Filed under: Fun, Games, Time-Wasters, Web
Three classic shooters, C64 style - Time Waster
by Lee Mathews Jan 16th 2009 at 10:30AM
I loved my Commodore 64 - I even talked my parents into letting me get one of the "mod" cases for it so would look like the newer (and more bad-ass) C128. There were three big Time Wasters for me back then: Zaxxon, 1943, and Gyruss.
Zaxxon's crazy pseudo-3d (also referred to as axonometric projection) blew me away. Like Icarus and his wax wings, flying too high or too low caused many untimely ends to my ship.
Gyruss, with its frantic pace and awesome electronic version of Toccata and Fugue in D minor kept me coming back for more. If you don't know the game, it's a tube-style shooter: move your ship in a circular pattern around the bad guys and blast them to space dust. 2 warps to Neptune, baby.
For days when I wasn't feling quite so futuristic, there was 1943. It's addictive, low-fi air-to-air combat at it's best.
Want to rekindle some old memories? Head over to C64s.com, where you can play all three (and tons of others). We've mentioned the site before on DLS, but its vintage goodness is hard to overstate.
Zaxxon's crazy pseudo-3d (also referred to as axonometric projection) blew me away. Like Icarus and his wax wings, flying too high or too low caused many untimely ends to my ship.
Gyruss, with its frantic pace and awesome electronic version of Toccata and Fugue in D minor kept me coming back for more. If you don't know the game, it's a tube-style shooter: move your ship in a circular pattern around the bad guys and blast them to space dust. 2 warps to Neptune, baby.
For days when I wasn't feling quite so futuristic, there was 1943. It's addictive, low-fi air-to-air combat at it's best.
Want to rekindle some old memories? Head over to C64s.com, where you can play all three (and tons of others). We've mentioned the site before on DLS, but its vintage goodness is hard to overstate.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Megarain said 6:23PM on 1-16-2009
I have an old Zaxxon cabinet. Yeah, I'm awesome.
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whiskey said 9:55AM on 1-17-2009
I have a working C128 with 5 1/2 floppies. Yeah, I'm not as awesome, but awesomeish none the less
Reply