Commodore 64 - Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN)

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description below [Applause] [Music] oh now let's go back to the past far back i'm talking old school none of this ps4 [ __ ] what's that stand for piss on the floor well five is out so i'm a little late on that stupid joke well you know me i like atari colecovision and television so why haven't i done an episode on the commodore 64. it is episode 198 after all well i have reviewed some commodore games in the past so roll the clips i'm at a farm with a dinosaur stepping on a space shuttle i have no comment yeah that's another thing about the commodore it only works when it feels like it well anyway the game sucks gotta give it the batman punishment [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] it's enough for this [ __ ] but let's take a closer look at the system itself now of course it wasn't just a gaming console it was a personal computer one that many remember with great fondness it was a computer for the masses not the classes commodore made a whole series of computers beginning in 77 with the pet you ever had a pet computer well you can't have a computer for a pet but you'd have a pet for a computer next in 1980 came the vic-20 which i've actually shown you before first exhibit is the count on the vic-20 and what the [ __ ] is a vic-20 well it's an old commodore computer from 1980. thought the commodore 64 was primitive well check out the vic-20 look at that cartridge that's what you call a game the competition was apple ii and atari 400 and 800 and even the radioshack trs-80 yeah they all had better sound and graphics though the vic-20 had a slight advantage using composite connections instead of that rf [ __ ] next in 82 came the commodore 64 named after its 64k of ram long before the nintendo 64 would be named after its 64 bits what makes it interesting is that the games came on multiple formats cassettes cartridges and floppy disks both the hard floppies and the floppy floppies whenever it's hot in here i just fan myself with the floppy floppies or make a house of cards or not the disk drives and hardware were sold separately and had all these different names like the commodore 1530 data set and the 1541 floppy disk drive these weren't without their issues such as the disc getting stuck and needing a butter knife to pry the damn thing out it even had a printer doubt i have any ink but i do have the perforated paper yeah this was back in the dark ages when printers were unable to [ __ ] out a piece of paper without these holes so that the gears can grab onto them and advance the paper through i distinctly remember printing out happy birthday banners and stuff like that which would just print across several sheets of paper it would come out it would take like an hour and be like yeah man commodore 64 was crazy it even had the incredible music keyboard yeah sure is incredible then there's this whole programming book this is how a lot of game programs will get their start here is with the commodore you could actually program your games or even reprogram some of the ones that already exist on there yeah but what's really impressive is how many games were made for the commodore it's so many that i've never even found a definitive number it seems there were maybe 2 000 games but if you count every commercial software title including office applications the number might have been as much as ten thousand but anyway take a look at my collection here so many games i have commando predator robocop somebody's tax documents from 1989 yeah i got these collections in large groups so lots of random stuff made its way in seeing all these handwritten labels reminds me of the old days when everyone used to copy [ __ ] same as today i guess but only the format has changed as a kid copying games was so common i think i saw handwritten labels more often than their proper labels certain games i don't even know where they came from it seemed everybody's grandpa or uncle had some poker game that they got from somebody who got it from somebody else and yes viruses were a thing back then but i realized the best solution for a virus is to have a computer that's so shitty the virus will go nah but that's not to say the commodore 64 didn't have copy protection the most common method which i've mentioned in past episodes was the code cards where the game won't start before asking you which characters appear in a certain set of columns and rows but some of them took it a step further by making it an impossible shade of brownish maroon so you couldn't photocopy it or barely even look at it then there's this one how the hell does this thing work man they got real creative with some of these codes it's like some kind of covert spy operation but let's take a step back when you first power up the machine you get a command screen nothing unusual in the 80s that's what you see when you start up a computer there's no apple logo with a deafening dong nothing like that no you just see a bunch of words on the screen you type stuff in and that makes it go so if you know the load command let's all say together load quote asterisk quote comma eight comma one yeah that's what you put in and you have to do it every single time you wanna play something why do i gotta do that i'll tell you why because it's actually not as random as it seems the asterisk tells it to load the first file it finds which should be the first file in the game but sometimes you actually have to put the name in the first number specifies the device 8 for the disk drive and one for the cassette and the last number does some other [ __ ] it loads the game into active memory but it depends on the game because sometimes that doesn't work and you have to put in run yeah the commodore was like a secret club you had to know the password after you start the game it's common for it to take ages to load but it's better