3D Games That Really Push The Commodore 64

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks to whoever came up with 'camel lozenge' and 'khaki calculator'. If you have any more ridiculous names for the C64 do let me know!

[@C.I...]

Nigel. The bathroom. Nosy Boge. Gish. Disused railway siding soup. Wenali Raisins II. Disgusting Boat Boy. Galahad's Balls. Nobbert.

[@Sharopolis]

I am VERY tempted to rename this video '3D Games That Really Push Disused Railway Siding Soup'. God know what the KZbin algorithm would make of that.

[@mikimouse3001]

Your videos are awesome , and you give off a good vibe with your narration. Now I'm gonna download some c64 3d games 😀

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks a lot!

[@aqualung2000]

@@Sharopolis Ballblazer was a good one.

[@StefanoBorini]

Important to remember that we didn't play these games on a 28" 200 dpi HDMI screen. We used a smallish tv with a rf signal and a crt screen that introduced a lot of blurring. The blocky doom clone felt a lot less blocky when the color transitions were blended by the tv signal and you played on a small screen. Same for elite. Basically we had antialiasing for free because of the tech limitations and the physics of the display.

[@immortalsofar5314]

Notice that the update area on the high res screens are inset horizontally? By reducing the drawable width from 320 to 256 pixels, it reduced the maths to single byte integers, it simplifies the maths enormously.

[@patsfan4life]

Immortal SoFar interesting.....

[@peterlamont647]

Couple that with zero page addressing and stack rendering. They also likely used lookup tables. No they definitely used lookup tables...lol for the texture wall data and color data. INC $02 LDA $02 PHA more clever code here... PLA STA 0400,X... you can burst 200+ values depending on your current stack usage. Couple that with 8 bit integers + sprites on a low res screen. BLAM you've got mood! If you shorten the width some more down to 255 from left to right, you can omit the logic to handle the 9th bit on sprite location X for all the sprites. HUGE savings there too.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

@@peterlamont647the 9 bit sprite thing is really nasty for a multiplexer. Commodore modified the 6502 for the C64 and designed the VIC-II. Going to 40 column text and no one thought that maybe we should include a B register. LDB STB would move 16 bit . ADB would ADC on 16 Bit for maths . Or have 16 bit X and Y regs. LDXX LDY STX STYY . So we could block copy everywhere or alternatively copy 16 bit values to a .. ah, sprites need an ID. We need two 8 bit addresses here.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Bitmap graphics uses the same tiles as text mode. So in a first step you “rasterise” over the 40x25 tiles. Then you rasterise inside each tile (8x8). You only need to split long edges if they are odd. Some games may have mostly edges up to 64px. So you could even have 2 subpixel bits. Only Elite is hires. It has no inset.

[@startedtech]

I just love 80s 3D, so ridiculously ambitious

[@datavalisofficial8730]

Ikr

[@jaydy71]

Even if it ran at a ridiculously glacial frame rate, it was absolutely magical to see 3D stuff with this level of aspiration, when even an "arcade perfect" version of donkey kong was still something to aspire to.

[@Sinistar1983]

If you look at the arduboy, that's the modern day equivalent to that.

[@antonnym214]

I was a games programmer in the 70s and 80s on the TRS-80 Model I/III/IV. We had only a few 3D games and the graphics were very low-res. We even had the Sublogic flight simulator, but it was UGLI with very low frame rates, on the order of 1 fps. The solid polygon stuff was very impressive on the c64. nice video!

[@ericblair6984]

The problem with 3D on the C64 was the character/tile-based graphics. The PC and Apple 2 had true hires modes that made 3D a little more straight forward. The C64 had a bit mapped mode, but it was so slow it was nearly useless for high performance games. That said, developers still produced some amazing results.

[@JimLeonard]

I never realized Space Rogue on the C64 had some anti-aliasing on some polygon edges -- really impressive!

[@TNX255]

And on the font as it seems ;)

[@Optimus6128]

@@TNX255 Font is easy as it's painted by the artist and just stored in the bitmap data.

[@McVaio]

Wow yeah, you're right. Pretty incredible.

[@Lucasrainford]

Disappointed you didn't include Mercenary, I loved that game, spent hours mapping it out and that led me onto Damocles on the Amiga. That game blew me away at the time :)

[@Sharopolis]

That will appear in another upcoming video, so stay tuned.

