I have and beat Autoduel for the C-64 (I've since picked up the Atari ST version as well, though I think the Amiga version was the best). It looked, sounded and played exactly like the Apple II version. With that in mind, I think you'd be very frustrated with it, as I was even then, though I did come to love it. It relies a great deal on arcade sequences, particularly for the intrinsic vehicular combat in arenas. It's a blast, but the cars control in a very slippery and imprecise manner. I plan on revisiting either the ST or Amiga version (again, the former is supposed to be poor) to see if that was fixed for those technically superior systems (the C-64 version could have been much better if it wasn't Apple II shovelware), but I bet it's still not as a good as even a mediocre action game. My point is, while I love and highly recommend the game, it's one you definitely need patience for (and it's helpful to have the original fold-out map).
I had the Atari 8 Bit conversion - also a straight Apple port including those hideous artifacted graphics. Never could get into that game and at some point I accidently destroyed the game disk. Never really felt a loss - except for the money...
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That would be a good list, particularly with a good list of reasons why, but it's an intensely personal thing nevertheless. I think most old games would be intolerable for most modern gamers regardless.
I could imagine most titles successful as free webgames - but nothing a "real gamer" would pay for.
That being said I would be really interested in the revenues that Nintendo gets out of it's downloadable emulated games.
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I really would like to try Dark Heart. I have a nice boxed copy and I've heard very, very good things about it, and it's certainly of the "underrated" variety. To your point, in playing Wizard's Crown recently, I was struck by how sluggish everything was in loading (particularly on a Commodore). That's the kind of stuff you kind of nostalgically gloss over and something we have very little tolerance for today, when 20 second initial loading screens are blasted for being way too slow...
I have the PC version as I bought practically every RPG back then. It's mostly a dungeon tactical fight simulator and the fights get brutally hard very quickly and I never finished it. It's not a graphics wonder (it never was) but it's interface is reasonably slick with menu commands visible and the game is fast on a PC.
It may be underrated because it was only played by RPG fanatics - there was much better stuff out there at the time.
However, I treasure my copy as it may pay for a car sometime in the future ;-)
I have and beat Autoduel for the C-64 (I've since picked up the Atari ST version as well, though I think the Amiga version was the best). It looked, sounded and played exactly like the Apple II version. With that in mind, I think you'd be very frustrated with it, as I was even then, though I did come to love it. It relies a great deal on arcade sequences, particularly for the intrinsic vehicular combat in arenas. It's a blast, but the cars control in a very slippery and imprecise manner. I plan on revisiting either the ST or Amiga version (again, the former is supposed to be poor) to see if that was fixed for those technically superior systems (the C-64 version could have been much better if it wasn't Apple II shovelware), but I bet it's still not as a good as even a mediocre action game. My point is, while I love and highly recommend the game, it's one you definitely need patience for (and it's helpful to have the original fold-out map).
I had the Atari 8 Bit conversion - also a straight Apple port including those hideous artifacted graphics. Never could get into that game and at some point I accidently destroyed the game disk. Never really felt a loss - except for the money...
That would be a good list, particularly with a good list of reasons why, but it's an intensely personal thing nevertheless. I think most old games would be intolerable for most modern gamers regardless.
I could imagine most titles successful as free webgames - but nothing a "real gamer" would pay for.
That being said I would be really interested in the revenues that Nintendo gets out of it's downloadable emulated games.
I really would like to try Dark Heart. I have a nice boxed copy and I've heard very, very good things about it, and it's certainly of the "underrated" variety. To your point, in playing Wizard's Crown recently, I was struck by how sluggish everything was in loading (particularly on a Commodore). That's the kind of stuff you kind of nostalgically gloss over and something we have very little tolerance for today, when 20 second initial loading screens are blasted for being way too slow...
I have the PC version as I bought practically every RPG back then. It's mostly a dungeon tactical fight simulator and the fights get brutally hard very quickly and I never finished it. It's not a graphics wonder (it never was) but it's interface is reasonably slick with menu commands visible and the game is fast on a PC.
It may be underrated because it was only played by RPG fanatics - there was much better stuff out there at the time.
However, I treasure my copy as it may pay for a car sometime in the future ;-)
take care,
Calibrator
take care,
Calibrator