than downloading software updates every time you try to start a modern game though in all seriousness it probably has the longest load time of anything i've ever seen and sometimes it comes with a trippy display of colors [Music] and after that you get a beautiful title screen but that doesn't mean the game is working you might get as far as a menu but it's very possible nothing else will happen so then you scramble and try everything you can sometimes you gotta hit enter f1 or spacebar or that extinct forgotten key of run or press the button on the joystick or press the button on the joystick while it's plugged into port 2 and sometimes none of that works i've tried every key sometimes every single key which is kind of exhausting it does help when it's plugged in but anyway i invented the commodore 64 keyboard presser presses every key i've even tried using the commodore mini that's right the commodore mini with some select pre-installed games they work fine but in order to access the vast library of the commodore 64 i had to add some roms and connect an old keyboard even utilizing the built-in virtual keyboard for that elusive run button but still more than half the time the games just don't want to start so what does that mean were the games always broken to begin with well now you know why it's taken me 198 times to finally do a commodore episode it's not like the nes where it just starts up well most the time the nes and future game consoles were like the young children who want to play you say the nes hey we're playing clash at demon head and the nes goes yay but the commodore 64 is like some old person you say hey you want to play and it goes my [ __ ] back hurts get out of here but don't worry we're definitely playing some games unlike the atari 5200 episode so once you're actually in a game there's one final threshold to get past the controls if nothing happens it could be the joystick is meant to be plugged into the second port it could be that it uses the keyboard it could be that the joystick is disabling every other key yes that's actually happened to me before when i plug in a joystick half of the keys stop working it could be this it could be that it could be that there's a gremlin in your house back then there were no standard rules for controlling a game it wasn't as simple as bna for jump and attack it was all just a mystery to figure out take this laurel and hardy game for instance i ran back and forth finding nothing but dead ends so i'm sure there's something i'm missing and i've tried believe me i've tried you know what's perplexing me even more is who the hell decide to make a laurel and hardy game i mean i'm all for it but you think any kids knew who laurel and [ __ ] hardy were but that's what makes the commodore so awesome it seems every franchise every movie every game series had a title on commodore big trouble in little china had a game on commodore that sounds like something a fan would come up with i can't get over the fact that it was licensed as a real video game and not many people even know about it being that it was such a cult film you don't expect it to get made into a game it's not that great though i just move left just keeps on going and going and every once in a while i fight somebody i don't even know where kurt russell is the simpsons arcade one of the most popular arcade games i've ever seen common as dirt at every roller rink and laundromat should have been on super nintendo or genesis but no commodore 64 where it looks and plays like [ __ ] street fighter yes the original street fighter was on commodore it's barely functional mash keys and hope for the best well that was easy one hit takes down the opponent i wouldn't even bother trying any special moves if there are any the subway background might be one of the ugliest backgrounds i've ever seen one backdrop says blockhead for some reason blockhead like in gumby or charlie brown oh and the taunts are the best wow that's such a demoralizing insult yeah but the crazy thing is the commodore had street fighter 2 yeah here it is in the box and if you look at the back you can see from these screenshots the graphics are just as good as the arcade wow now let's check out the actual game holy [ __ ] this is the worst false advertising i've ever seen they use screenshots from the arcade because they were too embarrassed to show what it really looked like no i take it back they weren't embarrassed they didn't care so basically this is street fighter 2 the [ __ ] edition turdo and no i didn't expect anything better on an older out of date platform but why why would you even bother putting this on commodore and who bought this me there's also a thundercats game wow dude a thundercats game in c64 glory lionel looks like a buff napoleon dynamite glitches aside i'm sure it must have been really cool seeing one of your favorite cartoons becoming a game but it's more entertaining to clean up cat vomit i might even have some right now and it would be better use of my time than this alf yes alf there was a goddamn alf game on commodore so let me ask if it was your job to come up with an idea for an alf game what would you do how about an elf head floating around the streets that's it great idea occasionally there's a cat or another floating head who's that supposed to be willie willy ha this makes the sega master system version look awesome next golden girls on commodore i'm just kidding then there's he-man imagine being a kid in the 80s and having a he-man game on a home computer because hell yeah it's [ __ ] he-man and it actually has the music from the show even though it eventually turns into a weird droning sound [Music] what's really cool is that enemies killed are tallied by skulls cracked i've played a lot of games and never seen it called that but the one thing that truly sucks about this game is that to jump you have to hit up and diagonal i can understand up but up in diagonal with this