[@ufox77]

Definitely deserves its own video, and a modern reboot!

[@Nautilus1972]

Mercenary - I was just thinking that!

[@Leaddevo]

Mercenary wasn't quite as ambitious I'd say. I'd also say it's a better game than Elite, even if it didn't have the same cultural impact.

[@dunjak111]

"Mercenary - Escape from Targ". Thought I would find it in the comments.. :)

[@yetidynamics]

The Sentinel would pre-render a 360 degree environment each time you moved, hence the long pause after each move. pretty clever. there is a PC clone out on the web for free

[@jasonuk8333]

I adored The Sentinel. One of my favourite games from a golden era.

[@elmariachi5133]

It's incredible fluent in fps. Being earth based instead of air, compared to flight sims, made 3d really viable in this game. they should have made more ground based 3d games ..also on Amiga.

[@robmclaughjr]

Love The Sentinel, very tense

[@OperationPhantom]

Nice selection and I enjoyed your comments very much! :) Battle Command is very impressive also... Encounter is fast and fun, even with its simple GFX. Scarabaeus is a scary 3D maze game, for its time quite the stunner! Mercenary and Moonfall are also interesting to check out!

[@Lucasrainford]

Deffo Mercenary! yeah I remember Scarabaeus, was a strange one :)

[@rud3m3chanical]

Moonfall looked gorgeous at the time, I remember that day/night cycle well.

[@Algernon1970]

Encounter was my 1st 3d game, and it blew me away how anything could be that fast and smooth. I'd started programming then, and drawing circles took several seconds in my code, and there was Encounter throwing them around like .. something fast and smooth.

[@sgerar37]

Stellar 7 blew my mind back in the day. I loved the introduction where the different types of foes would zoom from afar, rotate for a while, and depart. Could watch it for hours!

[@blindazabat9527]

Geoff Crammon also wrote "Revs" for the C64. A Formula 3 simulator. Very good when you get to grips with it.

[@stelleratorsuprise8185]

I liked Encounter on the C64 a lot, it had some kind of FPV with 3D effect and it was really fast.

[@stuartharvey2201]

@Sharopolis Loved the video. Slightly surprised not to see Battle Command in there, although it was very late in the C64's commercial life.

[@jamiewilliamson9829]

Watching a C64 related video the day after going to the 8-bit Symphony. What a performance it was!

[@Larry]

Funny how 3D Stunt Car showed that the C64 was more than capable of doign 3D games, yet Star Wars was sprite based and Hard Drivin' was complete arse.

[@Sharopolis]

Complete arse is putting it mildly!

[@scottbreon9448]

To be fair, none of the 8-bit conversions of Hard Drivin' were particularly good. While the Spectrum port was better than the C64 version, it was still rather shite. Truthfully, aside from the Megadrive port, I never really enjoyed any home version of Hard Drivin'

[@Rothron]

@@scottbreon9448 I would claim that not even the Hard Drivin' arcade machine had sufficient power to run Hard Drivin'. It's most notable feature was the force feedback steering wheel. Frame rate was pretty bad.

[@Rothron]

I rather enjoyed Star Wars on the C64. Played it a lot. Only the crosshairs and visible x-wing parts were sprites as I recall.

[@scottbreon9448]

@@Rothron I wouldn't necessarily call the arcade version shit, but I do agree that it's pretty mediocre and uninspiring.

[@andrewwilliams5655]

I think Ballblazer and Tau Ceti were about as 3D as it got on my C64 back in the day. I had no idea that someone attempted Doom on the system, although it doesn't surprise me given the enthusiasm that people still have for this machine. Great video!

[@Exitof99]

Tau Ceti is one of my favorites. Never did complete it, though.

[@arostwocents]

Doom is on the Spectrum several times over. I played a clone called Borsch last night.

[@scottbreon9448]

Tau Ceti was good, too bad the sequel never got ported to the C64

[@Arjay82]

8:23 How on earth does that run so smooth and Hard Drivin' on the Sega Genesis is an unplayable 5fps?!

[@lujho]

Holy shit, is that honest-to-god *anti-aliasing* I see on some of the Space Rogue stuff?! That’s impressive!

