The 10 Best Commodore 64 PETSCII Games Ever Made!

*Disclaimer : some of these games use hardware sprites
Hey guys OSG here with a new Patreon request. Grymmjack who joined my Patreon a couple of weeks ago asked me to do a video on C64 PETSCII games…. Well I have to admit that I had no clue what that was….a quick google later and I found that a friend of the Channel Robin from 8 Bit show and tell knew all about them so I have drawn on his knowledge to complete this request.
So ascii is the use of standard keyboard character set that most of us will have seen in terminal programs or mostly in that little .nfo file that comes with games that when opened with notepad tells us how to install and play the game. It’s something that I regularly use when making game launcher batch files just to give them that more professional look. But it’s not a new thing it’s been around since 1963 when the first edition of the standard was published. Pretty soon after coders started to use the ascii character set to create graphics rather than the usual bitmap graphics Since then there has been many revisions and today we will be looking at the Commodores own version of Ascii known at PETSCII.
Anyway, that’s the history of PETSCII just to give this video some context but the real request was for a list of best C64 PETSCII graphics games. I’ll just say that this list wasn’t an easy one as some games that I have played loads of times I never even knew were PETSCII but after a discussion with Robin from 8-Bit show and tell he pointed me in the right direction and a post on Facebook from Hársfalvi Gábor which named a lot of PETSCII games which I went away and played and came up with 10 great games that used PETSCII graphics
So without more delay let’s take a look at the 10 best Commodore 64 PETSCII graphics games in order of greatness.
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[@8_Bit]

Space Taxi getting added to the list is my fault - at one point OSG and I were talking about how some games use a mix of custom characters and PETSCII. Space Taxi has a PETSCII loading screen (a giant Space Taxi made out of ROM characters) and some of the levels are PETSCII-inspired like Short N' Sweet, Taxi Trainer, Puzzler, and more. Same with Tower of Rubble, where the title screen is all PETSCII, and the gameplay is still PETSCII inspired but does use custom characters. I hope you all enjoy the list anyway, and I thank OSG for giving me a chance to make an appearance.

[@oldstylegaming]

Im honored to have you on my channel mate, youve always been there when ive had a problem and love your videos although often i dont comment, i always watch.....just am so dumb i dont know what to say lol.

[@remistuczynski2768]

Cool list, however I am bit shocked you didn't include Monstro Giganto! Really good game mate!

[@oldstylegaming]

I never even knew about it... im wondering if it uses PETSCII and other stuff as I would have thought Robin would have mentioned it...ive seen it now and it looks great

[@remistuczynski2768]

@@oldstylegaming yeah, and it plays as good as it looks. As far as I know it's petscii only

[@oldstylegaming]

aw balls.... im pissed off now

[@patsfan4life]

It’s such a new release, maybe they didn’t know of it

[@remistuczynski2768]

@@patsfan4life yep, you are probably right

[@oldstylegaming]

So its become apparent that I've left out probably the best PETSCII game of all.....Monstro Giganto, this is because in my search I never even found it.... i might actually do a stand alone video on it that links to this video just to put that right. Im not taking this one down now as ive been on with it far too long and have other videos that I need to do...all I can do is apologise for making such a big mistake.......sorry guys Also i missed this disclaimer that Robin told me to use...... "Oh yeah, and in your disclaimer you can say some of these games use hardware sprites and that's okay too. The aesthetic actually goes back to the C64 Christmas Demo that Commodore released. Hardware sprites overlaid on all PETSCII backgrounds." I shouldnt be allowed to technical stuff...ill just stick to playing games from now on

[@DropDeadFrederick]

I literally came to the comments to mention Monstro Giganto. :D

[@patsfan4life]

I think it’s only about a year old

[@oldfartplayingoldgames]

Back in the early 80s I wrote a basic app that played Russian Roulette, using only PETSCII graphics. The gun, the bullet, aven the cracks that appeared on the screen when you lost were all PETSCII characters.

[@gumdeo]

Space Taxi, a timeless classic.

