Traveller Computer Games
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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:26 am 
 

Did any of you play the Traveller computer games?

I had the first one, on my Amiga 500.

I think it was called "The Zhodani Conspiracy".  But I could be wrong.  On my Amiga 500, it played so slow I never played it twice.

I think the second computer game was called "Secret of the Ancients".  Since it wasn't available on the Amiga, I never played it, so I'm not sure of the title.

But the BEST TRAVELLER GAME EVER was "The Mars Saga", by Electronic Arts, back on the Commodore 64.

Well, OK! NO, no it wasn't a "Traveller" game, but it could have been!

The character development and skills were so close, it's a wonder why EA wasn't sued by GDW!

Or why GDW didn't ask EA to go ahead and make an official Traveller game.

  

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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 3:02 am 
 

Mouse Police wrote:Or why GDW didn't ask EA to go ahead and make an official Traveller game.


Perhaps it was because Electronic Arts had already published one of the best space exploration, trading, and ship-to-ship combat games ever made up to that point:  Starflight.  Why pay GDW royalties just to use the Traveller or MegaTraveller name when they could keep all the money for themselves?

It still stands out as one of the best games of the genre.  Heck I still play it today and it is just as fun now as it was then.


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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:04 pm 
 

sorry my fave was mercenary. now that rocked.


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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 12:09 pm 
 

Mouse Police wrote:But the BEST TRAVELLER GAME EVER was "The Mars Saga", by Electronic Arts, back on the Commodore 64..


http://www.gamebase64.com/game.php?id=4604&d=18&h=0


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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 2:01 pm 
 

I guess I will never really understand why people liked the Commodore 64 (cheaper and smaller I guess).  I thought the games for other systems, especially the Amiga, were much better looking.  The first game I played on the Amiga was Defender of the Crown.  Man now that was a super fun game.

And speaking of Traveller like space exploration, combat, and trading games....did anyone ever play Elite?


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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 3:35 pm 
 

Kingofpain89 wrote:I guess I will never really understand why people liked the Commodore 64 (cheaper and smaller I guess).


I think it really all depended when you entered into computer gaming.  My first was an Atari 2600, then Commodore 64, then an Amiga 500.  I still have a fondness for some of the 2600 stuff like River Raid or Asteroids or Berzerk.

But I spent years with the C64 and can't even begin to name all of the games I spent hours playing.  The Amiga is by far the superior computer and arguably the best of its age.  It had so much going for it except that it was late to market and IBM got a foothold.  We would be years ahead if Amiga got the push that the IBM PC brick did.

For most retro games, I try and find the Amiga version but there are so many C64 games that weren't converted for the Amiga.

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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 3:36 pm 
 

Actually, now that I think about it, the C64 probably ended up costing more than the Amiga ever did.

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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 3:39 pm 
 

the C64 was a great computer for its time. it was the first real big-market contender for the ZX spectrum, which had most of the market at the time.

so then, it was the dogs b's to have. i had a ZX81, then a spectrum, then a C64, then amiga, then a PC.

the amiga was a great machine and had many great games, but i loved each computer in its own way, for stuff it had at the time.

and yes, mars is right, if the amiga got a chance at the market that IBM had, we would be miles ahead of things.

Al


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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:04 pm 
 

The C64 was quite a bit before the Amiga wasn't it? Its sound chip blew everything else away at the time. If you wanted rocking sound and shock me graphics it had to be the C64 (Monty on the Run? Wow! That tune still plays in my head.) It was a masterpiece ahead of its time. It's still amazing what the coders could pack into 64K (48K usable I think). The Amiga eventually got wasted by the Atari, as a games machine in the UK market at least. 'Course I never had any of these. I went down the Dragon 32 / CPC464 route because I'm a masochistic rebel.

I played out the first Megatraveller game on the CPC464, it was okay. By then most computer games were pretty much yawn material. I look on the shelves today and think, "Nice graphics but, played it in 1980, played it in 1980, played it in 82...

  

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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:44 pm 
 

dan: correct. a long time before.

monty on the run - yes classic.

one of my first C64 games, arcadia - took all of 18 minutes to load :D

i also liked bruce lee, way of the exploding fist, hovver bovver and theatre europe

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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 5:55 pm 
 

killjoy32 wrote:dan: correct. a long time before.

monty on the run - yes classic.

one of my first C64 games, arcadia - took all of 18 minutes to load :D

i also liked bruce lee, way of the exploding fist, hovver bovver and theatre europe

Al


Commodore 64 was introduced in '82.  Amiga 1000 in '85.  The Amiga sold for about twice as much as the 64.

