Games That Push The Limits of the Commodore 64 in Surprising Ways
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- čas přidán 10. 06. 2024
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For anyone who's interested this is the debugger I was using.
sourceforge.net/projects/c64-...
Yes it's the C64 once again and I'm on the hunt for more limit pushing games. This time I'm going for games that not only push the limits, but do it in surprising ways, making the C64 do things I really didn't know it could do.
00:00 Start
00:31 PCB Way sponsorship
01:50 Flimbo's Quest
05:49 Hawkeye
06:55 Turrican 3
07:27 Doc Cosmos
11:12 Metal Dust
15:12 Zeta Wing
19:16 Ending and Patreon Thanks - Hry
The C64 shouldn't have the hardware for parallax background scrolling.
Luckily the C64 doesn't know that, so he does it anyway.
You can do fake fullscreen overlaid parallax character screen scrolling on any machine that allows user defined graphics and pixel scrolling of the screen. You could even do it on the VIC-20 or Atari 400 budget machines before the C64. Scorpius on C64 does Amiga/Megadrive quality proper transparent top layer parallax.
....Luckily the C64 can run software that does this, so it doesn't matter. Its like when people can't believe their eyes that a sprite or whatever is scaling or rotating on a machine that doesn't have these hardware functions. Its a moderately misunderstood issue, mostly affecting hobbyists I think.
@@nicolasjonasson4820 Rotating anything, sprites or bitmaps/User Defined Graphics is massively CPU intensive and the C64 has only the 1mhz CPU to do that and no hack of any kind due to how the VIC-II is involved ;) We are talking about a simple byproduct of the way the C64 character screen is displayed by VIC-II but every frame manipulated by the 6510 CPU to change a few bytes to the redefined character set. The C64 can't rotate things any better than ANY home computer with a 1mhz 6502 class CPU
🤣🤣🤣🤣
Speccy doesn’t have any gfx acceleration hardware yet does plenty of good parallax as well.
Honestly, Sam’s Journey is what I consider to be the epitome of what the actual C64 could do. No enhancement chips, no additional RAM, no Stereo SID…. Yet we end up with a jaw dropping good looking game, insanely smooth 8-way scrolling, perfect locked framerate, an enormous world to explore, and instant suit transformations. Plus a banging soundtrack to boot!
Again, all on a stock C64 with absolutely no bells and whistles.
howover its diddent used any multiplexed spriets at all, and its all limited to the 8 sprites on screen, but used it in a smart way. a good game for sure.
So many c64 games rewrote the book on what the c64 could do..some amazing and very talented programmers that found ways to do things many though impossible on the old bread bin
the commodore 64 lasted 12 years (1982-1994)
i think that's enough time to reinvent the wheel many times, which is great, it shows how much C64 games evolved through the 80s and early 90s.
The C64 game "Apple Willie" is one of the few type-in games I can think of that has parallax scrolling. Published in COMPUTE!'s Gazette in April 1990 and written by Hubert Cross, it computes the 40 scenery frames upon startup and draws them on screen while doing so. This takes about a minute. At the time, I was quite impressed!
My first computer. Love the C64. Still got the same one I received for Christmas in 1987. Thanks for another interesting video.
👍👍👍
I gutted mine in the 90s just for a laugh. Oh well
I used this technique to create a static background for the Technodrome (which was a scrolling character map) in Turtles C64. I thought it was pretty neat when I came up with it (circa 1989). I'm sure it was done before then both on the C64 and in arcade games etc.
Flimbo's Quest was my favourite game back then. I have replayed it over and over.
I was surprised to hear you say the word "parallax" about 15 times but not actually refer to the 1986 game "Parallax" 🤣
Please, we already know who you are :)
En tout cas merci pour ce jeu mythique qui est dans ma collection c64 et votre bande son :) culte, monument of c64
One of the best examples of multi layer parallax scrolling on the C64 is on the 1987 game ‘Nebulus’ on the bonus stages set under water. Still looks amazing to this day.