[@ryanjones1938]

It was an incredible game.. it could track three ships at the same time not including your ship. It was fast too and far superior to elite, but it came much later too.

[@ryanjones1938]

By the way, I completed it. You have to return the stolen manchi egg to the machi queen on their homeland. There's something you need to find in the station where something went wrong and it's full of monsters.

[@arnolddalby5552]

The C64 was a brilliant computer and the 6502 a fond friend. It's assembler language was simple with 3 registers A,X,Y. Of course symmetrical microprocessors can easily be hacked by reversing the instruction like Jump Z to Jump NZ. I am surprised that no one on earth has thought of creating an asymmetrical microprocessor that is difficult to hack. Anyway, great video I remember playing a few of those games. Haha.

[@Marius-vw9hp]

Stunt car racer was my favourite game as a kid. I never knew which tape it was on though, so it was pretty much random when I got to play it.

[@jonasthemovie]

Marius VanDamme Played endlessly on my first 286, knew it by heart and can still feel it down my spine.

[@Marius-vw9hp]

@@jonasthemovie 286? Did you run it in DOS? What graphics card did you have? I remember a friend of mine had a 386 (or his parents anyway) and we played kings quest on it :p

[@jonasthemovie]

Marius VanDamme Ran it in MS-DOS, had EGA in that computer but have no idea what card.

[@stefanweilhartner4415]

i played it on the amiga. it was great and we also played it with two amigas connected together via serial interface

[@understyled]

Lol

[@lurkerrekrul]

The Sentinel - My biggest problem with this game is that I could never tell which way the sentinel was facing. It moved in jumps and I was never sure if it was turning toward or away from me. Made it kind of hard to plan my moves when I had no idea which way I should be going. Project Stealth Fighter - This game was the result of much speculation as to what the U.S. Air Force's new stealth plane would look like and be capable of. As I recall, there were even plastic model kits of this design, although I don't remember if the game copied the kits or if the kits copied the game. Obviously, the design ended up being way off, not to mention the F-19 designation. :)

[@Exitof99]

Way back when, I "cracked" Space Rogue using Fast Hack `Em's Sector Editor. The protection was a "xth word on page y" set up, but simply changed all the words to the same word. Then I began hacking the save files, figuring out what each byte represented and pushing the limits. Wound up with a overpowered laser that would take down capital ships with ease. Keep the solar winds backside.

[@gant6962]

The sentinel had a great sequel. Playing it on PC now. If you liked the sentinel then Sentinel Returns is a must have. Just try not to get malware when finding a download. Edit: A Unity game I am making called The Synthoid is almost done. I can update you all when it is out.

[@medes5597]

How did your game go?

[@blendingsentinel4797]

@@medes5597 This is the new account of Gant6962. We did not finish the game and it is on hold. We plan to restart in Godot or O3DE instead Unity but that will be a while.

[@johnknight9150]

Space Rogue looks amazing.

[@JoeUrbanYYC]

Great vid. What I love about these kinds of videos is they always jog my memory about games I had forgotten existed. The most annoying aspect of project stealth fighter (which is shown in this clip) is it coloured the 'ground' based on whatever was more than 50% in view. So if you were heading towards water the ground and water would both be green until water made up 51% and then both would be blue. I remember that irritating me as a kid.

[@Fuuntag]

Thank you for putting the time into making this video I enjoyed it quite a lot!

[@Rothron]

I expected to see Rescue on Fractalus and/or The Eidolon.

[@Lucasrainford]

Yeah they were great games! I remember almost shooting one in the back of the net when that alien banged on the window in Fractalus!

[@Nautilus1972]

Fractalus on the Atari, yes.

[@Exitof99]

Did you have the voice activated fire button?

[@Leaddevo]

@@Nautilus1972 Amen, that game was incredible and a big step over Fractulus

[@vapourmile]

Rescue on Fractalus / Koronis Rift / The Eidolon are three of the greatest technical achievement ever on the Commodore 64 They're overlooked because too many people who are games players are not programmers and don't appreciate what went into them.