[@oldstylegaming]

It is mate....its like a time sapper as everytime you load it up you end up playing it for ages

[@Trenchbroom]

​@@oldstylegaming Your video does not have the speech synthesis for each "Hey Taxi!' or "Pad 1 please". Maybe you need to run the emulator in NTSC mode, or possibly find a different version of the game online (I noticed the title screen in your video has "by Mc Orr Software" which is incorrect, it should say "by John Kutcher"). Just want to make sure the old girl is looking/sounding her best! Thanks for the great video.

[@TheStuffMade]

It's a great list of PETSCII graphics games, some of them I've never even heard about before. Space taxi really is a fantastic game, especially considering it was released so many years ago, it's like they took Lunar Lander and improved on it by turning it into a futuristic taxi game.

[@BenjaminHorvat]

Nice compilation..I would add Monstro Giganto to the list as well. Thanks for the vid!

[@merykjenkins3274]

A great collaboration between yourself and Robin. Digiloi is an amazing example of what's possible with such a simple character set!

[@IsaacKuo]

My favorite PETSCII games were silly games I made for myself on the VIC20 and then C64. I'm particularly proud of my 20 line Robotron clone. One which I played a lot of, considering how simplistic it was, was a simple action game with the USS Enterprise fixed at the bottom of the screen and a Klingon Bird of Prey at the top. I used INSERT and DELETE printing to shift the Klingon ship left and right (I don't remember exactly how tall it was ... maybe 6 or 7 lines tall). The only control was to press SPACE to fire phasers straight up. If you hit the Klingon dead center you won! If you pressed SPACE two frames in a row, you lost (your phasers overheated). Either way, I had a simplistic PETSCII explosion effect. If you weren't dead center, your phasers still gouged out a column of characters out of the Klingon ship. Such a ridiculously simple game, but for some reason I found it fun to play.

[@nellitheretrogamer8666]

I had a cheap compilation disk which had eight games on it and many of them used partly PETSCII graphics. The only one I liked enough to play more than a couple of times was a game called Derby Day which was simply about betting on horses. You placed your bets and watched the horses run and that was it. But is was surprisingly addictive. I always created four players so that I could bet on each of the four horses. The game was written in Basic and the code wasn't protected in any way, you could see it with the List command.

[@oldfartplayingoldgames]

That sounds like a cheap "Keypunch" (I think it was called) games collection I bought for my C64 back in the day. Target used to have a whole aisle of cheap software in blister packs.

[@grymmjack]

WOW what a video! THANKS!!! Incredible. Wow Robin, thanks for this joint effort my goodness!

[@mattjames6349]

Nice video! I knew what it was from the 8 bit guy but I’d not seen how it has been used before so…really enlightening ! Thanks!

[@Retro_B8]

Wow some awesome games here mate, played the one in first place a fair bit, beautiful looking and really playable. Top stuff mate

[@Hologhoul]

Wow some of those are really creative, that last one looks great!

[@chris-do]

Great idea as always .But like others i miss the real #1 PETSCII game MG ;-) . and 2 other small comments: PETSCII Lemmings is also quite funny and in my eyes the fantastic Space Taxi looks like a modified charset, so not a real PETSCII

[@oldstylegaming]

Well Robin checked these out and the only game he said was modified was NukeWar which I removed so Ill have to ask him about that. I normally wouldnt take a video like this on because I dont know enough about the subject to give it my all...i can only play the games.... i am annoyed that I havent got that game in this video though as I never even knew about it and I googled the shit out of Petscii Graphics games too

[@earthad666]

Lots of games I've never heard of. Awesome video as always!

[@robvegas9354]

Great video!!! Awesome games! Cheers OSG!

[@eskey691]

Well as always am super late seeing this video haha. Only knew 2 games on this list but the best of the 2 for me was Space Taxi man this game made me rage and happy all in one hit. Great video as always buudy and hey i learnt today so that's a big bonus. Keep up the great work and roll on the next one, laters an take care.