6:30 Battletoads on the NES used a custom chip in the cartridge to modify background tiles held in a RAM that was mapped in as tile ROM time to create parallax effects without needing to use large numbers of background tiles. They still didn't do much more than simple repeating patterns, but the chip wasn't really used to it's full potential. Color Dreams also had a cartridge in development that contained a 4mhz Z-80 with 64k of RAM that could animate background tiles and modify the color pallet per scanline but it never was used in any actual game (Hellraiser was to be the first game to use it)
I remember when I Played Flimbo's Quest on C64 for the first time and being blown away by the parallax scrolling, just wondering "how the bloody hell did they do that?"!
Just adding to that cartridge game part that there have been much bigger ones out there. The cart format used by ocean games around 1990 technically allowed for up to 1MB ROM size, probably via some bank switching tech.
Got my c64 back in 1983 in for my 14th birthday along with disk drive and 1702 was the best birthday of my life then got the Colecovision for christmas probably was the best year of my young life at the time, only thing that came even close was when i had got the Atari vcs heavy sixer in 1978 but to get a computer and a console system in the same year was the best.
This series is a great source of joy and comfort for me. To use the phrasing of one of my favorite youtubers, you are criminally undersubbed. Thanks for this kick ass content
There's always some madman who'll do the impossible, and that's awesome.
@@penatio facts. i want to become a content creator of note someday and when i do, i hope to collab with this madlad of retro awesomeness! Someday. I'll make it happen
@@over7532 Godspeed to you!
14:19 "Welle:erdball" was a favourite Band of mine in the early 2000s. I still would recommend their music to anyone who is into real songs with a 8-Bit-C64-Sound and don't mind it mixed with german lyrics (as a native german speaker myself I obviously didn't but they also have some instrumentals as well ;-)
'Enforcer. Full metal mega blaster.'
Why is it that games don't have proper names any more?
Forbidden Forest did parallax scrolling on the C64 in 1983.
And Beyond the Forbidden Forest had three layers. Plus your character scaled.
Yeah, I think it was the first one to do it. It's crazy that it was Paul Norman's first game and he did some groundbreaking stuff like that!
I was genuinely surprised that Beyond The Forbidden Forest wasn't featured in this video. I remember being blown away when I first saw it. It was the game that made me think that I might have picked the wrong team by getting a Speccy.
I get such a buzz when I see new videos from you. You have the best voice on the entire internet sir and a real pro narrative style. well done love all your pet names for our beloved retro breadbin lol
It's really neat to see the behind the scenes work going on in these things. Really makes you appreciate the work that went into them.
Oh yes the good old contre-amiral soixante-quatre! x)
I was proof watching back an old video I did about Scorpius on the C64, the parallax scrolling on that is completely see through with no ugly character blocks around the jagged bits unlike all other parallax scrollers that use straight lines or character block black outlines. Really awesome and it was a budget game for a few quid with 2 player co-op and power ups with sprite multiplexing to boot.
This is some of my favorite content on YT. Thanks for uploading!
People keep forgetting Star Paws; not just parallax multi-layer scrolling, but very fast scrolling too. Star Paws was released in 1987, before Flimbo's Quest
Wjhat about Ninja Gaiden on the PC Engine? That had a weird background parallax going on.
Y's 3 on PCE / TG-16 CD had the same type of not-so-smooth parallax going on in some areas as well.
Oh my god it was true horror :D
A pity because except that it is an amazing game.
I honestly think that I enjoy your videos because of your speech patterns! But really, I like hearing the technical explanations as well, I learned quite a bit about old graphics hardware by watching this series. Glad to see some new content from you, cheers!
Later C64 cartridges used bank switching for bigger ROM sizes, I had Robocop 2 by Ocean, which even had support for Mega Drive pads(B to shoot, C to jump) with an option to set no of buttons in the main menu. In fact, I think all the big carts may have been made by Ocean.
