Wonderland Game
THE MIDNIGHT POST * October 2006
Visit us at www.midnightsynergy.com
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A trip down the C64 Memory Lane

Must-visit Websites

Lemon64.com:
Probably the site for C-64 nostalgia. Click on "Games" to view almost all major game titles, with screenshots, reviews, and additional information. Just browsing these pages is sure to produce a few instances of "Hey, I've completely forgotten about this game!" And the Lemon64 Forum is a great spot to meet and reminisce with other C64 fans.


Wikipedia's Entry on the C64:
A great article with lots of information on its hardware and history, as well as an extensive list of Commodore 64 Games.


Remix.Kwed.org:
A great site for retro-gaming music enthusiasts. Remix.Kwed.org (aka "RKO") features modern MP3 remixes of classic Commodore 64 tunes.

Selected RKO highlights:
(Downloading these MP3s might take a few moments, so be patient after you click a link)
* Compare and contrast Paul Norman's spooky Forbidden Forest theme as a rap (!) and on spanish guitar, or check out a remix of his classic Aztec Challenge.
* Try the ultra groovy "Funky Pebbles" remix of Boulder Dash.
* Who would think to make an A Capella version of Shamus. Apparantly, somebody did! (some readers might also recognize this as the theme to the 1980s TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents)
* Composer Rob Hubbard produced many classic hits. Check out Chris Abbott's remix of Thing On A Spring. Or, for something completely different, how about the Commando theme played as a Dixie Country Tune and its high score melody as a spoof of a fictional boy band group N-JOY.


Press Play On Tape:
This Danish band is a regular at retro gaming conventions, performing an array of C64 songs on live instruments, and even creating their own music videos. If you have a fast internet connection, definitely hop over to their Video section and try out 'Comic Bakery - Larger when LIVE' (another boy band spoof), and 'Crazy Comets live in 2003' for some inspired madness.


Commodore 64 Emulators:
Finally, if you don't have a dusty C-64 hiding in your attic, you can still re-live the games of the Commodore 64 on your PC using emulators, such as CCS64 or VICE.


Midnight Synergy and the C-64

While Midnight Synergy wasn't officially formed until the mid 1990s, much of our first game development experience was on the Commodore 64 in the 1980s. We dabbled in many different game genres. We wrote a simple text adventure parser (a system to make the computer interpret typed commands in a text-based game, such as "take the key"), a space-based game using very (very!) basic 3D vector graphics (and based losely on the highly popular Star Wars video arcade game of 1983), and a very basic graphic adventure/RPG, among other games.

Games were written in the standard Commodore Basic, the expanded Simons' Basic, and 6502 Assembly Language. No games were released commercially.

Nothing much remains of that era, other than some dusty tapes, a few printouts of program listings (on a 6-needle dot matrix printer, no less), and some hand-drawn sprite designs and maps. Perhaps one day we can type in our own listings to see how good (or bad!) these games were.


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