C64 Longplay - Forbidden Forest (HQ)

Video from the C64 game "Forbidden Forest"
The video is downloadable at
www.archive.org/details/C64Vid...

[@ppsayl1235]

The sound track still haunts me to this day and is one of the driving forces that led me to pursue the field of creating music for motion pictures, TV and video games.

[@indiosse]

You are right it's astonishing. Almost as good as crazy comets (although this wins on atmosphere) hands down. Have you heard Aztec challenge that's also really atmospheric

[@ppsayl1235]

+Rich E No, but I'll check it out. Thanks.

[@KadrickNinness]

What are you doing with that pursuit now?

[@ppsayl1235]

I write music for other bands, in a band myself, wring instrumentals for potential television commericals and/or series and trying break into the motion picture industry via scoring. Finally got all my works copyrighted (that took a long time, the wheels of beurocracy turn very slowly). Also working with BMI, but not much on that front yet. All in all, I've been keeping busy.

[@Brontosauredumarais]

Yeah both soundtracks, Aztec Challenge and Forbidden Forest. Blue Max also, Falcon Patrol, Monty on the Run, Commando... and the list goes on and on :)

[@jjvagnar1]

I never forgot this soundtrack through nearly three decades!

[@deepdivegaming6127]

Sound s like the Stranglers!

[@gleuszler]

This game is being played on the "Crazy" difficulty level, the hardest of four selectable difficulty levels (the others being Innocent, Trooper and Daredevil, Innocent obviously the easiest). On Innocent, Trooper and Daredevil, the phantom, which spawns an infinite number of skeletons, needs to be killed only once (as shown in 4:58); however, on Crazy, the phantom must be killed twice. Ammunition in Forbidden Forest is finite. The player is given fifty arrows, ten of which are in a quiver on the player's back. The other forty are in quivers on the bottom screen with ten arrows each. As the arrows are used up, the quivers on the bottom screen will disappear, and when they are all gone, the arrows in the quiver on the player's back are used. If the player runs out of arrows, the game immediately ends. On Innocent and Trooper, arrows are replenished after destroying the quota of each particular creature. On Daredevil, this happens only twice--after beating the frogs and the phantom/skeletons--and on Crazy, only after the frogs.

[@mosaton]

I remember killing the phantom and being so scared of the game. It was daytime when I started playing and nighttime by the time I finished. I don't think I ever played the game again.

[@Femaiden]

wow, i never knew any of this. i was a kid playing this and didn't understand the mechanics. I could never get past the frogs. didn't even know those were frogs. I thought they were bears. . .dropping from the sky. . i thought maybe that's what drop bears were. i thought they were bears,mbecause they are brown, but watching this video, i can paise the vid and yeah, i clearly see they are frogs. i never even made it to the phantom, much less that spitting cobra, which would have been by favorite enemy, since i had just learned about those. the endboss reminds me of Ganon in Zelda 1, but this game obviously predates that and i would not have thought that back then. i never made it to the endboss anyway

[@i-heart-google7132]

This game used to scare the crap out of me and I was in a bit of a shock every time a spider managed to copulate with my hero's head. I never got beyond skeletons because I didn't know you had to shoot the damn witch..or whatever that was. Now, after 20 years I finally got to see the ending. Thanks uploader.

[@wildwest1832]

This was actually a really good game when you consider the insane technical limitations of the system. It had really good music and was just fun

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

It looks pretty well thought out, that last fight where you have the monster flowing around in the pitch black night, only visible when thunder strikes, that's tense and a good setpiece.

[@LukeMaynard]

Full credit is due to Paul Norman, the game designer who was a working musician and wrote & programmed the unforgettable score as well as everything else in this game. It's weird looking back, from an era when maybe 500 people can work for three years developing a hit game, to a period when just one person could do the whole thing alone. What an interesting age we lived through!

[@Begehrhard]

I do not fully agree about the technical limitations... it's just been an early, super frightening and thus outstanding game. But check Spelunker to see what the c64 was capable of 👌🏻 - other top games: Paradroid, Stellar 7 and Summer Games II.