I got Flimbo's Quest on a cartridge with a new C64 for Xmas 1991. I was immediately smitten. Beautiful graphics and audio that still looks and sounds awesome. Great memories..
Exactly like me 👍
A limited use of C64 "parallax" is also done in 1985 Suicide Express.
(along with a fantastic tune AND the trick of split screen)
Tony Crowther aka RATT was also a active demo coder. He was active in making some of the early first world hardware tricks and also software. Multiplexing and software sprites. Mr. Uridium also pushed the limits in many of his games. Ocean/Imagines Dave Collier, one of the first, if not the first to include mc sprites with hires sprite overlay to make awesome graphics.
Always look forward to this seriee
Audio? You ain't seen NOTHING yet!!
/watch?v=cKwLkNoySI4
Yes, that is coming out of an unmodified unassisted C64.
Bee 52 on the NES pulled off parallax in a very similar way, drawing a pixel-shifted version of 13 different cloud tiles into video ram. This is particularly hard to do on the NES. You can't normally draw 13 tiles in a single frame, and also be able to update the background for scrolling. Normally there is a hard limit of about 1800 machine cycles to draw all graphics data, enough time to update 150 bytes (9 tiles worth), and not update the background map at all. But Bee 52 is drawing 13 tiles, and performing scrolling plus the parallax scrolling effect. How does it pull it off? It 'turns the screen off' early by entering forced blanking mode. This allows access to video RAM, but it can only display the background color on the screen during this time.
Thanks for this info! I will definitely feature bee 52 in the future, it's really interesting how this works.
Shadow of the beast for the C64 has tons of tile shifting to trick the eyes. Its truly impressive how they manage to reproduce the game on the C64.
Oh hell yes!!! C64 you listened to my request thank you so much!!!
No problem!
Maybe one day I can find a video that explains what was the most capable 8-bit computer was it the NES was it the Sega Master system I really don't know what the most advanced 8 bit computer is.. what I mean by capable is the best graphics in video games possible
@@Lord_Vader_FL In terms of games, probably PC Engine.
@@iantellam9970 PC Engine/TurboGrafx had 16-bit graphics hardware. Overall I think that graphics was the main focus, because if memory serves me correctly, the GPU had a higher clock speed and more dedicated VRAM than the console's main CPU and RAM. But, since it has an 8-bit CPU, I guess it is technically an 8-bit console.
@@BeefJerkey True. If PC Engine is a little borderline, my vote would go towards the Master System then. It could pull off some impressive stuff when the right people got hold of it.
The Sonic the Hedgehog ports were excellent. The first person sections from Phantasy Star didn’t make it to the Megadrive sequels as they couldn’t figure out how to do it as well. Master System was pretty impressive for an 8 bit console.
Even though I'm too thick to follow the technical detail, it's still really fascinating. Amazing analysis again, brilliant job!
The first game I played with parallax scrolling was Bounder.
Dont forget 1001 crew. They opened up the borders.
If you want to see (well HEAR, actually) what a C64 with lots of memory can do with audio, check out these examples of 48khz samples being played:
- "Welcome to the Working Week" (Elvis Costello): czcams.com/video/cKwLkNoySI4/video.html
- "Cheap Day Return" (Jethro Tull): czcams.com/video/UYAf_awh5XA/video.html
Also of interest are these videos made entirely of PETSCII characters. Although they were created using a PC workflow, they _could_ conceivably run on a C64 if it had enough memory (the sound is NOT done on a C64!):
- Scene from "Blade Runner": czcams.com/video/gtZvb1CVs_c/video.html
- Scene from "Singing in the Rain": czcams.com/video/-1OERiekf8I/video.html
- The channel owner has lots of other examples on his page, including this one that shows his workflow: czcams.com/video/xq2uZArRdHo/video.html
Metal Dust works with 8MHz if you remove the audio (there's a proof-of-concept crack that runs on Flash8 accelerators) ... to put both aspects into perspective.
