C64 RPGs

[BillyHW]

Hey folks,

 

Can anyone recommend to me some RPGs for the C64? Also are there any in the JRPG style, or close to it?

 

Mercy Buckets.

[BydoEmpire]

Not JRPGs, but all the SSI Gold Box games are great. The Might & Magic series. The Bard's Tale series. The Temple of Apshai series.

[+cvga]

I enjoyed Questron and Phantasie years and years ago. I wonder how they've aged.

[+wongojack]

The great C64 RPGs is why I dislike JRPGs. I played RPGs on the C64 and thought Dragon Warrior was a joke. Bard's Tale is where I cut my teeth on RPGs, but get your map making gear ready. Wasteland is arguably a masterpiece. The SSI games are excellent although many of them have Amiga versions, so if you are playing in emulation you are better off playing the Amiga versions of Pool of Radiance or Buck Rogers Countdown to Doomsday.

 

If you just jump into these without playing the text adventure games that came before them, you might not really see what the big deal is as they will seem clunky and keyboard heavy. I recommend first trying some of the most popular text adventures - just play some Zork or Hitchikers guide for like 90 minutes and then move on to the RPGs. I think you'll see how the genre evolved.

 

All that being said, I always thought the first few Ultima games played more like a JRPG and they were huge on C64

[cimerians]

Ultima series. Great music. Play all of them. I won't say much more as they are the best. These are the games most JRPG's took inspiration from along with Wizardry. Origin also made an oriental RPG called Moebius which I mention below.

 

Here's all that I played on the C64 and a comment or two:

 

Moebius: An oriental adventure\RPG by Origin systems. Could never really get into it but I think it had a cult following. The closest you can get to a JRPG I guess.

 

Bards Tale series: I played all three but only finished the first. The third game was very well done and greatly improved.

 

The Standing Stones: A Wizardry type RPG with some british humor. I got halfway through the labyrinth but this was a grinding chore of a game. A forgotten EA game.

 

Legacy of the Ancients: One of the best RPG's on the C64. Beat it and I'm planning on doing it again someday. These guys also did Questron and Legacy of Blacksilver.

 

Might & Magic series: Weird and difficult RPG, finished the first game. Played most of the second.

 

Questron games: These are Ultima type games that are rather well done but I never spent much time on Questron since I preferred Legacy of the Ancients. Questron II is what I played mostly.....

 

SSI Goldbox games: If your a D&D fan, these are a no brainer. I finished most of them.

 

Phantasie series: Another SSI series that I never finished.

 

Temple of Apshai Trilogy: The original Diablo. I played all of these including Gateway to Apshai. I love them. They are action RPG's not turn based. Great stuff.

[+Gemintronic]

Can anyone give me some feel for Gates of Dawn? I kinda want to have the same look for a game I'm making. Not sure if any C64 fans have actually played it. Seems kinda obscure.

 

[cimerians]

Wow thats an obscure game. I looked it up on lemon:

http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/games/details.php%3FID%3D1028

 

Don't remember it at all but then again the C64 had thousands of games and stuff its easy to miss a lot.

[coleridge]

C64 RPGs are by far my favorite. I wish there was a way to play some legacy of the ancients or pool of radiance on my ipad without jail breaking it.

 

Moebius has a cool way of doing combat. It's a bit arcadey. There's also a sequel called Windwalker.

 

Legacy of the ancients has some excellentl and varied gameplay-- from a 3rd person overview when wandering, to first person dungeon crawling, to blackjack. to arcade-like mini games. All backed by an epic story. Play it if you haven't.

[Bill Loguidice]

My favorites were the three SSI Phantasie games, each of which I completed on the platform. To me, the Phantasie games were the most D&D-like. I never did play Pool of Radiance on the C-64 - I actually played and beat it on the Amiga, which has the best version of the game. The other RPG I beat and loved was AutoDuel. There was nothing else quite like it. The unfortunate thing with AutoDuel though was that the port used Apple II graphics and sound, which was kind of a lost opportunity given the C-64's capabilities.