[@zaibatsubilly6691]

Great video like always. Cheers!

[@DrScrobo]

I remember having a disk with Galaga on it. It was PETSCII graphics. Good game but needed some colour. Still was a way to play Galaga at home!

[@simonstapletondotcom]

Love this. If only there were more PETSCII games back in the day because they could have been cross-platform (in Commodore range) with ease

[@pelimies1818]

It’s always amazing to see smoother action on C64, than a $20000 PC a decade later. Fun Fact: Finland had the most C64s per capita in mid-late 80’s in the world. It cost c. 1300 USD converted to today’s rate, inc. joystick and cassette-station. That amount was equal to one month salary for well-paid engineer. The nicknames for C64 were plenty, including The Computer of the Republic, and Spruce Plank (spruce analogious to the number six in finnish).

[@oldstylegaming]

Spruce Plank? Is that for real?

[@pelimies1818]

@@oldstylegaming Sure, I used the name all the time - Kuuslankku, in finnish. Kuusnepa and Seekuusnelonen - as it was widely nicknamed.. Christmas 1985 shall never be forgotten :)

[@merman1974]

The definition of PETSCII has been stretched a little here, but it's a fun list with some alternative titles. I would recommend WEATHERWAR II (aka Ouranos), which is the C64 update of an early PET title. You play a wizard trying to blow up your opponent's castle with magic spells based on types of weather. It can be quite addictive.

[@RickinBaltimore]

Whoa! Great info from Robin in this!

[@oldstylegaming]

Hes a great guy, very helpful all the time :-)

[@jonpon69]

Wicked upload

[@ncf1]

just Monstro Giganto, thats a classic! those guys are geniuses

[@commocore]

Next year I hope that my 100% PETSCII pseudo FPS shooter, Bring back my bones will make the TOP 10 ;). Nice video, the first 4 games I had no clue about!

[@oldstylegaming]

Id love to check that out mate

[@commocore]

@@oldstylegaming \o/ yay! I also made the sequel, might be easier to start, but both games are straight from HELL anyway.

[@Simon0]

I like the text adventures but never could make it very far. I remember the Hulk and famous five games. Pretty good

[@robinhatherall6779]

Cool. Love the big chunky style

[@dodgierodders3217]

Great video, and it's awesome to see you and the 8-Bit Show collaborating! Do you, Robin, (or anyone) know if 'Cops & Robbers' (1985), or 'Floyd of the Jungle' (1982) are classified as PETSCII games, or a sort of hybrid with custom characters? Keep up the awesome vids!

[@8_Bit]

Floyd looks like it uses custom characters for pretty much everything. It doesn't use many, but from what I see it's not using the ROM characters. Cops'n'Robbers (1985, by Atlantis Software) seems to use a combination of PETSCII and custom. Some game developers would start by copying the existing ROM characters and then gradually redefine parts of them as the game was developed; that probably happened here.

[@oldstylegaming]

Robin is the man to tell you the tech stuff but as far as the games go, i havent played Cops & Robbers but love Floyd of the Jungle I actually had it in my Hidden Gems F video its a brilliant game

[@dennyhaynes3]

I never knew Space taxi was Petscii graphics. Position 1 and 2 was perfect choices so much so I'm going to give them a play 👍

[@MephProduction]

never really knew what PETSCII was, now i do and i think i like it

[@oldstylegaming]

me neither mate...but its pretty impressive stuff though

[@ncf1]

genius! Great idea!

[@karakug]

Baromi jók! Nem is gondoltam, hogy ilyeneket is lehet csinálni PETSCII-vel 😯 (Egyedül a Space Taxit ismertem, meg a pókeres játék régi változatát.)

[@Lucasrainford]

Well that was a bit different and very interesting. Until we was chatting the other night I'd never heard of em ever and thought they's look strange although now I've seen them I'm impressed! I've seen Bastow Manor and Space Taxi before but like yourself didn't take notice the gfx were different. A good few of these titles are pretty recent so there's a sub genre of these games? cool....