you're guaranteed to [ __ ] up and fall over and over oh come on come on son of a [ __ ] but there's another he-man game he-man jr gotta love the illustration the only way that drawing would be impressive is if it was done on the ljn video art it's a top-down view bullet hell shooter kind of like akari warriors and it goes on and on as you fight doctors and scrubs and hungry plants from little shop of horrors skeletor makes an appearance so that's cool i guess after i killed him i came to a dead end i mean i just killed skeletor so maybe i beat the game and they just forgot to program an ending that's a new one then there's double dragon not as good as the nes or arcade game obviously but it works well enough it's one of the more playable games spacebar jumps so there's actually a jump button and it responds weird thing though who the hell is wanted for fifty thousand dollars looks like someone from earthbound of course there's plenty of superhero games on commodore 64 like the amazing spider-man but there's nothing amazing about this bag of ass i don't know if you're in a casino or a closed grocery store at night sounds like he farts when he lands on his butt i like the giant image of spider-man over there just to remind you what game you're playing with batman 89 based on the movie the music is pretty good but the strange thing here is they programmed a suicide button if you press down you die what's the point i don't know i guess you can get stuck sometimes and in my experience it seems after you've killed yourself once batman will keep dying over and over so i doubt that's supposed to happen but it did happen so there's a game called mario's brewery okay a game with mario drinking beer of course i had to play it but it turns out it's just a donkey kong clone and was not licensed by nintendo so if you ever wanted to play donkey kong but instead of donkey kong being an ape he's a fermenting tank for beer then this is the game for you now of course i have to play terminator because hell yeah it's one of the greatest sci-fi movies of all time i gotta see how it is on the commodore [Music] the game is called terminator but it's just a friggin space shooter so i've been fooled the game just happens to be called terminator not based on the movie i've just been motherfucked okay next we have cyberdyne warriors does this one have anything to do with terminator after all it's named after the company that created skynet or it just happens to be a coincidence not related but the name cyberdyne was actually used for a japanese robotics company well that just seems like tempting fate and is [ __ ] terrifying anyway the game is just a generic run and gun platformer shooter but it's not bad in fact i'd say it's better than many of the terminator games i've reviewed besides the music is legitimately awesome now we're talking terminator 2 judgment day now this is the real deal we know this one's definitely based on the movie so let's check it out um okay commodore 64 is like a box of chocolates you never know what you're gonna get you might get like a flashing light show or a loud beeping sound or just a bright white screen that blinds you come on load you son of a [ __ ] load well i tried i wouldn't be able to get this game to load to save my life just a blank white screen but hmm maybe that's judgment day maybe the nuke exploded and that's it so i made my point every franchise ever was on commodore but the real treasure lies in all the games that you never even would have thought existed things that you couldn't even imagine so now let's dig into some games that are a hundred percent we how about apple cider spider where you're a frog hopping through an apple cider factory while avoiding spiders or bouncing heads where you're going around collecting lips or a game called get off my garden you're an r2d2 watering can defending your garden from croquet balls and teddy bears yeah get off my lawn you [ __ ] but i bet this game holds the distinction of being the only game to have a game over screen that says uh dittums then there's a game called cockin the one with the really weird cover art that i talked about before you play as a rooster going around a hen house avoiding porcupines but the best part is when the hen bashes you over the head another one with some pretty crazy cover art is gianna sisters but the game itself wow does that look familiar at all despite being a mario ripoff it went on to become a popular series okay here's one called sex games wow sex games funny to think this would exist back in the early days of video games they had their priorities now i don't think i could show this one but it's kind of like those adult atari games except this one's a little more um detailed but the real funny thing is to control what's happening here you have to shake the joystick like this up and down really fast that's what you do just make sure to grab the right one then there's a game called thing on a spring what is that thing on a spring now if you were a thing on a spring you'd think you'd be real good at jumping right but no the jumping sucks so anyway you're just helplessly hopping around avoiding pig heads and getting punished by everything in sight and when you get a game over it really lets you know in your face then there's revenge of the mutant camels you're a camel jumping around [ __ ] out baby camels to be honest i don't know exactly what i'm supposed to be doing but damn this is awesome there's even a face designing program called face maker hmm not quite as advanced as nintendo's me maker then there's dancing monster [Music] what the [ __ ] next up street [Music] hassle okay this is one of the best games i've ever played what is this so you're a wrestler and i guess this is what he does on his day off walk around the streets and [ __ ] people up they don't even look like intimidating enemies they're just random bypassers but then all of a sudden oh there's a there's a gorilla