[@romaneberle]

REVS+, Mercenary, Rescue on Fractalus, Infiltrator, Echelon

[@KabukiKid]

Echelon was a pretty unique one because it came with the "Lip Stick" controller headset. Basically a headset with a mic that you wore on your head and plugged into joy port 2. In order to fire you said, "FIRE." It was pretty silly, because I think anything you said worked... and if you had a second joystick, you could just hit the fire button for that joystick, instead. The headset was just a glorified joystick fire button, but it was novel for the time.

[@MarioTorre]

When you think you need an i5 and 2giga to run Firefox decently and the average webpage is about 4 megabytes, this is pretty impressive.

[@jamesavery3559]

that was fun thank you!

[@guidomersmann9744]

You should check out „Scarabeus“. It has a doom like environment and a quite scary atmosphere.

[@jontiummorkimus7111]

I saw a Dungeon Master clone running on the C64 in a video here on KZbin recently, very slick 3D movement and far less blocky than the Wolfenstein clone. A very impressive achievement that looks as though it could be turned into a polished finished product.

[@Chalky.]

It was probably more of a utility than a game but I had a lot of fun playing on 3D construction kit on the C64.

[@douggale5962]

Stunt Track Racer was absolutely incredible, huge respect to the developers. Seems like it maybe isn't that hard right? The C64 did not have a multiply instruction, at all. Didn't have a barrel shifter either, could only shift one bit. Good luck doing enough arithmetic on vectors to shake a stick at. Everything had to be done with a brilliant combination of approximation and lookup tables.

[@patsfan4life]

Doug Gale I knew it had to be hard.....

[@TheSulross]

3D games were the camel's nose under the tent - transforming gaming from something that a single individual could potentially master to write their own game (many today have mastered writing new C64 games - some very impressive, like Planet X) to the world we inhabit now where only large teams and big corporate budgets can create new games

[@Sharopolis]

Good point, 90's 3D was a huge revolution - not just in technology, but how games were made too.

[@jjdigitalvideosolutionsllc5343]

Surprised that you picked Project Stealth Fighter over Gunship. The filled polygons of Gunship and being a helicopter sim made it a stand-out from other MicroProse flight simulators.

[@lundsweden]

We got that intro music in Australia too. The good thing about owning a C64 in the late 80s was you could share disks with friends. It became more common at the end of the decade to own one as the price went lower and lower!

[@immortalsofar5314]

You'll notice that most of the games where speed is required have vertical borders of approx, 3 characters per side. This drops the horizontal resolution from 320 bits to 255 meaning the maths can work on 8 bit numbers, pretty much halving the computing power required for calculations.

[@EATABAGOFHELL]

The modern version of this trick is setting your 1366x768 pixel laptop monitor to run at 1360x768 instead, since there are a lot of rendering algorithms that work better when the screen's evenly divisible into chunks of 8x8 or 16x16 pixels.

[@rzeka]

I can't believe how smooth the scrolling is in The Sentinel

[@jeffgoodnough9704]

I don't want it to come across wrong that I frequently fall asleep to your videos... I have ADHD, and I fall asleep best while I'm cerebrally engaged, plus your voice and cadence are exceptionally soothing. Good night, Sharopolis.

[@nagualdesign]

There was another 3D game from the 8-bit era, which IIRC was called _Interferon._ You played the part of a computer hacker, moving around the 3D environment 'inside' the computer, interacting with things that would bypass security systems in 'the real world'. I think there was a map in the corner showing your accomplice's progress through a building, and it was up to you in 'the virtual world' to meddle with the CCTV and wotnot so that your mate could make progress. At least that's how I remember it! I've tried Googling it but found nothing, as the results are all about the biochemistry of _interferon_ (lower-case i).

[@Sharopolis]

Interphase might be what you're thinking of, weirdly I also remembered it as Interpheron too for some reason. An interesting game that's going to be in my very next video...

[@nagualdesign]

@@Sharopolis Yes, that's it! I wonder if it was renamed for the British audience? _Interferon_ sticks in my mind because, at around 12 years old, it was the first time I'd ever heard the word. I then found out that it was some sort of antiviral medicine, and understood that the game was called Interferon because it was all about computer viruses.

[@Sharopolis]

That is really weird, because I have the same memory about that word too!

[@TotalMK]

Surprised you didn't have "Castle Master" in this video. It was made by Domark and would go on to be the base tech for 3D engines on PC.