[@oldstylegaming]

Its a pretty weird way to make games like...but the results are staggering especially on Digiloi and that game ive missed

[@5HlNOBI]

Impossibru! Diabolical! That last one is my fav. TY OSG!

[@oldstylegaming]

I think if Tower of Rubble wasnt so damn hard it would be my favourite

[@EsmeAmelia]

Well I learned something interesting today.

[@johndough8115]

Some more info: 1) The Commodore 64 Keyboards has the Alternate Petscii characters printed on the lower front face of nearly every Key on the keyboard. You could press a letter key + another key, to activate the desired Petscii symbol, and it would produce the desired symbol, on screen. 2) The Character set in the c64, can be Edited. Thus, you can make you own character tile-set graphics, with a character editor... similar to how you make Sprites with a sprite editor. This is how most professionally made games on the c64 were made. The majority of the screen would be created from that custom tileset.. and then scrolled around. The c64 only had like 8 hardware sprites... and those would typically be used for the player ship, projectiles, and some enemies. At at least one point, I believe I crashed a professional game somehow... and when I tried to write text on the screen... I got the games graphics, instead. This is how I learned, about these games were created. The c64 characters were really cool, as they were very easy for anyone to access and utilize, with a simple two key combination, ...and they had enough shapes to be able to make decent images / pictures with. 3) If memory serves me right... I think the tiles were 8x8.. and the sprites were 16x16 pixels.

[@pvanukoff]

Sprites were 24x21 pixels.

[@The8BitGuy]

I'm having a hard time seeing any PETSCII used in Tower of Rubble or Space Taxi.

[@oldstylegaming]

Yeah mate... well im not going to try and say you are wrong...like i said in the video i know absolutely nothing about the technical side of retro programming... i sort of understand what this PETSCII is as i use ASCII when i make game loader batch files etc. But other than that I recieved guidance from Robin (8-bit show and tell) and the short list of games came from a number of forums and sites. I then went and played all the games and got the the list down to 10... at which point i sent it back to Robin and the only game he said to take out was NukeWar. So maybe there isnt PETSCII in them... well im guessing cos you are saying there isnt then thats correct cos you obvs know your stuff..... im just good at playing games

[@KiR_3d]

Yeah, PETSCII has it's charm def.!

[@allan.n.7227]

Lovely list.. To me - the best C64 petscii game is Donald Ducks Playground. My daugther loves to play this game as well..

[@oldstylegaming]

ill check that out

[@allan.n.7227]

@@oldstylegaming :-).. For what it is its actually quite amazing imo.. fun mini games, catchy tunes and important lessions on saving up, and the value of money.. As a bonus you can perform badly and make Donald angry 😂

[@atarimex2643]

You missed Monstro Giganto….fantastic game!

[@m0nde]

Two of my favorite content creators in one video! Thanks for this. I'm a big fan of ANSI art and follow 16colo.rs. I love the aesthetic of recent PETSCII games like Attack of the PETSCII Robots, Digiloi and a game you left off your list, Monstro Giganto, my personal favorite. I hope the trend continues and we get many more great PETSCII titles. Here's a link to Monstro GIganto's trailer - kzbin.info/www/bejne/oX2UZplqmd2irtk

[@kirkjerk]

Crossroads and Crossroads 2 :-D Just fill the screen with monsters

[@gullpayne]

Cool games 👍

[@ybergik]

Throughout the video I kept saying: What about Space Taxi? Glad to see it was not forgotten, though the digitized voice is somehow missing on you version (?) It was one of the first games I played on the C64.