there's a gorilla i mean that's what you call a [ __ ] game a wrestler on the streets fighting gorillas that's all you need and i love the headbutt there's something about the way he grabs them and leans into it yeah [ __ ] oh and that devastating sound effect like the force of his skull bashing into them sends a [ __ ] shockwave through the city [Applause] [Laughter] and that bouncing cartoon sound when he jumps oh man and he can also squat and go here doggy wow thumbs up on street hassle then there's netherworld where you're i don't know a space station like deep space nine floating around blasting at space dragons but the reason i point this game out is because of the music check this out so i mean it sounds a little fuzzy but for an early video game it's one of the most ambitious scores i've ever heard and a testament to what the commodore was capable of next is bozo's night out in this game i kid you not you play as a drunk guy trying to get home from the bar you have to avoid random people on the streets and anything you touch you end up in the hospital and start over so does he go straight from the hospital to the bar again damn you can even wander into the garden where there's a bunch of muppet monsters and if you eat a mushroom you go on a crazy trip holy [ __ ] one of the most complicated games is everyone's a wally it's very innovative for its time because you switch between multiple characters each with their own specialty such as plumber electrician etc but as you switch the other characters who you're not playing as are still walking around through very simple ai so each player has to complete a job and ultimately together they all have to open a safe to collect their wages wow imagine to get paid for your job you had to steal your own pay by breaking into the [ __ ] safe along the way you go into a post office and stamps attack you you go into a bakery and bread attacks you that's the type of world these games operate in it would be like if i walk into the nerd room and all my games are flying around smack me in the face so anyway just walking around going to a phone booth and then oh [ __ ] it's a space shooter now yes the game just switched genres now i'm a spaceship shooting at lightning bolts in space and then i come out of a different phone booth so it's basically a teleportation unit with a space shooter inside then i fall into a basement oh my gosh shark shark shark shark and then i'm dead well i've saved the best for last from what i've seen in my opinion this is the best game the crowning achievement on the commodore 64. lazy jones the premise is you're a hotel employee who wants to escape from his work and play video games it's simple all you do is walk around avoiding running into people and visit every room in the rooms are giant tvs with a video game so this might be the first time in history that i'm aware of at least where you play a video game inside of a video game that was a pretty revolutionary concept for its day and that's the whole idea of lazy jones it's just a bunch of mini games and you never know what you're gonna get it might be a ship shooting at spinning squares or stopping carnival gravitrons from landing on earth or shooting lint and meatball asteroids or volleying doggy bones or fighting ostriches or trying to cross a street like human frogger or breaking blocks while controlling the copyright symbol have you ever played a game where you're the copyright symbol that's the best video game character not samus from metroid or simon belmont from castlevania the copyright symbol from lazy jones let's see some cosplay on that and there's this one oh my turkey's on the conveyor stabbing with the fork turkey's falling in the garbage can get the turkeys get the turkeys get the turkeys get the turkey get the turkey get the turkey the forks and the turkey fork in the turkey watch the phone watch the phone ah those [ __ ] phones always stopping me from getting my turkey before it falls in the garbage it makes no sense unless it's a surreal nightmare inspired by cooking a turkey but the phone call distracts you and ruins the turkey hence the reason why the phones are stopping you no even though the mini games are so bizarre it's still cool because you never get bored with all this variety it's like playing 10 games in one it keeps you guessing what the hell you're gonna see next it's the type of whacked out lunacy that could only happen in the 80s i especially love the character himself lazy jones a guy who doesn't have a care in the world i like his nonchalant bouncy walk and for some reason it goes so perfectly with the music check that [Music] out it's that playful repetition with a slight mischievous mood like he's up to something and if that weren't enough you can actually go to the toilet and when lazy jones pisses it sounds like lasers wow [Music] so there you go i finally got to play a bunch of commodore games that wanted to do this for a long time and as you can see it's a gold mine has so much more to explore the commodore 64 has a special place in our hearts it made it through the video game crash it was a cheaper affordable computer making it the underdog of the competition and it challenged and perplexed young gamers many who went on to become programmers themselves and to this day it has a loving nerdy cult following it's the commodore club where the password is load quote asterisk quote comma eight comma one but we're not done yet we still have a few more commodore games we want to talk about um certain horror themed ones and since we're heading into that time of year where my room suddenly goes darker for whatever reason and it gets spooky so it only makes sense so light up those jack lanterns and tune in next time also all month of october be sure to check out cinemassacre's monster madness around the world 31 days 31 countries on the website cinemassacre.com [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Cinemassacre

