well, there are manuals! You go out and buy software today, if it has any kind of documentation at all it’s either in a Help file on the CD or it’s all on a web page someplace. However, a lot of games in the 80’s relied on copy protection that required you to look up a word in the manual, or in the case of one of the war simulators, find the picture of the tank and click on the name of it. The Dungeons and Dragons games used code wheels. I remember Sid Meier’s Pirates! game would ask you a word out of the manual; if you got it wrong the game would still play, but the beginning fight against the captain was impossible to win and you would always have a harder time getting started. This was all intended to make games difficult to copy and give away to your friends, but people just hacked the code to remove the copy protection check entirely (I actually knew several people who knew how to do exactly that.)
One of the things I found that really takes me way back is a set of diskettes labeled “GEOS.” There are three sets of them – GEOS, GEOS 64C, and GEOS 128. I remember this program well – this was back in 1984-ish, when the PC was still in its infancy and the Apple ][ was being sold for thousands of dollars as a home computer. Commodore systems were toys compared to the raw processing power of the Apple or the IBM PC (1Mhz vs 4.77Mhz. How far we’ve come.) A company called Berkeley Softworks developed a GUI desktop for the C64, and later upgraded it to support the C128’s additional memory and support for 80 columns. With it you got GeoWrite, GeoCalc, GeoPaint, and other addon programs that would make your Commodore system useful instead of just a home entertainment system. It even supported a mouse. I remember this program so well because, not only did I use it, but it eventually evolved into GeoWorks Ensemble for the PC, which was the interface used by the original PC version of America Online. I actually helped to beta test the thing. Abbreviated PC-AOL, we used to call it “Pickle” (as opposed to the Windows version of AOL, or WAOL, which came later. We called that “Whale.” I beta tested that too. It in no resembles what AOL looks like today, although it was a much different service back then too.)
Among other gems…
Gunship – this is what passed for flight simulators back in the 80’s. The actual “play” area took up less than half of the screen; the rest was all cockpit indicators. Honestly, the system couldn’t handle full-screen graphics, and even what it was able to do was limited to solid colors and lines. The C64 was considered advanced as far as its sound chip went, with three-voice music available, but to hear it now… beep beep boop…
MULE – This was one of the coolest games for its time. You chose a character and used Multiple Use Labor Elements to mine, grow food, or collect energy. The game supported up to four players, and would fill in with computer players as necessary. Each would take a turn, and outfit a plot of land. When everyone took their turn, a random event might occur that could affect your plot – acid rain, meteor strikes, energy storms, etc. Then you saw what you got from the previous turn, and got the option to sell off your surplus or buy extra if you’re short. You get another plot of land, and the process repeats. It’s turn-based, the graphics aren’t all that flashy, and it’s based on your decisions and chance. And it has a duck in it – one of the character types is a Flapper, from the Boid-drop system. 8-bit duck, but a duck.
Raid over Moscow – Shows what the mindset was back in 1984. US and Russia sign SALT IV, but Russia launches nukes at the US because of a skirmish over Saudi Arabia. You have to fly into Russia in a stealth fighter to take out the missile silos and then attack the Kremlin.
Pools of Radiance – One of the Forgotten Realms series of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons games. I remember getting into these back when PC-Link started hosting a little game called Neverwinter Nights. It was free during the test period, then they started charging for it after release, and I couldn’t afford the $6 an hour to play it all the time. Someone told me that NWN was based on the existing Gold Box games, which I promptly checked out. I have the PC collection on CD, but many of those games didn’t translate well to IBM/Tandy format – they were EGA and had almost no sound. The Commodore version had color and decent sound to it at least.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – One of the best and at the same time one of the most frustrating Infocom games I have ever played. Loosely based on the book, you play as Arthur Dent (well, most of the time anyway) as you go from Earth to Magrathea. Some of the puzzles are so simple, yet it’s possible to spend a great deal of time on it because you expect it to be difficult. Other spots of the game are timed (as in, you have X number of turns to do this or you die.) This game defined two adages: “if you’re able to pick it up, pick it up” and Al Lowe’s favorite saying, “Save Early, Save Often!” There is a spot early in the game where, if you don’t do something, much later on you won’t be able to get any further; you’ll have to reload from a previous save point (hope you had one!!) And then there’s the end of the game where you’re asked for an object, and you had BETTER have it or you spent the entire game for nothing. This was probably the first game I ever played that made me want to toss it out the window – to get all the way to the end and find out you can’t finish because you didn’t pick something up way at the beginning.
There are actually two copies of this game in the pile, both of which contain the pocket lint, the microscopic sized space fleet, the peril-sensitive sunglasses, and the order for demolition. Sadly, the “Don’t Panic” button is not included with either box, which is a shame because my original button got stolen when I was in high-school (some moron broke into my car to take my boom box and my jacket, which was adorned with several hundred dollars worth of rock pins and my Don’t Panic button.)
Leather Goddesses of Phobos – An Infocom game that claimed to be “naughty,” which for its time I suppose it was. As with all Infocom adventures it was all text, so the “naughtiness” was limited to descriptions only, but the game had “naughtiness” settings ranging from tame, which is about what you would see on Prime Time Television (at least in the 80’s anyway) all the way to Lewd, which included many of George Carlin’s Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television (yes the box actually says that.) Basically, you’re kidnapped by aliens, and in order to save the Earth, you have sex with some of them. That’s about all the impact it made on me (hey I was 15 at the time.) I do recall a sequel was made some years back, updating it with graphics, but I don’t think I played it (or if I did, I blacked it out as a bad memory.)
Seven Cities of Gold – This was a game that you could play for MONTHS. Set in 1492, you play an explorer sent off to explore the new world. You generated a map disk (which takes 20 minutes!) and then set sail! You run into Aztecs, Incas, and other period-tribes, and you have the options to set up trade or slaughter them. You’re limited on food and men, and use trade goods to impress the natives. Another one of those games that barely uses half the screen (everything takes place inside a small window, with status text around it) but was addictive nonetheless. There was a DOS version released at one point, but I don’t recall if it did well.
As I go through these disks, I see a lot of software companies that went belly-up in the past decade. Microprose. Strategic Simulations. Infocom. Accolade. The only two that survived? Electronic Arts and Activision. And here’s something – when you turn on the C128 in 128 mode, the top of the screen shows copyright info, including “Commodore BASIC – Copyright 1977, Microsoft.” Who knew?