Top games by Commodore

[Lord Mushroom]

What are the top games made by Commodore (for Commodore 64 and Amiga)?

[Leeroy ST]

Didn't Commodore only directly make like a handful of games, and does CDTV count as an Amiga in this case? 

[carlsson]

Going by GB64, the distribution looks something like this:

 

Commodore: 106 games including a couple of re-releases and duplicates

Commodore Educational: 358 titles including potential duplicates

Commodore Business Machines: 43 games including some duplicates and games already listed with Commodore above

Commodore/Adventure International: 2 games in some form of co-op

Commodore Electronics Ltd: 1 game (unclear origin, but if it is genuine, Pazazz might be the very last game published by Commodore)

 

Lemon64 has far fewer entries, but those are rated by its users on a scale 1-10. The top 10 games published by Commodore would look like this, with original publisher in parenthesis:

 

Wizard of Wor (C64 version): 8.4 (Bally Midway)
Rally Speedway: 8.3 (Adventure International)
International Basketball: 8.3
International Soccer: 7.7
International Tennis: 7.7
Satan's Hollow: 7.7 (Bally Midway)
Dragons Den: 7.5
Solar Fox: 7.4 (Bally Midway)
Omega Race: 7.4 (Bally Midway)
Lemans: 7.4

 

Further down the list you have more original games like Icicle Works (7.2) which though is a clone of Boulder Dash, Jack Attack (7.2) which got its name from Jack Tramiel's outbursts and Arctic Shipwreck (6.9) which is Hungarian developed game which usually equals bizarre gameplay and it doesn't let you down.

 

On the Amiga side as noted, Commodore are only credited for four entries on Lemon Amiga of which three are CD versions of existing games and one is a game from Synapse Software published by Commodore. Simply there is not much to rank here.

 

The selection is a little wider on the VIC-20, but I think a top list would be headed by some Bally Midway or other conversions there as well, not to mention dubious ports of Pac-Man, Galaxian, Night Driver, Rally-X and so on.

[Leeroy ST]

OP said made by not published though which makes the list incredibly small.

[Lord Mushroom]

13 hours ago, Leeroy ST said:

does CDTV count as an Amiga in this case? 

No, you would have to be able to play it on an actual Amiga.

 

Thanks a lot, carlsson. I will take a look at some of those games when I have the time.

Edited September 17, 2020 by Lord Mushroom

[carlsson]

Well, on the VIC-20 and C64 it can be hard to determine which games were developed in-house and which were outsourced. Like I mentioned in the other thread where Sega and Commodore were compared, a good number of games were developed by the people just about to form HAL Labs in Japan. There were also other smaller developers, sometimes bedroom companies, but also some working in-house. For instance I believe Jeff Bruette worked at Commodore when he re-implemented Wizard of Wor, after the rather dull MAX version made by HAL Labs but they also were restricted by preferrably staying within 8K ROM, only using static graphics and the infinitesimally little RAM in the MAX Machine.

 

Clearly we can remove games by Adventure International and also Infocom text adventures (not even listed above) that were co-published through Commodore. If we remove ports of popular games (licensed or not) and also remove generic sports games no matter how good those are, the list would shrink considerably:

 

Dragons Den (which is a bit similar to Joust but not a direct clone)

Jack Attack

Arctic Shipwreck

and then I would have to go back to Lemon64 to dig out more exclusive games ranked below 7/10.

[Lord Mushroom]

58 minutes ago, carlsson said:

and then I would have to go back to Lemon64 to dig out more exclusive games ranked below 7/10.

No need to do that, I have what I need.

[high voltage]

Some earlier (PET), made by Commodore

 

[mbd30]

23 minutes ago, high voltage said:

Some earlier (PET), made by Commodore

 

What a cool collection. I love old computer stuff.

[Leeroy ST]

5 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

No, you would have to be able to play it on an actual Amiga.

But you can play CDTV games on the Amiga, because the CDTV is an Amiga lol.

 

I remember when CDTV dropped to like $100 after the A570 was starting to increase presence in stores because it meant there was no reason for a CDTV. 

[Lord Mushroom]

27 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

But you can play CDTV games on the Amiga, because the CDTV is an Amiga lol.

I was looking for games, which could be played on a typical C64 or Amiga. If a game is on a CD, it can´t. Also the CDTV does not have Amiga in its name, so it is technically not an Amiga. 

Edited September 17, 2020 by Lord Mushroom

[Leeroy ST]

1 minute ago, Lord Mushroom said:

I was looking for games, which could be played on a typical C64 or Amiga. If a game is on a CD, it can´t.

Well you didn't say that, I figured you'd count the other Amiga models with CD drives as Amigas I didn't know you wanted games only compatible with an 85 Amiga 500 type machine. 

 

Well, it seems carlsson got you covered anyway so it worked out. 

[Lord Mushroom]

1 minute ago, Leeroy ST said:

Well you didn't say that, I figured you'd count the other Amiga models with CD drives as Amigas I didn't know you wanted games only compatible with an 85 Amiga 500 type machine.

I know, I didn´t specify exactly what I was looking for. Primarily because my knowledge of C64 and Amiga is limited. But I edited my previous post after you quoted it, and if you read that post again, you will see that I am in the clear vis-a-vis the CDTV. Only just.

[carlsson]

If we base our findings on Lemon Amiga, it gets very easy:

 

Mind Walker (1986) is a floppy disk based game developed by Synapse which might have been bundled with some Amiga 500:s. Actually it is rated 7.7 of 10, so not a bad title.

 

Defender of the Crown (1991) is a CD-ROM release for the CDTV of the game Cinemaware published already in 1987. I don't know if it is enhanced with additional music or graphics backdrops, but since we don't consider CDTV enhanced games in this survey, let's put it aside.

 

Defender of the Crown II (1993) appears to be an exclusive CD-ROM release for both CDTV and CD32. I'm unsure if it supports AGA graphics modes or simply relies on the OCS modes found on the CDTV. Again, it is outside of our scope.

 

Amiga CD Football (1993) was marketed as a CD32 game, but based on some comments it is a CDTV game that never got released in 1991 when it was due, and instead was delayed until the CD32 arrived. It doesn't seem to exist in a floppy version for any regular Amiga, and very few people have even encountered it.

 

Well... unless some games have been mislabeled or ignored, it would seem that the entire library of floppy based Amiga games published by Commodore is one game. If we also eliminate games developed by an outside studio (perhaps Synapse was at the end of its lifetime in 1986?), the library of Amiga games made by Commodore is down to zero games. So which of these zero games is the best one? Well, all of them or none of them depending how you consider it.

[Lord Mushroom]

1 hour ago, carlsson said:

So which of these zero games is the best one? Well, all of them or none of them depending how you consider it.

It is a close call, but I am going with all of them.