[108 Stars]

Most C64 RPGs are hard to swallow for those who haven't been there back in the day. Very archaic gameplay, often with terrible disk-swapping (one disk for towns, one for the world map, one for battles etc, loading times every time).

 

User friendliness is not exactly the greatest strength of those early RPGs.

For the great classics you can usually find better ways to play than the C64 version nowadays...

 

That said, I would recommend to you some of the later, less known RPGs.

 

For example:

The Ormus Saga. http://www.thelegacy.de/Museum/6545/

It's three RPGs with character import, and basically an Ultima clone. That said, they were released in 1991, 1993 and 1994 respectively, and benefit from the more refined user friendliness standards of the time. You'll have a much easier time getting into them than with Ultima. You can even play it almost completely with just a joystick! The coder definitely looked at console RPGs to see how to handle easier controls.

 

For other games of the late breed of RPGs I am not sure if English versions were even available...

 

Also, you might want to check out Newcomer. It's a homebrew RPG from Hungary from 2001, complete in English with great visuals. http://www.thelegacy.de/Museum/15357/

It's also freeware, so you can legally download it.

Edited February 22, 2014 by 108 Stars

[bennybingo]

My recommendations:

 

Pretty much every game in the Ultima series for C64

Wasteland

Auto Duel

Bard's Tale I, II, III

Times of Lore

Wrath of Denethenor (a very hard to find Ultima type "clone")

Might and Magic

 

I haven't played the D&D games or any of the SSI games (like Gemstone Warior/Healer or Phantasie), but I have heard decent things about those as well.

[108 Stars]

My recommendations:

 

Pretty much every game in the Ultima series for C64

Benny, please... you shouldn't suggest your worst enemy to play Ultima V and VI (!) on the C64! They are great games, but not great games on the C64. Way too ambitious for the hardware imo.

 

 

In general, I would play Ultima I and II on the C64, and III and IV are okay; but for those, the Gameboy Color port of U III (homebrew) and the SMS port of U IV are the more comfortable versions because of easier control and no disk swapping.

 

Everything after Ultima IV is a no-go on the C64.

 

But I still think someone who isn't used to the old CRPGs will have an easier time getting into them with the Ormus Saga.

[bennybingo]

Benny, please... you shouldn't suggest your worst enemy to play Ultima V and VI (!) on the C64! They are great games, but not great games on the C64. Way too ambitious for the hardware imo.

To each his own. Personally, I only had a C64, so there was no base of comparison. I loved the Ultima series throughout, though I must say that II, III and IV were the best. I still think Ultima II was my favorite...as basic as it was.

[108 Stars]

To each his own. Personally, I only had a C64, so there was no base of comparison. I loved the Ultima series throughout, though I must say that II, III and IV were the best. I still think Ultima II was my favorite...as basic as it was.

Wow, respect. I honestly wouldn't have thought anybody fought through 5 and 6 on the C64. I only tried them out much later, but it always felt to me like they didn't belong on the machine, a bit like many of the late arcade conversion such as Final Fight and SF II. But I salute your patience to fight through them, it shows you were passionate about them.

[RobertB]

108 Stars wrote:

> I would play Ultima I and II on the C64, and III and IV are okay; but for those, the Gameboy Color port of U III (homebrew) and the SMS port of U IV are the more comfortable

> versions because of easier control and no disk swapping.

For easier control and no disk swapping, then you should use Magervalp's Ultima III Gold and Ultima IV Gold, bug-fixed and enhanced for the C64. You can read about Ultima III Gold enhancements at

 

http://comp.sys.cbm.narkive.com/mulSARux/ultima-iii-gold

 

For the details on Ultima IV enhancements, go to

 

http://compgroups.net/comp.sys.cbm/ultima-iv-gold-for-c64-released/455624

 

And for the Ultima III Gold and Ultima IV Gold downloads, go to

 

http://www.paradroid.net/projects.html

 

Truly,

Robert Bernardo

Fresno Commodore User Group

http://videocam.net.au/fcug

[+wongojack]

Xu4 is a remake of Ultima IV for PC that improves the experience a lot

 

http://xu4.sourceforge.net/

[cncfreak]

A couple no one has mentioned.

