When did you stop playing 8bit games?

[klx300r]

I still have my original C64 and because of Archon and PitStopII etched in my head I've never stopped playing

[CCCP alert]

I agree, it was slim pickings in the early days and I'd rather play Summer Games 2 on my C64 or for £25 less than Psygnosis Arena on Amiga too, but I wouldn't play Marble Madness on anything other than Amiga too so all 3 machines were used in 87. So for me it was a weird transition, and I wasn't going to spend £200ish on a disk drive for my 64 instead of £400 for an ST in Summer 86.

I was in the arcades all the time from 82 and that was my type of gaming so as the ports became beyond the 8bits by 85/86, and the ST really, I moved onto more powerful hardware hoping for good conversions. Still I was quite happy paying £15 less for some games like Bubble Bobble on 8bits as I didn't see the point of getting them on ST/Amiga sometimes. My 6 fav' arcade games with a 68000 were 50% really crap conversions/never made it to ST/Amiga.

Amiga games were expensive, Megadrive Jap import games like Thunderforce 3 even more so in 1990. But Nemesis on the C64 is full of meh and no Manfred Trenz quality top end port and that really was when I got an Amiga....but like I said it was slim pickings in those early days for ST/Amiga arcade games I would pay for. For a very long time C64 Terra Cresta was better than anything on ST and Amiga for me so it was a waiting game. By Xmas 89 I didn't look back, enough good Amiga games per year for my spare cash for gaming personally.

Still, had I known about awesome budget tapes like Codemaster's CJs/Slicks for peanuts I would have bought them for sure, a few quid for a nice 8bit game is a no brainer.

[grond]

I think "Last Ninja III" was the last one for me. Even though I was a great fan of the series (but found No. 3 quite a letdown), I never finished it. I even attempted playing it a couple of more times, got farther than I did back then but didn't complete it nontheless. Perhaps I should try playing it again. My life feels incomplete now that I think about it...

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by phx

As soon as the A1000 was set up and running (spring 1987) the C64 went into the shelves and was never used again (still have it, together with the VIC-20).

This doesn't mean I never played an 8-bit game again. I certainly played a game of Paradroid or Fort Apocalypse via emulation at some point. But I never really looked back to the 8-bit systems, like I'm doing to the Amiga today.

I had a big desk lol but just messing about with an Amiga in Workbench was amazing back in mid 87 and it felt so revolutionary. I never did anything creative on my 64 but even if there were no 16bit games I fancied it left me spare cash for upgrades like more RAM etc or Digi-View/samplers etc. Apart from Laser BASIC all my 64 expenditure was for games only. I did covet Commodore's Music Expansion System (big keyboard and SFX Sound Expander module bundle) but OPL1 sounded like wank vs SID iconic game tunes so glad I never got it back then for £125-150 and got an ST instead to play Dungeon Master lol

[Lilura]

Yeah, Amiga did not get a truly great shoot 'em up until Hybris of 1988, which is a Terra Cresta clone.

As early as 1986 observations were being made about the slowness of Amiga releases as well as the lack of games that tapped the Amiga's chipset.

On the other hand, the A1000 initially only had 256K RAM and more "instruction overhead" that 64K C64s. As well, market penetration and coder-understanding of the chipset takes time.

Overall, I wasn't going to shelve the C64 any time soon at that stage. Not for gaming at any rate.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by grond

I think "Last Ninja III" was the last one for me. Even though I was a great fan of the series (but found No. 3 quite a letdown), I never finished it. I even attempted playing it a couple of more times, got farther than I did back then but didn't complete it nontheless. Perhaps I should try playing it again. My life feels incomplete now that I think about it...

That's so true, which is why I had to finish Manic Miner 4 decades later lol First Last Ninja game I find really tough now, never had any other versions, I've forgotten how to play it I guess, ditto for Wizardry on 64 .

[grond]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

First Last Ninja game I find really tough now, never had any other versions, I've forgotten how to play it I guess, ditto for Wizardry on 64 .

Yes, true. It's a miracle that back then we had that sort of patience with games. All this jumping over stones and swamps and a ninja that couldn't swim, how ridiculous is that? And then each time you had to play it again from the start. Of course, I eventually could do all the jumping pixel precise each and every time. Now? Clearly impossible...