[@oldstylegaming]

Yeah the voice is there but on every copy i play its a lot quieter than the sound effects

[@chris-do]

the newer Soundchips SID8580 can´t reproduce this digi sounds at this high volume. You have to use the old 6581 SID or if you have a 8580 you can make a Digifix on the newer PCB´s

[@PedroFerreira-sx2gd]

Great list, considering the dificulty of ir. Always surprising me. Space táxi is my favourite, but i have doubts if the clients sprites are made with petscii . There is Also a petscii versions of lemmings and portal that i never played, but looked great

[@oldstylegaming]

I played Pescii Lemings but was a bit too fiddly to play, im waiting for Robin to come back on Space Taxi to see what he says about the Petscii graphics

[@csbruce]

2:16 I wonder if Commodore would have been better off using a compatible version of ASCII for 95 glyphs and adding 33 graphics characters to it. I guess 4 card suits, 7 quad-graphic patterns (plus 7 more reversed), horizontal and vertical lines, 4 line corners, and 16 more. After all, their first computers were intended as business machines rather than game machines. 7:35 The checkerboard pattern doesn't look like C64 PETSCII, since the ROM pattern is 4×4 instead of 8×8. The bushes don't look like PETSCII either. 8:25 This one definitely doesn't use PETSCII characters. 9:35 Space Taxi uses character graphics for the main screen, but it's not PETSCII.

[@8_Bit]

Yes, it looks like Rags to Riches does redefine a number of characters. It's interesting that they'd build such huge levels almost exclusively with PETSCII, but not go all the way. Space Taxi uses PETSCII on its loading screen (not shown) but also some of the other levels are made mostly of PETSCII characters (but still use the custom font for numbers). The Tower game has an all PETSCII title screen, but in-game definitely uses lots of custom characters.

[@LeoDavidson]

I can't believe you missed out Stroker. ;-D (Do not look that up at work, in public, or with family nearby, lol.)

[@oldstylegaming]

Lol i know what it is as a bloke used to always request it when i used to do live streams haha

[@LeoDavidson]

@@oldstylegaming Haha :D It was quite, erm, educational to me as a young boy.

[@JosipRetroBits]

PETSCII rules!!! Great games!

[@arlasoft]

Bit confused by a few of these. Tower of Rubble - the only thing that looks PETSCII is the title screen. Space Taxi looks old school but definitely some custom chars in there. Still a cool video though and inspired me to put a PETSCII game on the to-do list.

[@oldstylegaming]

Maybe they are mate, like I said I dont really know about this stuff... although im sure Robin would have told me not to use them as he did with another game I had on the list originally which was NukeWar

[@oldstylegaming]

Hmmm missed this from Robin when we were talking....maybe I should have said this in the video "Oh yeah, and in your disclaimer you can say some of these games use hardware sprites and that's okay too. The aesthetic actually goes back to the C64 Christmas Demo that Commodore released. Hardware sprites overlaid on all PETSCII backgrounds."

[@jpcompton]

Weather War II. Also, Space Taxi is clearly a redefined charset.

[@oldstylegaming]

That weather war II looks interesting it wasnt on my list but ill check it out...im not sure about Space Taxi...tbh Robin has explained it to me and I have read quite a bit about PETSCII but i still dont fully understand what it is and the differences between it and a redefined charset

[@chris-do]

@@oldstylegaming if it is redifined then it isn´t petscii anymore :) Petscii means to use only the build in characters from the rom. 95% of the games are using redifned chars for the graphics if not a bitmapscreen is used

[@jurispurins8065]

I would have put Space Taxi as #1 As it has really withstood the test of time See if you can complete a 24 hour shift on 1 go - it gets hard as nails But never unfair A few little quirks or Easter Eggs in it I still play it today and since the beginning I’d love to see an episode on all the Gravity/Lander type games on the C64

[@oldstylegaming]

Ill defo look into that ive been playing Gravitar in a competition on Anstream and love that genre

[@Mucker-le6ld]

Good to see do so much for your Patreon members. I mean who gives a shite about this other that that guy.

[@asgerms]

Surprised you didn't pick clips that simultaneously showcased the very charismatic speech in space taxi. Makes me wonder if you are playing it on a SID version where the hardware "bug" allowing speech was "fixed"? Thanks!