[@bjornnilden260]

Castle master does have real 3d. Not some doom-shit like 3d :) So it would definitely be on this list. As well as 3d construction kit.

[@TotalMK]

@@bjornnilden260 Well I used to make Doom levels, and the 3D idea is pretty much the same as Castle Master, using square sectors of different sizes to make rooms with 4 walls a roof and a floor.

[@scottbreon9448]

Actaully Domark were only the publishers, it was made by Incentive Software

[@TNX255]

Space Rogue really looks like a game that, if played on an emulator at, say, 1.5 or 2 times CPU speed would be very enjoyable. The graphics were very nice and inviting and if the story is even half decent then yeah, a great one to try.

[@Sharopolis]

It's already pretty enjoyable even at normal speed. It may not come across so well on the video, but it feels good to play. I didn't get that far in it, but the story does seem pretty interesting too.

[@klenchr3621]

Glad you mentioned space rogue. Fantastic game. Played it first on ms dos and then c64. Would love to see a remaster or home brew add ons

[@theyamo7219]

Everyone: filled Vector polygon graphics cannot be done well on a C64...just look at Hard Drivin' Jeff Crammond: Hold my beer

[@patrikwallander]

There are many more as Chuck Yeager Advanced Flight Trainer, Revs, Driller, 3d Tennis, 3d Pool.

[@tygattyche2545]

Gunship, Mercenary and REVS eare games i am missing in the list. But Driller... Great game, fantastic soundtrack but the 3D-graphic is a bit too slow for that game IMHO.

[@Exitof99]

Fly high enough in Chuck Yeager and reach space!

[@scottbreon9448]

Invaders of the Lost Tomb (Scarabaeus to you in Europe) was another one.

[@rodzandz]

Are you joking mate? How could you forget Total Eclipse?! If there's an impressive 3D game for the c64 it's definitely that one.

[@Djwhiskers]

If these were cutting edge for these systems then it really puts into perspective how crazy good terry davies' was with his temple os with games such as talon

[@blazer666del]

I can most definitely say that intro music was on the UK version of Elite, I still have my orignal game ...

[@Sharopolis]

Someone else pointed that out too, a slip up on my part, sorry!

[@tomsuzyinfluencerinfj2712]

Space Rogue, one of the best C64 games. Played it to death

[@Geenimetsuri]

One game I loved that was at least partly 3D was Advanced Tactical Fighter or, as it was commonly known, ATF. The polygon landscape under the sprite plane was absolutely awesome.

[@yadgar1969]

Mercenary? Koronis Rift? Rescue on Fractalus? Stellar 7? And, not to forget: Spindizzy!

[@michaelhill6453]

Space Rogue was the game I always wanted. Disc drives were big in Australia but I could never track this one down.

[@lurch666]

Completed space rogue back in the day.loved that game. Elite with a plot.

[@leeh3568]

@sharopolis Love these vids on technical 8bit issues and ur Autopsy vids likr ur style of delivery as well..look forward to ur next vid.

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks!

[@DS-pk4eh]

I played Elite so much on my C64. It was so great game. Some years later I would write my graduation work "3D graphics on computers". I used C64 and Simon's Basic to create 3D objects. It was SOOOOOO SLOW, it would took 5 hours for one image to be done (wireframed, not the ray tracing). What a great time

[@SlyPearTree]

I would replace Project Stealth Fighter with Gunship, I spent as much time playing that as I did Elite.

[@KabukiKid]

Yeah, Gunship was a hardcore addiction for me, as well. I did also love Project Stealth Fighter, but Gunship was the one I loved the most of that type of game. :-)

[@scottythegreat1]

I like to highlight the game Stealth Originally for the Atari 8-bit computers, it was ported over to the C64. Stealth may have been a very simple form of 3D, but it is still a SNES mode 7 style game before the SNES existed.

[@deavo74]

0:54 I’m sure it has been mentioned, given this is a 4 year old video, that this music was probably on all versions. It was on my UK version.

[@jaysmith2858]

I'm sure I've heard you narrate more 'mainstream' stuff. If not, you certainly sound very familiar. Your narration/videos certainly deserve more views based on this one alone.

[@Barcrest]

Mark radcliff you are thinking of.

[@jaysmith2858]

Maybe.

