Commodore 64 Games Go Wiii

I don't know about kids, but I'm glad they're doing this. I've been using Vice as an emulator to play some of the better games C64 made. Granted there aren't a lot of games that I would replay now but games like Bard's Tale 1,2,3, Wasteland, Legacy of the ancients, Ghostbusters, Treasure Island, Moebius, Mail Order Monsters, Archon, Spy vs Spy, Autoduel, Swiss Family Robinson, Pirates and Below the Root are great even today. I hated the PC port of Bard's Tale and only play the C64 one.

Even with my love of these games, I know there is no chance that someone who didn't grow up on these games will find them enjoyable. I guess Ninetendo is counting on people like me to buy these to make a profit. It's an unusual thing to sell from a giant corp but hey Nintendo isn't known for going with the flow and it seems to work out for them. They snuck in innovation with the Wii when Sony and Microsoft were trying to outdo each other with graphics.

xSamhainx said:

Well, there must be a market for it or they wouldnt be doing it. To me it sounds like an abysmal waste, playing some godawful old c64 title on some state of the art console. Love to see the face of the kid that accidentally picks one of those games and fires it up for the first time.

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There is a *huge* market for playing older games - the NES and SNES and N64 games have done very well, and Microsoft and Sony have done very well with theirs, and GameTap does quite well even on the Mac side where playing old stuff like that is the only thing you *can* do.

I guess JDR and I are getting hung up on the fact that you are buying games using points instead of buying credit to circumvent earning gold for in-game lewt. My better analogy would be the 'Totalgaming' system of 'tokens' that you buy with cash and then use to buy games.

txa1265 said:

There is a *huge* market for playing older games - the NES and SNES and N64 games have done very well, and Microsoft and Sony have done very well with theirs, and GameTap does quite well even on the Mac side where playing old stuff like that is the only thing you *can* do.

I guess JDR and I are getting hung up on the fact that you are buying games using points instead of buying credit to circumvent earning gold for in-game lewt. My better analogy would be the 'Totalgaming' system of 'tokens' that you buy with cash and then use to buy games.

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TXA those are old console games. What I found unusual is that they went with old Commodore 64 games. I think it would be harder for kids or people that didn't grow up on that machine to play games on it, due to the graphics and the unusual way you have to load games "insert side 1" "insert side 2, character disk, boot disk" Don't get me wrong I love those games, I just didn't know there was a market for them.

And Totalgaming is great. I used it to buy Gods: Lands of infinity and had no problems with it. It's a little unusual the way you have to download and then load the game. But it's not that different from steam.

skavenhorde said:

TXA those are old console games. What I found unusual is that they went with old Commodore 64 games. I think it would be harder for kids or people that didn't grow up on that machine to play games on it, due to the graphics and the unusual way you have to load games "insert side 1" "insert side 2, character disk, boot disk" Don't get me wrong I love those games, I just didn't know there was a market for them.
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Graphics aside, those issues obviously won't exist on the Wii. Loading will be instantaneous, and there will be no need for any disk swapping.

That being said, I still think $5 a pop is too much for Commodore 64 games. I could see paying $2-$3 at the most.

Well, if some of these games are "great" (as you said previously) and worth revisiting in the first place, you should have no problem shelling out 5 measely dollars for them. I'd think just having access to these old games on a spankin new console would be worth the price of admission alone, if you really would seriously like to revisit them.

Too expensive as far as I'm concerned.

Well, nobody said that C64 RPG's are going Wii. Uridium and IK+ just require reflexes to play; did you guys expect to swing your Wiimote like a sword in Bard's Tale?

Otherwise, the idea of making new ports with improved graphics of the classics is a good idea and gets my support.

Umm, they are just emulating the old games they aren't developing new versions.

Mind you if they have a few classics that you want to reply it's ok. You can already do this on a pc for years though even with Amiga games and the like.

JDR13 said:

That being said, I still think $5 a pop is too much for Commodore 64 games. I could see paying $2-$3 at the most.

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I agree - I know that Atari collections for handhelds and consoles do 'OK' in terms of sales, but nothing like newer stuff. So perhaps there will be collections ...

JDR13 said:

I was wondering the same thing about you.

Why do you insist on trying to compare real money with video game currency??

Real money is not "symbolic", at least not in my country.

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I'm not comparing it, and I NEVER said that real money is "symbolic", but the in-game money and the Wii points are ...

If I didn't have an emulator already on my PC, I'd probably jump all over this. Of course, PC emulators have their issues as well, and if they have done any type of optimization to run the games on the Wii, it may be worth it to buy a few, even at $5. And since you can use a WiFi keyboard with the Wii, it should be fairly easy!

You can download remakes of a lot of the old C64 games for free at retroremakes.com, and quite often they have vastly improved graphics as well. In fact, the only thing on my computer is these and other freeware stuff like N. I have remakes of both C64 Ghostbusters (I & II), Wizball, Impossible Mission, Spy Hunter and several more. It's actually a 'booming' segment of the freeware market.

Implausible Mission FTW!

The only games I'd really be interested in are those like the Phantasie trilogy or Rags to Riches, where they're not on the PC (at least Phantasie II isn't) and are impossible to find a working disk image of (key word being working). I'll tolerate the older DOS games pitiful graphics and sound in exchange for already having many of them sitting on a backup disc.

azraelck said:

The only games I'd really be interested in are those like the Phantasie trilogy

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Amiga/Atari ST versions are the best ones. I had Phantasie3 for amiga like 15 years ago. It was the best rpg I had for that computer. Just a year later though I got PC and ultima underworld / betrayal at krondor and phantasie was quickly forgotten.

'Virtual Console' C64 games should be fun for the, oh, 8 or 9 people still alive that actually owned/know what it is. Five bucks should buy you the whole catalog, IMO. In all seriousness, it's cool that somebody is trying to preserve those games. Blue Max, anyone?