Games That Push The Limits of the Commodore 64 in Surprising Ways

Visit PCBWay
Support me on patreon

For anyone who's interested this is the debugger I was using.

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

[Lovuschka]

The C64 shouldn't have the hardware for parallax background scrolling.
Luckily the C64 doesn't know that, so he does it anyway.

[sabin]

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.

[willrobinson]

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

[syniekos]

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.

[atibyte]

Flimbo's Quest was my favourite game back then. I have replayed it over and over.

[MrSnrub]

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!

[heyhonpuds]

My first computer. Love the C64. Still got the same one I received for Christmas in 1987. Thanks for another interesting video.

[MartinGalway]

I was surprised to hear you say the word "parallax" about 15 times but not actually refer to the 1986 game "Parallax" 🤣

[djmips]

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.

[CoolDudeClem]

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?"!

[atomicskull]

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)

[madcommodore]

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.

[uko_productions]

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.

[darrencullen]

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

[timecapsule]

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.

[penatio]

This is some of my favorite content on YT. Thanks for uploading!

[moarif]

you essentially missed a gem, 'Mayhem in Monsterland'

[BeefJerkey]

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!

[over]

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

[kendoolin]

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..