[@txmetalhead82xk]

Ground breaking

[@AE-bm4no]

technical limitations? check out Sam's Journey , a Pig Quest, and Mayhem in Monsterland.

[@LuciRosseTV]

this game scared the shit out of me when I was a kid....

[@the_gilded_age_phoenix8717]

Yeah, it had the same effect on me, but I guess it's easy to scare a seven year-old.

[@RRGreiner]

Me too, me too

[@Halligen1972]

@@the_gilded_age_phoenix8717 back in the days, yes...now the seven years old are playin´ "zombi-mode" from "The walking dead".

[@peterjensen3162]

Still scares me 🙀

[@999jay999]

Looks to me to be the early SKYRIM ! :)

[@isquiesque]

I agree with all the other comments about the atmosphere and music and everything - but I simply had to comment (even 11 years after the post) to applaud your guts on that final banshee... turning away from that skeleton to take it out, being so sure you'd do it. That was epic.

[@gentlemandudley7761]

Oh man, I'm 34 years old and I remember this vividly. My long lost uncle came over for a week during one summer when I was little when we still had contact with him. He had all of the C64 games and we just spent that week gaming old school. The Forbidden Forest games where amongst my top favs. I miss you Uncle Wayne, if you ever come across this.

[@anotherultidude7345]

Did you know that 50% of time spent on this game is used for fighting and the other 50% is for dancing

[@fcycles]

hum... perhaps the character is in a rave, taking drug.. and hallucination make him see all that... when he get a bit better, he is dancing and take another pill...

[@gatorhand]

idk if I killed 20 giant frogs I'd be dancing too when it's over.

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

You just gotta celebrate when you just confirmed that you personally is at the top of the food chain.

[@akualung]

the name's Archer... Dancing Archer

[@RetroRichie]

50% hunting Simulator 50% dancing Simulator 100% relatable

[@sym667]

Oh man, I'm 48 now and I was 11 when I used to play this game. My mom behind me, doing some reading or knitting......I got so nostalgic...😟

[@urpomussukka]

The scariest game of all time.

[@darkmage7280]

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is scariest, but this is #2, no doubt about that.

[@surfersilver6610]

@@darkmage7280 Throw Aztec Challenge in the mix, same company, similar scary/dreadful music to haunt you the rest of your 1 gaming life(no do overs).

[@wildwest1832]

One of my favorite games as a kid. This game really captured a lot of atmosphere given the insane limits they had

[@MrBeard17]

LOL Still love the victory dance between levels.

[@T8HPO]

yeah those were my favorites too heheh :)

[@ToysintheStatic]

I always thought he was reloading his arrows, having him dance kind of ruins my image of this game, so I'll choose to continue thinking he was reloading :)

[@mikeycourington2011]

@@ToysintheStatic I agree - a lone archer in a dangerous forest would retrieve every arrow he can for the next fight, and that's what I always imagined that he was doing. Game mechanic-wise, on the lower difficulty levels, he does get his arrows back between stages, so him retrieving arrows instead of dancing makes perfect sense.

[@SOULDEZIGNER]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/eZbGooyhdq2oqa8

[@linushyper300]

I actually got some serious nightmares from playing this game back in the day.

[@jonathanrose8416]

Four year old me thought this game was the scariest freakin' thing on the planet. Now I look back and see the archer dancing after he kills anything and I'm like O-o

[@adroharv9213]

this really is a work of art. It's a collection of things coming together making for a terrific experience. Still holds up very well thanks to excellent design all round from a fitting and beautiful sound orchestration to a timeless visual style and tight gameplay mechanics but also due to there not being a save state system in place to destroy tension. Massive credit to Paul Norman for understanding this medium better than anyone else frankly. His Aztec Challenge is similarly excellent in execution

[@WinrichNaujoks]

Best music, together with Aztec Challenge, on any computer game, to date. Still scary af. Amazing game.

[@DukeJon1969]

great game, great soundtrack. Way before its time.