[@josyfkristopher4320]

The C64 has kneecapped by both a slower CPU than the BBC but also the fact that the 2MHz CPU of the BBC was coupled with 4MHz memory so there was no memory contention - part of the reason that the Beeb cost so much more. Even so, the Amstrad still managed superior graphics to the Beeb using the same video controller.

[@josyfkristopher4320]

One other part is that the C64's cell style memory layout was not conducive to fast 3D - programmers either had to develop rather convoluted routines, or map out the graphics off-screen and then convert them on the fly resulting in a lot of inefficient double handling.

[@peterzerfass4609]

Flight Simulator, F-15 Strike Eagle and Rescue on Fractulus also come to mind. At the time they were mind blowing.

[@EelkodeVos]

Great list, but Cholo really should've been in there too. Played that a lot. Originally created for the BBC Micro in '86 but quickly ported to the C64 too.

[@Renville80]

And then there’s Spindizzy. 386 screens of map data condensed into 14K of memory along with the main game code.

[@tygattyche2545]

Well Spindizzy has some really fast screen-redraw routines but it is lacking things like scrolling, rotating and thus.

[@Barcrest]

It wasn't 3d as such it was isometric.

[@toadieC1970]

As others have said, no Mercenary, The Eidolon, Rescue on Fractalus, Tau Ceti, Driller.. maybe a Part II video then?

[@mooseyman74]

Loved mercenary 👍🏻

[@Sharopolis]

Part two one day I hope.

[@scottbreon9448]

Don't forget Dark Side (sequel to Driller)

[@theyamo7219]

Driller ran at a SNAIL'S pace on the C64. As did all the other Freescape games

[@fromvoid3764]

The docking in elite on C64 was only unforgiving regarding the orientation, iirc. You could miss the mail slot but when it was horizontal to your position you would still dock.

[@Hologhoul]

Brilliant and fascinating video! I loved my C64 but aside from Elite didn't play these games.

[@JohnDRobinsonelectronicdrums]

a great video as usual ! my favourite 3d games were Super Huey, Stellar 7 and Rescue on Fractalus!

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks!

[@JohnDRobinsonelectronicdrums]

@@Sharopolis you're welcome!

[@C64_Mat]

Rescue on Fractalus was amazing!

[@dbranconnier1977]

What about 'Beyond The Forbidden Forest', 'BallBlazer', 'Marble Madness', 'Delta Man' and 'Platoon'?

[@KaufmansCurse]

Ballblazer's a good shout. Also Koronis Rift from Lucasfilm. And Scarabeus which is not only 3d but perhaps one of the best games on the c64 full stop...

[@litjellyfish]

Not really 3D except Ballblazer

[@patsfan4life]

Some of these are 2.5D like Beyond FF

[@scottbreon9448]

Marble Madness was complete shit on the C64. Marble Madness without mouse/trackball support is bound to be shit. That's why the Amiga port shits all over the C64 version. Plus the music on the C64 version sounds like it was made by a tonedeaf retard. That's usually the case when an AMERICAN does the music on the C64.

[@10MARC]

Wow. There were a few on here I had never seen. Space Rogue seems very nice - I will have to track that down!

[@mrbronstein]

I may have misheard you, but I am almost 99.99% sure I purchase Space Rogue on Disk. So wasn't tape only. Secondly, very surprised you left Mercenary off this list. For me its 3D performance was far better than nearly any other C64 game. Big thumbs up for Sentinel and SCR!

[@szabolcsmate5254]

Space Rogue was disk only because of it's non-linear data requirements. On tape you would have to manually wind the tape to the counter position of the space station you are docking with and so on.

[@exidy-yt]

That Elite version's theme song was NOT limited to the German version, my pirated copy in Canada of the North American release of Elite had the same song. As soon as I heard the first notes the whole thing came back instantly. What a great game. Another 3D game I really enjoyed was Mercenary: Escape from Targ. Mainly because it had VERY realistic falling physics. When falling out of the space station in low orbit (which was all too easy to do) or ejecting from your stolen fighter before being shot down you would tumble to the earth in a genuinely nauseating way. For years my friends and I judged 3D games by if they had 'the mercenary on targ effect' for their physics.

[@briansrcadventures1316]

a VR remake of Stunt Car Racer would be fun!

