The Legends will never die

It’s that time again for another retro roundup

Ghostbusters – C64

I’m sure many of you long time gamers have had the pleasure of carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back, taking out bank loans and ducking under the legs of Gozer the Traveler. This isn’t a usual pick for my list of obscure old games but with all the talk about the new Ghostbusters game due out in June I’ve had the old game on my mind. One of the most memorable things about Ghostbusters for the C64 was how the terrible speech scared the hell out of me, but not enough that I didn’t have a great time singing along with the bouncing karaoke ball.

Did you know that the NES version had such terrible spelling and grammar?
”Conglaturation !!! You have completed a great game. And prooved the justice of our culture. Now go and rest our heroes !”

You’re Winner!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZYSVgE5Kwg

Park patrol – C64

More Activision greatness. Park Patrol is one of the top C64 games I’ve played, I have to wonder if Activision hoped that this would end up in arcades as it truly did all the right things to make it a great eater of quarters. The basic idea was to run around and pick up trash before you run out of energy, you also have to deal with killer swimmers and turtles while ants take food from your storage hut. Fantastic and simple, makes me wonder where the developer has gotten to now. Unlike the Ghostbusters developer who’s making iPhone games, Tony Ngo seems to of disappeared entirely

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Up77H268E

Moonstone – Amiga

The most frustrating game on this list by far is Moonstone for the Amiga. Three lives and the constant threat of instant kills may not sound fun with real time combat, but the tactical combat and crazy gore would always pull me back for some more punishment. If you don’t watch any of the other youtubes that I’ve linked to at least watch this one, it still doesn’t look to bad graphically and still isn’t half bad; perhaps that’s why it has a fansite http://www.moonstonetavern.co.uk/ and sells for $45 used!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLMFybclOJM

Startrader – C64

Startrader brings us back to the obscurity as the game was only available on a crazy cassette that had ten games on one side and Band Aid’s “Do They Know It's Christmas?” on the other. Under $10 for ten games and money donated Famine Relief in Ethiopia is a crazy deal by today's standards, I only wish they picked different art for the box, it freaked me out pretty badly.

 

I see a lot of people calling Startrader a poor man’s Elite and they might be right, even still, I had the darn music stuck in my head a couple of nights ago and I couldn’t remember it at all come morning. Sadly this game is so obscure that I can’t even find a YouTube video for it, so instead I have a link to lemon64.com where you can subject yourself to a tune I’ve heard over and over.

http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php%3FID%3D2453

Gumshoe – C64

Untill I just stared researching I had forgotten that Gumshoe actually came in the same pack as Startrader and it’s perhaps the best game in that little package. Now I’m sure a lot of NESheads are thinking of their light gun game, it seems as is Nintendo must of bought some of the rights from A&F Software with the change in their pockets. The premise is very simple shoot guys, and reach the top, perhaps that’s why it was so playable.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FORDZUIjo_0

And so ends another walk down memory lane for me, I hope I’ve reminded some of you with games forgotten and given the rest of you an interesting quick look into my gaming childhood.