[@ZiomDJeMZi]

Insane, creepy music

[@chipchipchuree]

I was horrified by this game as a child.

[@Paperclown]

it's still scary

[@YouBazinga]

I remember my first interaction with this game. It was one late evening and my parents went out to our neighbours house, so I was home alone. Instead of getting ready for bed, I decided on playing my new C64 game. It was so scary, that later that night, when I finally went to bed, I couldn't sleep for hours. All the spiders, snakes, skeletons and the sound effects, enough to scare the hell out of a boy 😄

[@Antipaavi]

I played this a lot when I was a kid. It was really impressive, like watching a mysterious horror movie. The sounds are quite simple but they work extremely well - for example on stage 5, the sound of a dying ghost is bloodcurdling.

[@MLCrow]

One of the best C64 games for me. Impossible to forget the awesome/creepy melodies (since I was a little kid back in the 80's). It's cool I remembered of it and took a look. Revive it again.

[@Alex69eyes]

The father of survival horror and third person horror shooters!!! :-)

[@RaposaCadela]

.

[@Alex69eyes]

Something like dead space from electronic arts.....

[@RaposaCadela]

.

[@V3ntilator]

+Alex 69eyes Fuck yeah, or was it Caverns of Khafka in Mario Maker? I will remake Forbidden forrest too :D

[@txmetalhead82xk]

+Alex 69eyes -The Suffering, too.

[@V3ntilator]

Pure awesomeness from my childhood :D ... Monty Norman made the kick-ass music. Scariest game ever too.

[@wildwest1832]

I love the spider AI. Charge until he loads the arrow then run like hell

[@georgegrennan6328]

This brings back so many happy memories of playing CBM64 games in the 80s. The epic soundtrack is forever etched in my mind, and the dance the archer does when finishing a level was brilliant - from a 1980s perspective :-) Many thanks for posting this!

[@Blahbevava]

Awesome Game from my childhood. Scared me a little when I was 5 years old especially with that ghostly demon screaming after it get's shot. The concept of this game is fantastic. I'm surprised it has not been re-made on modern game systems.

[@ArmyJames]

This game was incredibly atmospheric for the mid-1980’s.

[@stroszekFailure]

I've obviously been in love with this game since I first played it aged 9...It has something...weird and bizarre; hypnotic and sad in it. In fact, I still love to play it when I'm depressed. It's like..it perfectly fits the mood.

[@SuperHns]

The music when winning the stage is epic!

[@seankennealy7572]

Thanks for the memories. Used to scare the hell out of me when I was a kid. I actually got chills again from the last boss. Crazy

[@Aichauer]

i loved this game! And the haunting soundtrack.😃

[@zippydebrain]

The most facinating thing about this game is that most of it was written in C64 BASIC if you can imagine such a thing. The Music and some of the Sprite graphics and screen scrolling were managed using machine language calls, but the rest was done with basic and some of the multi-color custom font features of the C64 that not a lot of games used as well. Of course the custom font made reading the Basic code a challenge if you could manage to break out of the game. (You had to modify the loading program to pull that off.)

[@SteveLeicht1]

The fact that part of this game was coded in BASIC absolutely blows my mind. Can't wait to tell my brother, who's a computer programmer.

[@zippydebrain]

steve-o l The music was a machine language routine that ran in the background, and I think there was some ML Support to make sure the scrolling was smooth but the bulk of the game itself was basic. Castle Wolfenstein was as well surprisingly. This made it easy to cheat. You had to disable the blocking of CTRL-BREAK to be able to see any of it.

[@KC9UDX]

MANY C64 games were written this way

[@zippydebrain]

@@KC9UDX The use of ML routines for music and effects was very common. There were not a lot of games you could break into and change things though one that you could was Wolfenstein if you timed it right. Most later games were compiled machine language games with pure Machine Language routines tied to the NTSC timer for music and effects like split screen etc...

[@KC9UDX]

@@zippydebrain there are numerous ways to hide and obfuscate the BASIC code, too. Many games and applications that started out SYS 9xxx had hidden BASIC after the first line, or even higher in memory.