One of the reasons I despised the Commodore (and the VIC 20 predecessor) was because of the horrendously long load times of their games due to most of them at the time being on tape.

I cut my video game teeth on the Atari 2600 and the Magnavox Odyssey.  My Apple II+ was a breakthrough in graphics and sound compared to the other two.  I had a couple of friends with TRS-80's and VIC-20's and they were crapola compared to the Apple.  My grandfather got a Commodore 64 and I played some games on it but always seemed to enjoy the Apple II+ (and later the Apple IIe) better.  But for me the Amiga blew them all away.


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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 6:13 pm 
 

john: well of course the amiga blew them all away, it was a damn sight more powerful man!


that said though, the 64 did have some great stuff for what it was.

another game, Paradroid. classic :)

then you had the C64, did you not have the connector thing for the tape that came out that allowed you to "crunch" all the games down to literally nothing? we did that with all our games.

we also had the twin device so we could tape to tape and record two things at once.

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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 6:58 pm 
 

I had the disk drives for my C64. The C64 blew the Apple II away in both sound and graphics. The Apple II was better for hackering though. Amiga wa the followup to the C64, but by the time it came out in 85, both the XT and AT from IBM were already on the market and Commodore was doomed.

  

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Post Posted: Sun Jun 01, 2008 9:33 pm 
 

killjoy32 wrote:another game, Paradroid. classic :)


Paradroid is a classic!  I played it a ton on the C64 and then bought Paradroid 90 for Amiga.  I played a lot of the Psygnosis games and Bitmap Bro's games on the Amiga: Blood Money, Killing Game Show, Speedball II (there is a new Speedball out now too), Chaos Engine, Nitro, etc.

It was all about the platform shooters with the parallex scrolling :)  Flood was another good one.

The Lucasfilm games also really stood out (Monkey Island series) because on the Amiga the music was awesome.  I remember going to a number of friends with their 286 or 386s and hearing these aweful noises from the onboard speaker - the C64 had better sound than that.

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Post Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 4:55 am 
 

Mars wrote:
Paradroid is a classic!  I played it a ton on the C64 and then bought Paradroid 90 for Amiga.  I played a lot of the Psygnosis games and Bitmap Bro's games on the Amiga: Blood Money, Killing Game Show, Speedball II (there is a new Speedball out now too), Chaos Engine, Nitro, etc.

It was all about the platform shooters with the parallex scrolling :)  Flood was another good one.

The Lucasfilm games also really stood out (Monkey Island series) because on the Amiga the music was awesome.  I remember going to a number of friends with their 286 or 386s and hearing these aweful noises from the onboard speaker - the C64 had better sound than that.


ahhhh speedball on the amiga. now THERE was a game. that was just the best game ever that.

we borrowed an amiga off a family relative some months ago (was in great condition too) with a batch of games, and was so pleased that speedball was there.

my daughter loved the crowd noises in it, especially the immortal "ice cream, ice cream". she thought that was real funny.

Psygnosis...my mate mike waterworth used to work for them doing gfx...you can actually spot his name on the credits of some of their games.

Al


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:24 am 
 

Kingofpain89 wrote:And speaking of Traveller like space exploration, combat, and trading games....did anyone ever play Elite?


Ah, one of my all time favorites!  :)  (I played it on my C-64 back in the day.)  Yeah, that one definitely had the Traveller-feel to it.  ;)  LOVED IT!  It was also a marvel of programming ability.  I even have Elite TNK loaded on my Windows XP computer to play whenever I get an itch to go old-school.  ;)

Oh... and another big thumbs-up for Paradroid!  :)  A true C-64 classic!  :D  Oh... and don't leave out Impossible Mission!  ;)

~Kat  ^_^

  

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Post Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:31 am 
 

Let's see... order of computer-like things I had:

Coleco Vision.

Intellivision.

TRS80.

Tandy 100 - yes, a Tandy.

Atari 2600.

Apple II.

Commodore 64.

Sega.

Nintendo Entertainment System (I returned the Sega to swap for the NES because NES had more games and they were rentable.)

Commodore 128.

PC (a 286 with 4 MB of RAM, running DOS 2.0).


Out of all of these - the C64 saw the most use.


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Post Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2008 11:34 am 
 

serleran wrote:Commodore 128.


Heh.  The C128.  Had one (still have it, in fact), and aside from a word processing program, I think it was only ever used in 64-mode. :lol:


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