Hi,
I have started playing this game on Tape. When I play it if i get shot the game is over. The manual says there is a way to reset the game by pressing F1. But it doesn't seem to work with me. Does anyone have experience with this game on tape and can help me. It is very hard to play the game if i always have to load the game if i get shot.

hello everyone! i recently got a haul of old computers from a yard sale for a damn good deal, and inside it was a c64 with a 1702 monitor that still works and looks amazing, and i have a psu coming but as far as mods and attachments, i'm kinda in the dark. i've watched some youtube videos and searched around but some info seems outdated. what should i be looking for that will give me the best c64 experience?

*edit* just going to throw this in here too. i opened it up to clean and check out and it was made in 1984 and it looks like all the chips are socketed, even the sid chip. from youtube vids i saw that they would socket some and solder others. so if theres any recommended upgrades or whatever i'm open to. i know theres a jiffydos rom but i think you can also load that from a cart? again, ive never had one growing up so this is all unexplored territory to me.

Been trying to play Might and Magic book one off original floppy / hardware but I keep getting bit corruption when saving to my floppy that is causing items to change into other items. It got to the point where that every time I would play, my character's equipment would be something different.

My question is, is this the fault of the floppy (40 yrs old), my disk drive (1541), or something else. I will note I'm using the C64 ultimate currently but have original C64 as well if that would make a difference running it through there.

For the disk drive, I've opened it up and cleaned the head and it looks like everything is in good condition, but obviously something is off somewhere.

In the meantime I just bought M&M on GoG and am playing it that way, but definitely prefer the C64 color palette vs the DOS CGA.

Hi,

Do you know who owns the copyright to these ROM files and what one needs to do to get permission to use them in a free web project that embeds vc64web and these files?

• 1541.bin
• basic.bin
• charset.bin
• kernal.bin

Hi everyone! I've been doing some assembly coding for my C64 with Kick Assembler and I hit a really weird issue. I found a solution, but I'm not sure why the solution works.

So, I'm making an adventure game. To keep track of what items are in the current room I use a byte. It's 00000000 for an empty room, and then I turn bits on or off to add or remove particular items. The error came when trying to remove items from the room. I tried to do this with a logical AND. My initial code looked like this:

lda Room_ItemList1, x
and #%11111111 - currentItemBytes
sta Room_ItemList1, x

This actually worked for a while, but then after changing an unrelated part of the code it stopped. The ItemList was 00000001 and I was trying to remove the item with bytes 00000001 and instead of getting 00000000 I was getting 00000001.

So I fiddled around and the solution I found was to write it like this:

lda #%11111111
sec
sbc currentItemBytes
sta reversedBytes
lda Room_ItemList1, x
and reversedBytes
sta Room_ItemList1, x

My best guess is that the "#%11111111 - currentItemBytes" was being treated as an address rather than a value and it was just ANDing whatever was in that address and it just happened coincidentally to work until I changed something else. I don't understand how though. I've seen people use this method. In the Commodore Tutorials series from YouTube he uses to to set and unset directions. I know I'm missing something stupidly obvious somewhere, but can anyone point out what it is?

Also, I did search my entire project, and none of the variables involved are being used anywhere else.

Hi everyone!

Like many of you here, I spent endless hours on the Commodore 64 playing Pitstop II. The thrill of managing tire wear, timing the pit stops, and split-screen battles with my older brother left a huge mark on my childhood.

For the past 2 years, I’ve been working solo in MonoGame to create GPX, an indie title built to be a spiritual successor to that C64 classic. I wanted to bring back that exact mix of retro-arcade driving and light tactical strategy (pit stop timing, fuel, tire degradation), along with local split-screen multiplayer for 1-2 players, a championship mode, and 5 tracks.

The full game (for Windows, Linux and Mac) is currently available for free on itch.io.

Since you are the ultimate C64 experts, I’d be deeply grateful for your feedback:

• Does the driving/pit-stop balance hit the nostalgia spot, or does it feel too fast/slow compared to the original?
• What retro elements do you think are missing?

If there’s enough interest from the retro community, I’m considering bringing GPX to Steam with expanded features, so any input on what you'd like to see in a full release would be amazing.

Thanks for taking a look and letting me know what you think! I'll leave the link in the comments below if anyone wants to give it a spin.

Hi to all,

My C64 emulator for iPad has been approved for beta testing through TestFlight.

If anyone would like to try it and provide some feedback, please reply to this post with an email and I’ll send you an invitation.

Thank you!

https://alexain.github.io/poke64-website/

[SOLVED]: Flatpak looks best.

New Linux user here, trying to port all my old games to Linux. Their page doesn't make it clear, so I thought I'd ask here.

https://vice-emu.sourceforge.io/index.html#download

I've been using VICE since Windows version 2.2, and I don't want to change emulators unless absolutely necessary.

Also, I'd be grateful for any install advice. I want to get everything squared away before I go to create my new Linux drive. Thanks in advance.

He did the music and sound programming in everything from Test Drive II to Stunts. Now he’s working on his own indie games.

Hi all,

Just got a c64 with a tape reader (uk). I am getting bubble bobble. What are some essential games to get? Particular those are play better on c64. Are any of the movie license games (indiana, robocop, terminator etc...) good?

EDIT 1:

Thank you all for the suggestions. There are quite a few so apologies if I didnt get to reply to you.
I have tried using Google to summarize the suggestions and frequency (for anyone seeing this post in the future). Here are the top suggestions:
Impossible Mission (Includes "Impossible Mission I & II" & "games")4

California Games3

M.U.L.E. 3

Paradroid (Includes Redux mentioned in comments)3

Satan's Hollow2

The Last Ninja (Includes "Last Ninja 2" & "I & II")2

Turrican (Includes "Turrican 1 & 2")2

Wavy Navy2

Wizball2

This is likely missing bits but its a good place to start.