[@roflmows]

used to play this on Saturday nights back in the 80s...parents asleep downstairs, cassettes of my favorite mix tapes playing, lots of Jolt Cola and E.L. Fudge cookies...good times. ohhh, the long-ago days of simple childhood pleasures...how i miss you now =/

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

Man, I miss Jolt Cola. Can't drink that kinda stuff now though.

[@vargstrand]

My first horror games, had forgotten it... But now the nightmares are back :-) .

[@elshaitan1057]

After 40 or so years I still remembered this game and the creepy soundtrack

[@highjim7778]

I used to play this back in the day when I was very young, was the first game I ever completed, re watching these videos a while ago reminded me how creepy the game was and explains a nightmare I used to have a lot when I was ill. Things getting closer and the weird pulsing type thing going on.

[@LAIRDO-]

I originally had this game on tape (C64 datasette), It took like over an hour to load up. What memories I have of this adventure!! And OMG, the music and SFX take me back!!

[@thomasgriffin5340]

Best C64 game ever. It was as addictive as DOOM for me. Never could finish to the end. I wore out a lot of joysticks in the mid 1980s.

[@gleaming999]

This was the first game I ever played on the C64, and I still remember everything ......

[@michaelr9839]

The sound effects and ambience of this game freaked me out as a child. Love the victory dance

[@gettingpast4391]

This game was so creepy when I was 12... it still had that feeling when I see it today. I remember once playing for like 2 hours straight without dying. I got into some sort of loop where the pattern kept repeating and I could keep going. I finally gave into exhaustion and stopped playing.

[@scottbreon9448]

I would say this is probably one of the earliest, if not THE earliest examples of the survival horror genre.

[@pausastronzo]

wtf the music is just amazing!!!

[@RogueAndroid]

Perhaps the best game i played on C64 when i was a kid. First really scary game i ever played. I always got that creepy feeling when facing the Demogorgon. The first few times i jumped up from my seat when the thunder cracked and he became visible. And the ominous music track... fantastic! Simply a great game altogether :)

[@inquisitorgothmog]

Fuck when I was a kid I played this awesome game 1000 times. Thanks KZbin and you who put it up just too see it almost 40 years later. The Brain remembers it all. Fuckin awesome game and music. Now I want 4K Zombie action perfection but I fuckin enjoy the old school memories!

[@RaptureMusicOfficial]

I played it as kid in the 80s. One of the scariest games of all times, because of the crude graphics, the atmosphere, and the music! When I see junk when I walk in the forest, I'm reminded of Forbidden Forest. Awesome game!

[@dgwaters]

When I got out my old Commodore 64 in 2005 after nearly fifteen years in storage the first game I played was Forbidden Forest. Why? The MUSIC! Still epic after all of these years!

[@RogueAndroid]

One of my absolute favorite games ever! Got it emulator now, used to have it on C64.

[@gogsy]

Loved this Game ,still play it now and again on the Emulator!

[@robertmiller7921]

Ah such memories. I remember the first time I got to the last boss. I had no clue what was going on, I fired an arrow at random and killed him. I was like "WTF, that was easy!" Next play through I could not hit him at all and his giant head comes down and crushes me and I'm like "Wait that was hard?!" I was never ever able to beat him again...

[@isquiesque]

That is a great story. Thank you for sharing it.

[@keddw101]

Great to see this again. Remember it well

[@Erithywen]

I remember this game scaring me when I was a little kid, lol. Such a great game for its time and it still is!

[@andrewegmuller2179]

As much as I love the C64 and the games I played as a child: I'm glad games have evolved a lot since these times. Playing a game like this today would drive me insane after a few minutes 😅

[@Freddyfan1428]

Death by dissoultion, horrible way to die at the Snake fight! I remember this being one of the really bloody games on the C-64 and loving it. Ahhh happy memories, i can almost feel the nostalgia waving over me... and the frustration of the insane loading times, loL!