What an AWESOME Video! Zeta wing at the end made me so happy!
I love that odd C64 palette.
you essentially missed a gem, 'Mayhem in Monsterland'
My favorite series of yours!
Operation Wolf actuelly also used that pallarax effect in a surprising way: used on the status!
The reason is the status would scroll with the gameplay window as you cant split the window like that on hardware. Its also used a cover to mask this by a multiplexed energy status, so the enemy sprites newer walked got into the status. Very genius!
NES could not do that in that game (status was moved in the bottom).
@shareopolis Since you asked for other examples --- quite a few games using the cool "parallax" technique seen in Flimbo!
Metal Storm on NES is an example: czcams.com/video/D_xGOAnpCqQ/video.html
Sonic 3 actually does this trick in a few places: the Genny/MegaDrive supports 2 background layers, but it fakes a third layer by animating the tiles on the BG layer - you can see it in Lava Reef zone: czcams.com/video/s9xl7covihg/video.html
I believe a few TG16/PCE titles did this as well. Most of the time, these background layers were simply faked with sprites on that system because it could move a lot of sprites. But sometimes it was animated background tiles, generally on later-gen titles that made use of the RAM expansion cards.
Yeah, I'm certain some other MegaDrive games use the technique when they want more than 2 layers, but I can't think of it off the top of my head.
I seen "Filmbo's Quest"'s type of parallax scrolling in the "Bee 52".
Rygar on NES, on the very first area you play in, has a still background that doesn't move, like that of Hawkeye, with a burning sunset that remains still independently from the foreground elements that do scroll. Not sure how they achieved it though or if the tehcnique used there had anything in common with Flimbo's Quest or Hawkeye (and also it was a relatively early game on the system and the earliest I can think of to pull off a pseudo-parallax effect like that).
I did think of Rygar when I saw Hawkeye. I wonder if it’s a similar technique
It's kind of flattering that PCBWay sponsors these videos. Yes, custom circuit boards is totally a thing I do, I'm very smart and resourceful and I know everything I want to know about building my own electronics...
in my dreams.
Hmmm...earliest example I can think of is Forbidden Forest (1983) - for the C64.
Metal Dust was released by Protovision and "cracked" by Genesis Project. The samples are played back from the SuperCPU SuperRAM and not from the disk. Also, there is Wolf3D and Doom also specifically for the SuperCPU.
Just look at what the C64 Demoscene has put out over the years. That old breadbox can do very impressive things when in the right hands...
Wow. Would've never believed some of this possible in 1984!!
Thanks for finally, after all these years, explaining the flimbos quest scroll!
Glad I could help!
Bad Dudes on NES had pretty fancy parallax effects on the train level.
This is such a great topic always got to watch these
Just subbed after watching the very nostalgic for me invade a load video. Great channel. Thanks. My fave 8bit computer is The Commodore 64, so many great gaming memorys.
In the winter years of the Amstrad CPC range clever & amazing discoveries were found with the machines Monitor display.
Pretty much along a similar approach to the c64s. Alas though, without hardware sprites to take away the wieght of processing time.
Love your videos! Keep em coming!
Thank you! Will do!
Hawkeye and Flimbo's Quest definitely share some DNA in that they have the same graphic artists.
The C64 has a lot of juice yet to be squeezed out of it. what a surprising piece of hardware. if it only had a two button joystick/controller from the start, it would have allowed for a lot more flexibility in game programming.
That would have made so much difference wouldn't it? Why did they have to go with the Atari standard? Two buttons would have been so much better and if the C64 did it, the Amiga probably would have too.
Great video. Old C64 fan here - from back in the day! Amazing what the C64 can do! However, no matter how many times I hear the parallax scrolling of Flimbo's Quest explained....it still makes no sense to me whatsoever!