[@nialltracey2599]

If you enjoy projectile vomiting.

[@deavo74]

The C64 version had turn based multiplayer, not link mode between two computers. You’re are right that the Amiga/ST did as I played this often! I loved to be proved wrong about the C64 link mode but it isn’t on my version.

[@EATABAGOFHELL]

think Space Rogue ran a smidge smoother on the Apple II. actually you can kinda tell it was designed for that system first and foremost just from the art design; the ship colors for the four main factions are orange, green, blue and purple. also from the fact that it says "ORIGIN" on the box.

[@Domarius64]

15:18 "You picked up a shoot-gun!" XD

[@Domarius64]

Finally! A gun that shoots!

[@Hologhoul]

"A handful of mangled pipe-cleaners on a snooker table" 😄

[@HelloKittyFanMan.]

So this game "Mood" was designed to be a parody of Doom? Oh, yep! ;-D

[@stuartbrownlee3108]

As far as Elite on the c64 is concerned, I am increasingly wondering which, er, world I live in now, or lived in. See, I remember there was Blue Danube docking music, and there were, um...tribbles? If no-one can verify this, then...damn, I must've travelled far.

[@brundaged1]

I believe the auto-dock ship upgrade you could purchase in the game did play Blue Danube. And there were definitely tribbles.

[@Sharopolis]

Yeah the music was only in the auto-docking sequence. I looked around for the 'trubbles' as I think they were called, but didn't find them for this vid, though they are there.

[@Barcrest]

Tribbles were in the first release and were omitted in later versions.

[@KabukiKid]

@@Barcrest That's interesting that they were later omitted. I definitely remember them and I remember the only way to truly get rid of them was to eject from your ship in your escape pod and just get a new ship. lol They were definitely "trubble." ;-) Oh... and I can confirm that the C64 version did have "Blue Danube" as the docking computer music. ;-)

[@peterlamont647]

Hey you forgot a relatively obscure commercial title with scrolling 3D. It seems like it sold reasonably well, but I don't see much about it these days at all...which leads me to think perhaps it was only selling well in the US. It's called "Invaders of the Lost Tomb". It plays very much like an indiana jones game, but he his not mentioned. Instead you and your pet...rabbit or something go around in this 3D tomb with other minigames thrown in. The 3D scrolling is fast and astonishingly smooth. When I got back into the commodore...that was one of the games I wanted to find again. That and the Sentry(love that you mentioned this one!!!), time tunnel, war in middle earth, skate or die, and a list of others... By the way, when we got the Sentry, we got it with no manual(from a discount used software bin which is where we got almost all our games). It took us (My brothers and I) a couple years of occasionally trying it out aimlessly when we got bored of other games until we finally one day figured out how to play it. Then it was on! It was the cool 3D landscapes that kept us coming back and disintegrating trees that kept us coming back.

[@Sharopolis]

Invaders of the lost tomb nearly made it in, but I just sort of ran out of time, a really good game though!

[@KaufmansCurse]

@@Sharopolis Amazing game. Called Scarabeus in the UK I think. Pls add and repost. It deserves some reminiscence!

[@Eightbitswide]

Where is Rescue on Fractalus?

[@KaufmansCurse]

And/or Koronis Rift!

[@theyamo7219]

All three of the lucasfilm games should have at least gotten an honorable mention

[@KingofPotatoPeople]

My c64 elite had that opening theme. It was in a compilation of Sci Fi games....definitely UK, had the UK manual with the backstory. How interesting.

[@quint3570]

The Darkwheel! Loved that

[@kloakovalimonada]

Kudos for not dwelling on the 80s like most of lists like this!

[@gochem3013]

Now I see those 3D games on C64. It's like being an Early N64 games.

[@Booruvcheek]

Clearly these 8-bit machines were never meant to run 3d applications. C64 had hardware sprites and scrolling which made it superior as a 2d machine, compared to, say, ZX Spectrum. 3d games, on the other hand, had to rely solely on CPU, and this in aspect C64 was not above its peers. Quite the opposite, in fact. All that said, however, I can't help but wonder - what would an 8-bit 3d-accelerated game look like? What if in a parallel universe there was a 3dfx add-on card made in the 80s for 8-bit home computers of the time? What games would be created for hardware like this, how would they look and play?