[@Akabackalooka]

I first had it in the early 80's for the Atari 800 but on the flip side was the C64 version. When we got a C64 a few years later I was MUCH more freaked out! The Atari version left a lot of the gore and a couple of levels out. Paul Norman/Cosmi made some good games!

[@DrMcFly28]

- Ah, I remember how gruesome I thought the frog death was when I was a kid. It probably looks completely tame now. (watches video) - Oh... oh.

[@surfersilver6610]

Yeah this isn't your cute family orientated business man Frogger trying to get to his log home....This is FROGS FROM HELL!(actually Heaven i.e the sky, but who's counting, no time for that...RUN Forbidden FORREST RUUUUUNN!!!!)

[@ryebread105]

This is one of the few games on C64 that I beat. It took several tries but I was glad I could.

[@2PeteShakur]

"Because this was my first game and my first programming exercise, I had no rules to follow, and there were no inhibitions. As always, I treated myself as the audience and did whatever I could to excite and surprise myself. One technique was to write complete action sections with lots of random variables without checking each step along the way. I would then run it to experience the whole scene as a viewer instead of a creator. Naturally, things didn't work a lot of the time, but, when they did, that was as close as I could get to an outside perspective." -- Paul Norman, designer and programmer [Forbidden Forest - C64]

[@ytubeanon]

Haha, I used to play this on my Atari 800.. the life affirming victory jig after every stage, the near heavy metal 8-bit music, the super long death animations that go on and on, the creepy sound the reapers make when they're dying like at 5:29 - ah memories... *RetroGaming Radio Interview with Paul Norman (Forbidden Forest):* kzbin.info/www/bejne/eZXTZXuEZq1naZo

[@matheuslopes5287]

This death sound was used again in the new indie game Infernax! Check It out!

[@EdwardZia]

This game freaks me out as a 44 year old man, and I'm a veteran who fought in real battles.

[@troels4554]

Oh man..... at the end of each level.... them 80s hip hop moves...

[@teranokitty]

My sister and I always figured that the archer's "dance" was actually him traveling deeper into the forest. It seems like when the archer is holding an arrow in his right hand with the tip pointing at the middle of the bow, he's trying to find his position with the stars or something. It makes more sense to us that the archer would be searching for these beasts and not the other way around. What does everyone else think?

[@ArmyJames]

Fleem Eyman I think the archer was also a gay disco dancer. That’s my interpretation anyway.

[@edward4191]

My favourite C64 game of all time..

[@giscarddintestin8754]

Super Pipeline great too

[@COMBAT4TRUTH]

Oh the joys of loading this game on a good old cassette tape, seemed like hours! Oh, it almost was.

[@Boris_Greca]

i had this game on cassette tape back in the 80s... classic

[@Argumemnon]

Whenever I hear the intro music I get PTSD from this damn game. It's amazing how scary cheap graphics can be. Wait a minute. I never saw that snake. Huh ?

[@vicioussuspicious894]

Funny thing is that I cant remember it either. Maybe different version?

[@reds005]

The music still freaks me out. First played this when I was about 5 (1985). Nostalgia overload

[@tulkasainur]

I played this game when I was 6 years old, and it scared the shit out of me, even after I have won it...

[@tonyc416]

That game was awesome! I used to love playing that game on C64!

[@markgaskell5370]

The noise at 5:00 took me right back to being a 6 year old playing this and being scared out of my wits.

[@user-zr2lt6dh8j]

I've been sitting back looking through all the responses everyone wrote and am so amazed of the folks that loved this game too. One or two responses reminded me that this was over 30 decades old. Boy, did that hit home how old I am. Anyway, I loved this game among many. I don't know why, but I did. In fact watching it on KZbin made my fingers get all itchy to want to play it and just fall into the old groove. What a blast from the past. Took me right back to the area in the house where I played it. Haven't seen the dining room so clearly the way it was arranged back then in years. Weird. Commodore 64 was the shit back then, that's for sure. Floppy disks and all. Lol

[@pakpukik]

For the time it came out, the music was surprisingly good for the game!!

