C= Memories

Most of my memories related to the Commodore involve either
playing games or writing games. These memories also include
typing in programs from magazines.

Listed below are but a sampling of these memories:

0 - Watching my cousin Ryan type in the program 'Backgammon'
from the November 1985 issue of Compute!'s Gazette. We were
both anxious to see how difficult playing the game was. When
he finished typing it in and SAVEd it to disk, he played
for awhile, noting the 'irregularity' of the computer
game player's logic.

0 - Programming 'Westfront' on the Commodore 128. I spent
over 8 months working on this adventure game, which took
place in the dark ages of Norway. The landscape was vast,
as were the characters. Ryan helped me debug this game,
noting that the player should be able to examine items
described in the room descriptions. 'Westfront' included
a sprite title -- WESTFRONT -- as well as function key
command shortcuts. Included in the game was a large
Redwood forest, a Smurf village, Oslo, Trondheim, 
Stavanger, Bergen and Flora Island, among other
things.

0 - Playing the game MULE on Ryan's Commodore 64. We
had lots of fun with this space exploration/colonization
game. The best starting character was the 'Flapper', which
was good for beginners. We purchased land, cultivated food,
energy and crystite, and sold goods at monthly auctions.
The goal of MULE was to become 'First Founder' while also
helping to ensure the success of the colony.

0 - Two other games we played were Seven Cities of Gold
and BC's Quest for Tires. In Seven Cities, we took turns
voyaging to the New World (North America) in search of 
riches and other  trinkets, while in B.C.'s Quest
for Tires we ducked trees, hopped over rocks, avoided
falling lava and rescued our lady love (guarded by
a large dinosaur).

0 - Ryan programmed a small space game, 'Moon Rocks',
where the goal was to reach the moon in the quickest
time possible (while avoiding asteroids). The title
screen was especially memorable, as Ryan displayed
'MOON ROCKS' in a large opening marquee. The player's
spaceship even had "USA" written on it.

0 - Playing the game 'Yier-Ar Kung Fu' on Ryan's C-64.
We were amazed and awestruck by both the graphics and
the gameplay. With numerous moves to learn and use,
'Yier-Ar' provided hours of entertainment. Part of the
fun was in knowing what moves to use against certain
characters (most of whom either had their own unique
moves or devastating weapons).

0 - Getting my Commodore 1571 disk drive to work. During
the summer of 1986, the 1571 suddenly stopped reading disks.
It would blink endlessly whenever we tried to load a program
from disk. At first, Ryan and I though that the disk drive
was overheated, so we took it outside to 'ventilate' for
several minutes. This didn't work, but as it turned out
the drive just needed to be re-aligned, which we did and
the drive started working again.

0 - Typing in programs from Ahoy!, Compute!'s Gazette and
RUN magazine. Some of the more memorable games included
Jungle Jake (Ahoy!), Haunted Mansion (Compute!'s Gazette),
Tomb of Horror (Ahoy!) and Balloon Blitz (Compute!'s
Gazette).

0 - My brother and I playing David Malmberg's 'Castle
Adventure'. The game was based on the data structures
and ideas of Scott Adams. We explored a thick woods,
a large cave, a castle and a dungeon. Although we
never beat the game -- the Baron was just too quick
with his axe -- it was fun to play nonetheless.

0 - We also played Magnetic Scrolls 'The Pawn'. This
was a tremendous adventure game with brilliant
graphics, an excellent parser and an involving
storyline. Our fondest memory involved climbing
up a tree in the forest and speaking with a wise
guru inside a grass roof hut. He kept laughing at
us -- we weren't sure why -- but eventually he
provided us with useful information. There was
also 'Honest John' traveling the countryside in
a covered wagon, an evil wizard flying around on
a floating disc and other oddities.

That's about it for now. Read more at my website:

http://www.geocities.com/dunric/index.html

Paul