[@NigelXW]

Probably something similar to the Super FX games?

[@Sharopolis]

The C64 Super CPU does that basically, here it is in action. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKmlh6unqKljq80

[@Booruvcheek]

@@NigelXW Probably, but SuperFX was designed for 16-bit hardware (SNES), so I guess they would design something less advanced, yet producing graphics superior to the unaccelerated original 8-bit machine?

[@Booruvcheek]

@@Sharopolis I did a little reading on SuperCPU (never heard of it before), and it looks like a CPU/RAM upgrade, rather than specialized 3D hardware. So this is still software rendering, with all its strong points (you can implement whatever algorithm you want) and weaknesses (specialized hardware is faster). Also it was designed much later, so it clearly is not a product of 8-bit era. My idea was rather this: imagine a hardware company in the 80s designing a 3D accelerator for 8-bit microcomputers, not dissimilar to 3D accelerators of mid 90s, only at a technological level available 10 years prior? What kind of games would be developed for this hypothetical hardware, considering the state of the industry back then? How would they look and play?

[@NigelXW]

@@Booruvcheek You have to remember, the snes was very similar to the nes, just with much more powerful hardware. a home computer would probably have some faster, dedicated bus.

[@janpolak6249]

I would personally mention The Train: Escape to Normandy. While not true "3D" it was pretty much open world and the supposed third dimension would be the so many varied screens around train giving almost 360 look.

[@alexanderwingeskog758]

The first I got (3D C64 games) was Harrier Combat Simulator and it was amazing! A bit later I got Acrojet and that blew my mind back then. Stunt car was really great also! But by the time I got it, my friend with he's Amiga 500 got it also and the framerate was a tad bit better... Still great on the C64 though!

[@jpjokela1]

Nice list, but few games I'd definitely add: Rescue on Fractalus (1984): Long into 1990's, many flight simulators had flat ground with occassional pyramid depicting mountains. This game had procedurally generated 3D fractal mountains back in 1984. Battle Command (1991): A bit more "arcade" tank game with rather fast filled vector graphics. Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer (1987): Felt faster than many other flight sims, filled vectors. Mercenary (1985): Non-filled vectors, more impressive for being open world "on planet" game. Tau Ceti (1986): Interesting 3D engine, not vectors as such, but filled, and shaded based on light direction. Revs (1986): Maybe not as "3D" as the other games named here, but a 3D F1 racing game for C64, with VERY good framerate. Unsurprisingly, Geoff Crammond once again. 3D Construction Kit (1991): Yes, Freescape engine is damn slow. But I find it impressive they managed to make "in-engine" editor for games for C64.

[@AppliedCryogenics]

I remember being kinda impressed with the C64 port of "Power Drift".

[@scottbreon9448]

That wasn't really 3D though

[@verficationaccount]

My favourites (not vector-based though): Deflector, The Eidolon, Trailblazer - these were a good bit faster than the games you picked ;-)

[@FunnyBunnyHelena]

Trailblazer, I played that a lot!

[@franzcrack]

You did not mention Snow Strike. A so little-known flight and combat simulator, similar to Project Stealth Fighter, yet even more impressive, that deserves consideration IMO.

[@bosoerjadi2838]

I remember at the time spending weeks before I ever managed to dock into the space station in Elite, never really mastering it. Each time I succeeded it felt like having beaten an arcade fight end boss. Compared to docking in Elite, aerial refueling in DCS is a cakewalk.

[@KabukiKid]

The cruelest part about learning to dock in Elite... was that once you sort of got decent at it, you could afford a docking computer and never had to do it again. lol ;-)

[@jammerc64]

Grey (WIP), Mino Trace, Red Serpent (preview/WIP).

[@LordmonkeyTRM]

Another superb list.

[@SteveSmith-km2mw]

What about Encounter, Koronis Rift, Mercenery, and Second City

[@vast634]

You should also include the C64 version of mercenary. A 3D exploration game with FPS controls and Flight, on a pretty big city map, and indoor environments.

[@nelchid]

My favourite 3d game for the C64 was the brilliant, Mercenary. I waisted many years as a child flying around that "MASSIVE" alien planet..... Targ!

[@jan-cederikkummer8311]

10:30 what is the Name of that game?