[@oldstylegaming]

So the speech is there but its really quiet, its always been a problem for me on space taxi as the normal thrust / landing and music is the correct level but the voice is low and really you cant understand it anyway...maybe i have a broken rom or something but ive tried a few with the same results

[@asgerms]

@@oldstylegaming I actually think it is because you use/emulate a modern SID. Speech is loud on my old breadbin (using original 6581 chip). Anyway, just wanted to make sure that you and your son got maximum enjoyment out of the game ;)

[@oldstylegaming]

ill try it on my breadbin later and report back

[@asgerms]

@@oldstylegaming Sorry for "spamming", just forgot and went back for an edit. I have noticed how you very often comment on *how* much you enjoy the *beep* out of listening to SID music while gaming. Quite a few of these games use the sample-playing ability of the old SIDs to produce better drums on "an extra channel" etc., so you may be missing out. (A bug in the old SID causes a click when adjusting master volume. This click-bug was utilized for samplings and as an extra channel. On later SIDs the click-bug was almost removed and samplings almost disappeared).

[@marcusmalone]

Was Forbidden Forest a PETSCII game? That was pretty impressive, if yes.

[@tamastabi3182]

Can you tell the name of the music starting from 0:09 just after the intro (or give a link to it)? It is very cool.

[@oldstylegaming]

yeah its a remix of an ocean loader downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/c64-hits-1-back-to-the-roots/05%2520ocean%2520loader.mp3

[@tamastabi3182]

@@oldstylegaming Thank you!

[@garethbraint]

I'd love to see you do a play through of rags to riches. Its hard but I always found it quite addictive. Maybe you could cheat a little ?

[@oldstylegaming]

Ill try that mate

[@_.OX._]

No Monstro Giganto?

[@oldstylegaming]

I never even knew about that game and no one mentioned it...is it proper PETSCII ?

[@_.OX._]

@@oldstylegaming Full Petscii, probably the most impressive of it's kind - kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGOZiHSifat6edU

[@RobeenaShepherd]

@@oldstylegaming I really thought this would be #1 😂

[@oldstylegaming]

Sorry Guys my bad

[@RobeenaShepherd]

@@oldstylegaming Not a guy but enjoy it when you get to play it!

[@chloedevereaux1801]

what scrolling in the django game???? its flick screen..

[@stephaneauger1036]

ok..eehh. wow,,and super wow....that all o got to say!,,oh no thank you too

[@8BitNaptime]

What's the music from about 3:00 to 3:30? I feel like it's obvious but it's eluding me!

[@oldstylegaming]

yeah its a remix of an ocean loader you can listen to it or download it here along with loads of other great game music downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/c64-hits-1-back-to-the-roots/05%2520ocean%2520loader.mp3

[@8BitNaptime]

@@oldstylegaming Ooooh wasn't it also used in a demo? It's a good tune.

[@meelboom]

I was expecting to see jumpman or jumpman jr on the list

[@oldstylegaming]

I dont think they are Petscii though are they?

[@anttipere7220]

@@oldstylegaming nope

[@nythyhel]

Monstro Giganto???

[@oldstylegaming]

I never even knew about it.... i did say in the video that I didnt know this shit lol......i am proper pissed off though that ive missed it cos it looks class ...ive pinned a comment at the top on how ill try and rectify this

[@nythyhel]

@@oldstylegaming fairplay. It's a cart only game so maybe tricky to get hold of. It's a cracker though.

[@BigJuffer]

There's some kind of witchcraft going on here, where did they learn to program? Hogwarts??? Never heard of pesky graphics before but some of these are amazing looking

[@oldstylegaming]

PESCII, what you are taking about is at the end of Scooby Doo when the baddy sasy i would have gotten away with it if it wasnt for you pesky kids.......

[@BigJuffer]

@@oldstylegaming it was old man Withers instead of old style gaming

[@michelefrank3825]

😇 P-R-O-M-O-S-M!

[@Blur2040]

Awhile back, I made a point to pay no more attention to the 8-Bit Guy because he's a gun psycho. I don't care if you like guns, but the dude is weird. Also, the thing where he's a serial KZbinr with several dead channels on other topics. Also weird.