I never actually had a Commodore 64 but a family member did and I loved this machine! I was one of those people confused at people choosing to play the Spectrum over the C64. The choice to me was obvious, the C64 had better graphics, better sound and the games selection was good. I think possibly the Spectrum had more games, but what good is it having more games if you have to play them on a Speccy?
Anyway I remember playing Ghostbusters for hours on the C64 and I was huge fan of the films, at the time, everyone at school wanted to be a Ghostbuster. The game had some great music and I remember some speech whenever you lost a battle that said “He slimed me!”. That might not seem exciting to you new gamers but speech? on a C64? It’s a technical marvel! I’m pretty sure the C64 could technically actually play speech all day ’til the cows come home but it was very rare to find it on a game in those days.
I’ve just found this online C64 version of Ghostbusters written in Java, def. worth another play!
It’s my first post but I thought i’d start with one of the best point-and-click adventures of all time – Monkey Island. It was 1990 when LucasArts launched “The Secret Of Monkey Island” (Yes thats right, 20 years ago bet you feel old now !) . I remember spending hours on some of the puzzles, bare in mind I was only 10 years old at the time, I remember dedicating a good few years of my childhood playing the Monkey Island series, even looking back now, some of the puzzles were ridiculous. I vaguely remember having to “use a monkey on a water pump” at one stage after weeks of head scratching. It was the sense of humour and character of the game that made it unique and still does to this day. If you have never played the series before I cannot recommend it enough, just think Pirate of the Caribean but funnier and more involving. In fact read recently in a magazine called Retro Gamer that the script for a Monkey Island animated movie (which was pulled) was written by Ted Elliot who went on to write the first Pirates Of The Caribbean movie. A fourth Pirates Of the Caribbean movie is due for launch in 2011 and will be based on Tim Powers novel On Stranger Tides, the same book that inspired the Monkey Island games.
It was a very sad moment when LucasArts pulled the plug and no longer carried on with the series. Fans started setting up their own blog dedicated to the series always spreading rumours of a new Monkey Island game but for years nothing happened.
Finally after years of waiting a new publisher Telltale Games has taken on the series and to be honest - they couldn’t of done a better job. The new games encapture the spirit of the classic games very well.
To play the new series visit: http://www.telltalegames.com/monkeyisland you can download the DEMO for FREE!
You can download the special editions of monkey island 1 here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/32360/ for £6.99
A site called cdosabandoneware http://www.cdosabandonware.com/std_games_details.php?gameid=1188 does allow you to download some of the Monkey Island games for free but you have to enter some of their prize draws (also free)
You can download the special edition of Monkey Island on the iPhone in the iTunes store: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-secret-monkey-island-special/id324741347?mt=8 – priced at £4.99