[@AzorBazrah]

This was just the best C64 game. period. Ilove this video, and paul norman, you are a God.

[@tomhat9]

My first game I got on the Commodore 64 around 1984. Only one I could afford with my allowance. Still have the box and cassette tape! Love it back then!

[@ArcadeDude44]

Wow, a classic...this was one of the few tape games that I would load into my C64. I enjoyed it, but found it creepy (which made it even cooler). Thanks for the memories.

[@dBro4769]

Man, I completely forgot about this game! I remember it as the most impressive thing I had seen on my C64. Thanks for the upload!

[@carlbModels]

wow, better than I remembered in many ways. Many thanks for posting the video 👍🍺🇬🇧

[@JJ-GG2050]

I miss this game so much! Used to play it when I was a kid as well as the game "Alone in the Dark"! This made me so happy, thank you! One of the best soundtracks!

[@zanthimos]

I was playing Minecraft just now. Using lots of arrows on my bow to kill lots of monsters in a dark forest. Suddenly, this old game popped into my head. Graphics may have changed over the years, but some things never change.

[@IWALVG]

I play this every Halloween, and this year will be no exception. :-) Neil's Top 5 Games To Play On HALLOWEEN!

[@scottbreon9448]

I play this as well as the sequel, although I prefer the original due to the music

[@isquiesque]

What a great idea! Thank you!

[@Paperclown]

dont forget it's almost halloween

[@pjcnet]

I absolutely loved this game, I completed it on numerous occasions and I also enjoyed the sequel which was less popular.

[@T8HPO]

Oh man thank you sooooo much for downloading the commodore 64 games. Brings back so many memories.

[@pjcnet]

I remember them saying this game was just 25K in size, I loved it and completed the game about 100+ times, the game's atmosphere and music was unique. I bought and completed Beyond the Forbidden Forest too.

[@lukcaluwaerts1689]

Paul Norman created a fantastic creepy game !! I loved it as a kid. Let the blood flow. sadly this game is not renewed anymore in these last years. I need such a game again. The horror; da good music. da thriller !!! I felt like I was playing = THE THING 1982 movie. Kill that Dragon. Kill the ghosts and skeletons.

[@EGOS42]

How have I not heard of this game until now?

[@1ekaba]

my god, talk about going down memory lane! I used to LOVE this game!

[@JustWasted3HoursHere]

I think this is the first C64 game with "dual playfield" scroll. Very impressive at the time.

[@peters8341]

Skeletons with spears, yeah this game scared the _ out of me as a kid lol

[@peters8341]

The victory music was always worth it though!

[@steelreign5529]

...But the phantom's (or spectre's) scream got my ears closed... and it's also scary...

[@exidy-yt]

Superb playing! This was on the hardest difficulty too!

[@jontaylor4511]

friend got obsessed with this pretty late into the 64 days, ingenious, quirky game even if it looked dated.

[@keithexum7312]

Wow what a flashback in time! Played this for hours. That music you will never forget. Paul Norman made super Huey as well.

[@rikk319]

FYI, the boss at the end, Demogorgon, was taken from Dungeons & Dragons, a nasty demon lord.

[@resofactor]

Oh that's what is on the last level that you need to hit when the storm flashes?

[@toyotaboyhatman]

I remember a friend having this game first.. creeped the hell out of me, between the music and those giant sprites. Way ahead of it's time

[@0neDoomedSpaceMarine]

I love the little victory dance he does after every round, like he's all *"Fuck YES! I am the best, nobody is as cool as me!"*

[@SneezyD]

Thanks for this!! I loved this game as a kid.

[@AzorBazrah]

Absolutelly the best! Paul Norman, you are a god!

[@toniomiklo2406]

What a fantastic game: one of my first. Wonderful memories. Best soundtrack in a video game ever imo.

[@wesleydaholtarre129]

This game scared the shit out of me !!!! When I was a child !!! Paul Normal did a great job !!! RESPECT !!! RESPECT !!! THIS IS A REAL CLASSIC RETRO !!!! SO SCARy !!!!!!