Phobia by Anthony Crowter. a game from 1989 that deserves attention here.
Once again, a totally awesome vid concerning amazing things that somehow can be done with limited computing resources (except where it is a bit of a cheat with that Metal Dust thing chiz ect). I did spend most of this year writing an Atari 800XL version of "Space Invaders" where almost everything was done using a deferred VBI and obviously DLIs were employed also - the invaders are software sprites written to whichever ANTIC mode it is that has a resolution of 160 x 192 but with only one playfield and no page flipping was needed, because only 1 invader gets written each frame and the invader array gets smaller each time one gets shot, so eventually just like the arcade game, they move faster, and there were certain other things like stratosleds from "Flash Gordon's Trip To Mars" that try to drop homing hardware missiles on the player. Also there are geese that you must not shoot, because if you do, you get paralysed and if you shoot just one on that level, then you won't get the advantage of the protective V-formation that comes on after a certain delay and which stops the invaders dropping their bombs and allows your rate of fire to increase. Obviously, the player sprites are multiplexed via the DLI...anyroad, here's where this thing can be found:
github.com/M0nkers/ycefek
*important note: this is intended for PAL only, not NTSC. I could almost certainly make it NTSC compliant by removing more scanlines from the display list.
Since the time that I wrote this, I have discovered the PETSCII graphics editor and also 8bitworkshop.com, but the way I develped this originally was using the MADS assembler with the WUSDN plugin for Eclipse.
The title of my Atari invader clone is "Ye Clouthe Et Fosse Et Knyghte". The next game I am going to write will be kind of vaguely like "Choplifter", and there will be a whole lot of parallax scrolling and flying scallops will be the main enemies. This new game will be called "Edmund Hillary's Pork Pie Palace".
Phobia on C64 had a similar effect to that Zeta Wing trench.
Nebulous is based around a demo effect AFAIK. Gauntlet animation technique is worth checking out.
Space mambow on the msx2+ uses a similar technique, a new register in the 2+ and variable sprite masking on the borders to mask the cycling, very remarkable on a machine that usually scrolls horizontally by 8 pixels chunks.
Wrath of the Demon had parallax scrolling on c64
In regards to the multi-layer parallax, I'm pretty sure Bee 52 did something like this with its backgrounds. While I haven't delved into the code, it does feature clouds that seem to scroll on a second background plane which is pretty amazing to be honest
Wow, that's a good one! I've never seen that game before and probably would have never have looked at it, but the parallax effect on that is amazing. I'm sure I'll feature it in a video at some point, thanks for the tip!
Oh man, Flimbo was a pack in game for my C64. Played it and played it and played it. Even my mum completed it a few times. That music brings back the memories
I don't know if the technique is similar but in 1988 Firebird released "the extirpator!" on the Atari 8bit line with a parallax scrolling consisted by 4 different planes. There is one more space shoot'em up with many levels of scrolling where the space ship flies over them. I don't recall the name or the year but I will post it as soon as I remember it.
And ELITE was a jewel with the code. The universe generator.
Great video! Thank you.
What tool do you use to analyze and show the memory and assembly lines, like in 3:49?
How do you get all of this on screen?
At least Sanxion (1986) has a double parallax effect prior to Flimbo's Quest. And Delta (1987) has four layers of parallax, Three different star fields and meteors/rocks.
My 2 Favorite SHootEm Ups in the 80's plus Terra Cresta.
A great feat was Slimey’s mine with all the digital samples in the game - yes. It took forever to load - but well worth it
The Smooth scrolling in Mayhem in Monsterland is quite impressive.
It really is amazing how much a bit of extra RAM and brute CPU oomph can compensate for hardware deficiencies. Commander Keen, for instance, made up for the EGA's lack of hardware sprites with a technique similar to the first game in this roundup: by keeping four copies of each sprite in RAM, one for each two-pixel offset within the eight-pixel-wide minimum addressable framebuffer unit (due to the EGA using planar graphics). This allowed smooth, NES-like animation (Keen started off as a Mario 3 clone for PCs) without the jank in contemporary games like Duke Nukem.