 

Wizard's Crown / Eternal Dagger. Very Tactical RPGs, but you can do quick combat to speed things up.

Deathlord - Ultimaish RPG with an Oriental flavor. HUGE HUGE game and brutally hard.

Shard of Spring / Demons Winter. Decent SSI RPGs

Realms of Darkness - very obscure SSI RPG.

Legacy of Ancients / Legend of Blacksilver - really cool RPGs

 

 

Wizard's Crown series / Might and Magic series and Phantasie series are my favorites. (Ones I played when I was a teenager)

Edited February 24, 2014 by cncfreak

[WolfAmongWolves]

Another really interesting action RPG is Master of Magic. It features a split screen with a map at the top, a list of actions you can choose from in the middle, and a view of items and opponents at the bottom. It's much shorter than the other RPGs mentioned here and focuses less on character development and more on exploring and hack'n'slash. One of the highlights is the great music by Ron Hubbard that plays throughout the game. Definitely worth checking out.

[BillyHW]

Thank you for all the suggestions everybody! I need to decide which one I'm going to start with. I'll be playing on VICE, so I could warp through the disk swaps and loading, but I may want to leave that on for the authentic experience. If a game was unplayable because of it then, is it fair to judge it positively now? Anyhoo, I remember C64 load times being quite excruciating at times, back in the day (remember Bruce Lee?). But there apparently were fastloader carts too, unfortunately none of my cousins/friends with C64s had them, so I didn't learn about them until later.

[WolfAmongWolves]

Yeah, the load times can really add up. I remember playing Pool of Radiance for about two months on the C64 and only finishing about 10% to 15% of the game. I then upgraded to an Amiga, and bought the game again because I had loved it on the C64 and wanted to finish it. On the Amiga it only took me a little over two months to finish the entire game. If you have a fastloader it will make it much more palatable.

[BillyHW]

Yeah, the load times can really add up. I remember playing Pool of Radiance for about two months on the C64 and only finishing about 10% to 15% of the game. I then upgraded to an Amiga, and bought the game again because I had loved it on the C64 and wanted to finish it. On the Amiga it only took me a little over two months to finish the entire game. If you have a fastloader it will make it much more palatable.

 

I will check if VICE emulates a fastloader cart. (I haven't seen it before, does anyone know if there is a way to do it?) I know there is a warp setting that you can use to bypass loading times, but I would like the authentic experience of emulating the loading times with a fastloader cart.

[+wongojack]

 

I will check if VICE emulates a fastloader cart. (I haven't seen it before, does anyone know if there is a way to do it?) I know there is a warp setting that you can use to bypass loading times, but I would like the authentic experience of emulating the loading times with a fastloader cart.

You can get the JiffyDos roms and use them with VICE. JiffyDos was a commercially sold mod for the 1541 disk drive that basically corrected a bug that prevented the original design from using the equivalent of parallel IO. This sometimes improves load times by more than 9x. It is a little hard to find these online, but stick your nose in the usual bittorrent holes and you'll catch a whiff.

 

I've never bothered to track down the FastLoad rom, but it is out there and you can specify it in the cart slot in VICE. The presence of this cart actually damaged some software - so be careful and make backups.

[BillyHW]

So I've decided to start with Temple of Apshai, even though it's not exactly the kind of game I was originally looking for (I will try those later). I've found an online manual scan and set up VICE and I'm ready to go. I've turned on true drive emulation, so I think I'll be getting authentic load times. Unfortunately I don't know if my ROM is PAL or NTSC. I've set up VICE as NTSC. If it is a PAL ROM, will it run too fast, or crash or what?

 

Too bad the stickers are covering the box art.

[BillyHW]

Hmmmmm, where's the any key?

 

[Rybags]

The 2 Alternate Reality games are also on C64. I don't think they use a fastloader, so probably painfully slow compared to some of the others.