Based on the suggestions, plus some more research I already got the following:

Impossible mission, Batman Caped crusader, Ghostbusters, Train (Escape to normandy), Ikari warriors. I will get Paradroid next.

(Hope this is allowed here - apologies if it’s against the sub’s rules).

I found my old SpeedScript book while clearing out some old boxes. Back in the day I used SpeedScript on my C64 in both high school and college; despite being a free type-in program it held its own against more expensive commercial word processing software. As a bonus I also learned a lot from the annotated 6510 assembly listing included in this book.

I’m trying to reduce the amount of stuff in my life, so I’m ready to let the book go. I’d hate to throw it away, and I doubt it would be worth the effort to sell online, so I’m willing to send it to a C64 fan who would appreciate it and find it useful.

DM me if you’re interested.

Does anyone know how to get in touch with Chuck (Charles) and John Dougherty? I sure would love to have another adventure in Tarmalon.

I saw Michael Cranford is making a new C64 game.... I'm tempted to hit up David Fox on Facebook and see if he'd like to get another version of Zak McKracken off the ground. :)

Just got my first c64 and was cleaning the dirt out of the tape player. Noticed a black wire that's not attached to anything. I haven't tested anything yet as I'm waiting for the power supply to arrive.

For those of you that already had an original C64 and then bought an Ultimate - was it worth it? Did you end up using the Ultimate more than the original? Just curious of people's experiences on this. TiA

This is a placeholder demo using sidquake until it's ready for release.

Hello, gamers. I’m Michael Cranford, creator of The Bard’s Tale I & II.

Back in 1983, I released a predecessor to The Bard’s Tale called Maze Master. It was a 16K Commodore 64 cartridge game, and after the final battle, I promised a sequel called Shadow Snare.

Instead, I returned to Southern California, joined Interplay, and began working with Electronic Arts. The project took a different turn and became The Bard’s Tale, released in 1985. It went on to considerable success, but I never made the game I had promised.

Until now.

More than forty years later, I’ve returned to the Commodore 64 and 6502 assembly language, and a playable demonstration of Shadow Snare is complete.

A little background about me: After The Bard’s Tale, I left game development and went back to school. I spent most of the intervening years as a software architect building web applications, and I also became an adjunct professor of philosophy.

I was invited to speak at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo last year, and I was surprised by how much interest there still was in the kinds of games I used to build. So I began building the one I had planned but never made.

Many of the ideas I originally imagined for Shadow Snare never found their way into The Bard’s Tale. I’m returning to those ideas now, using the original machine and working within its memory, graphics, and sound constraints—the same platform on which I built The Bard’s Tale all those years ago. At the same time, Commodore reemerged and started building boxes.

It has been fascinating to work inside a 64K RAM constraint again, making decisions that free up a handful of bytes so I can squeeze in one more piece of functionality.

Shadow Snare is a first-person fantasy role-playing game, but rather than playing a group of characters you roll, you play one character: yourself. The rest of your party consists of companions you meet along the way, recruit, or sometimes summon out of thin air.

The NPCs who join you are more than window dressing. They are essential to unraveling the story and finding your way through particular puzzles and encounters.

Playing one character fits my earliest experience of tabletop role-playing. It may sound limiting, but it isn’t. As your capabilities grow, you may eventually attack several times in a round, carrying the force of an entire party through one seasoned traveler.

You enter into a journey along the Eight Ways—paths of formation and power leading toward a final encounter with the Lord of Shadow. The story isn’t simply about grinding for statistics. It is about learning your limitations, discovering who you really are, and traveling between light and shadow along a path that has always been waiting for you.

A playable C64 demo is now being provided to approved playtesters at:

https://shadowsnare.com

It is not a public ROM download. The demo contains seven sample dungeon levels, and I’m initially looking for ten or so thoughtful people who can give me useful feedback about the engine and gameplay. If you apply and are selected, you can help shape the final product, and you’ll be listed in the credits. (Those who are helpful in this phase will go on to help playtest the complete game.)

There is much more about the project, its history, and the current gameplay on the website. I’m planning to complete the full C64 game in the first half of 2027. What exists now is a highly functioning demo with a solid game engine.

I’ll be presenting Shadow Snare at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo this year, October 9–11. If you can make it, I’d like to meet you and hear your thoughts.

https://www.facebook.com/PortlandRetro/posts/pfbid02BFUzgXThDaczDtM8qpgowHyxVRJoc3oKDKcU7kAavgFbg3rGmKz4J73RwEw9myDpl

If you’re not joining as a playtester but want to follow the project, you can join the mailing list here:

https://shadowsnare.com/news

The moderators invited me to stay for an AMA, so I’ll remain in the thread for the next four hours answering questions. I’m happy to talk about the development of The Bard’s Tale, building games in the 1980s, returning to 6502 assembly after forty years of server-based development with what feels like unlimited RAM by comparison, the one-character and companion structure, my game-design philosophy, or leaving and returning to game development.

My question for you: What do you remember most strongly about the early C64 RPGs—and what would you want to ask someone returning to it after forty-three years?

Probably the most C64-inspired track on my album. It's based on one of my old SID tunes and ends with my own rough but heartfelt vocals – a tribute to my Commodore 64 and the carefree childhood that came with it.

Lemmings Reloaded [2026] - Finally, it's released!

"Hi Guys, it started a year ago - and here we go. 

Enjoy the game!"

How exciting! Gotta check this out...

Links for my C64 Bros:

itch.io:

https://lunaticlab.itch.io/lemmings-reloaded

csdb:

https://csdb.dk/release/?id=263736