Views: 1,580,106

Rating: 4.9308748 out of 5

Keywords: avgn, angry video game nerd, Commodore 64, commodore, avgn c64, avgn commodore 64, angry video game nerd commodore 64, avgn198, angry video game nerd 198, cinemassacre, james rolfe, commodore 64 games, c64, c64 games, commodore 64 computer, commodore computer

Id: UDumOYP0ZA0

Length: 30min 52sec (1852 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 25 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/CombustionEngine]

I've felt the format of his newer videos has gotten better. More the old style lately. Not a bunch of guests. More gameplay footage. I'm sure James doesn't write them anymore but compared to some of the newer ones it feels like he does. Can't pinpoint where but within the last 5 or so episodes it seems to have gotten more classic again

[u/Clbull]

Only experience with a truly retro home computer was about twenty years ago. Used to be part of a local youth club, someone brought one in, played a motorbike racing game on it that took around 8 minutes to load. Can't remember what system it was, think it was a ZX Spectrum or BBC Micro.

That shit blew my 10-year-old mind, but now looking back I think I was naïve to be fascinated by outdated 8-bit hardware, especially since my childhood was dominated by 32 and 64 bit consoles.

I've genuinely thought about downloading a Commodore 64 emulator and just fucking about. Wouldn't exactly know where to start, or even how I'd find retro home computer games from 40 years ago...

[u/LordHayati]

AVGN has a point: the commodore 64 was a launchpad for developers, and still has a massive cult following. I can't even fault him for being lighter than usual this episode.

the c64 survived the gaming crash mostly unscathed, that says it all.

[u/justintheplatypus]

I've never heard of these codebooks before. That's got to be the most annoying copyright protection I've ever seen.

[u/JRR_SWOLEkien]

Man am I ever surprised to see all the hate for AVGN. Not every episode is a smash hit, but most of them are entertaining enough. The Fear and Loathing episode was amazing imo.

This episode was certainly refreshing though, and I'd love to see more just talking about the game collection in a passionate way.

[u/themanoftin]

Surprised to see an AVGN video here. Not a fan of the direction of the channel currently but the recent episodes have been a pretty nice improvement over stuff like the real abysmal Shrek one

[u/platfus118]

I think he should consider abandoning the "angry" shtick and just talk about the games, console, the good and shitty games. It was fun in 2004 where random lawlz and shouting was funny.

[u/Daedelous2k]

I love that he covered Bozo's Night out - That game was one of Tasket's many quirky games I remember so well.

Here's a few games that James did NOT cover....

Sanxion - Side scrolling shooter Famous for it's loading music. Seen here

Armalyte - One of the side scrolling shooters on the system, different enough from R-Type. Also has a great Title theme and Loading theme

Alien (By Argus Press) - A budget game about the first alien movie that involves you commanding the crew of the nostromo in trying to deal with the alien, you don't directly control them, but direct them, so their AI will differ depending on the situation. On a "full" game the android and victim are randomised. You could try to kill the alien, blow up the nostromo and escape or fail and let the alien return to earth. Interesting game for the time

Psi-5 Trading company - Command a crew aboard a trading vessel to haul a freight accross space where pirates await to rob you at every turn. This one was really unique in that the crew mates were more AI based than Alien above. You have to form a crew from a wide cast of races and personalities. Some crew love to work on their own, some really hate having to work with robots or men/women (Don't for example, put 2 people on targetting and weapons that hate each other). I can't stress how fun this game is, give it a bash.

Hacker and Hacker 2 The Doomsday Papers - This one has you playing around as a hacker who dials into a corperate system and manages to dick around with their internal control network, only to discover that said company is up to no good, being treated like a remote employee you have to work to foil their plan while not getting booted from the system. This game doesn't tell you jack shit and you are expected to learn like a "Hacker" would. Similar idea for the second game, but it involves an entirely new setup of controlling robots placed within a building to steal documents while avoiding security.

[u/SimonCallahan]

I have played the Batman game he showed and it's not supposed to do that. In fact, ducking is kind of integral to those parts of the game, so pressing down as a "suicide" button makes no sense. You can, however, die by swinging into a wall.

The game as a whole is pretty novel, to be honest. There are only two platformer levels, the first one and the last one. Between them are two driving levels (one for the Batmobile and the other for the Batwing), and a level that plays like the old Mastermind board game where you're trying to find what products The Joker hid the Smilex in.

The game is balls hard, though. You're not going to get through all the levels your first time through, there's a lot of memorization to be done.