At 0.46 that is the c64 I had, the c64 maxi that was released should have been that style, I also had the c128 similar to the c64 look.
Rigor, Mood and Creatures 2 come to mind. :D ...or even the Hugo C64 port....
Incredible job again!
"Haunted doorbell" lol. Great description.
One of my top 5 CZcamsrs dropping fire!
Vertigo is dizzyness.
Acrophobia is the fear of heights.
I got the Playful Intelligence bundle for Xmas so Flimbo's Quest became one of my top favorite C64 games!
Why? Why isn't there a link to the shown debugger prg in the video description?
there are a few old games that have digi samples in the music and SFX, I don't recall the names though. One was a skateboarding games.
Not only is scrolling by shifting pixels within the tile data easier to do horizontally, because you can spread the commands out over the screen drawing process instead of cramming them all into the offscreen cycles, it looks like it would also be faster because you can use the processor's dedicated commands to rotate bits left or right within a memory register (6 cycles per ROL/ROR instruction = 48 cycles per tile) rather than having to swap them in and out of the CPU's internal registers (16 load and store instructions at 4 cycles each = 64 cycles per tile). And _Zeta Wing_ has six tilesets moving at once at one point.
...Why yes, this series has inspired me to do some reading on 6502 assembler, why do you ask?
Great video, I love channels that don't think C64 = 1985.
I think the game boy had some games that relied on shifting tile sets during drawing in order to do similar effects to Flimbo.
You should do a video on the super CPU, never heard of it before and would like to learn more :)
It is amazing what the old brown wedge can do can't it? I was just watching a video here on CZcams the other day with Ben Jordan, Albert Charpentier (designer of the VIC II !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and Bill Herd (Designer of the C128!!!!!!!!! who still had to know the C64 extensively to be in charge of 128 development). It makes me wonder what Albert Charpentier would think today seeing these games running on a C64 (especially something like Sam's Journey). This question was not really asked in the time they were together in the video (it was from last year and Al is still here and of course Bill). It was still very interesting. It is like a piece of history to have these guys talking on a Zoom call today! There was another video where Bill walked through the old Mostek Semiconductor building where the C64 chips were designed and manufactured. Unfortunately, it was a bit run down but he showed where certain processes took place and where his office was in his days at Commodore!! It was another great video of Historic significance in my mind. I was thinking, "Imagine. This is the exact building where the amazing C64 was birthed AND manufactured". Interesting indeed.
Great video! Thanks so much! Just Subscribed...
I would throw up Crossroads, which I consider THE absolute best game ever for C64 by a long shot.
It was blatantly lifted from Wizard of Wor, except cranked up by a factor of ten. SO many enemies and chaos on screen at once, with never an ounce of slow down or glitching to be found. It's one of the only games that's just as fun now as it was back then, and they really need to do a remake.
Not many people might have played it, as it was never an official commercial release. Initially released as a homebrew program for Compute Gazette magazine, I'm not sure it was ever sold outside of that.
Awesome! More C64, please!!!
Love your style and really enjoy the fact you look under the hood!
I mean you can have more than 16k on a cart these days - Prince of Persia is 512k for example
I remember that Turrican looked pretty good on the C64 :) That is ... if I remember it correctly^^
The game Uridium also had "parallax" effect... static background though...
6:26 there are a few Gameboy Color and Gameboy games that take advantage of bank switching to achieve either parallax or "impossible" effects for the systems.
Did you actually mention 'mayhem in monsterland' in one of your videos?
Regarding to gfx tricks in jump n run, its pretty much perfect.
You can still get some of the supercpu functionality using a ultimate-64 motherboard...
16:09 This is fantastic and would be even much better if the layers were moving properly linearly - the closer, the faster.