My favourite Commodore 64 and Amiga games

Leaderboard Golf (Commodore 64)

An amazing and addictive golf simulation. Even playing this game today is very enjoyable.

Not only do you need to select an appropriate club and aim, but there is wind to factor for, and if your timing is not right you may hook or slice your shot. Or sometimes you may want to choose to hook or slice.

Once on the green, putting involved carefully controlling your speed and aim to counter any slope.

You can play this game online using the amazing online C64 emulator at c64online.com.

This awesome website has an online C64 emulator that allows you to play many C64 games on your desktop or mobile. You can even write a BASIC program.

Test Drive (Commodore 64)

There is few versions of Test Drive but the one I recall playing the most is the first one, where you are driving up a mountainous road.

Unlike earlier driving games, Test Drive was much more realistic.

Starglider 2 (Amiga)

I don't remember what the objective of this game was but it is a fascinating game where you could visit and explore many solar systems and planets.

You could find all sorts of strange and interesting machines and creatures. As you got close, you could hear whatever sound they made. Some would move on their own or when you got close. You could explore tunnels on some planets and capture objects with a net.

Virus (Amiga)

At the time, there was nothing like this game. You fly some sort of space craft in this amazingly rendered 3D landscape, and the craft shoots out little dots as exhaust.

I have no idea what the objective of this game was, it was just visually interesting.

F/A18 Interceptor (Amiga)

Like most of my favourite games, I had not interest in completing the actual objectives of F/A18 Interceptor. It was just enjoyable to explore San Francisco, fly under the Golden Gate Bridge, and land on an aircraft carrier.

Microprose Golf (Amiga)

I'm not a golf enthusiast, despite there being two golf games in my list of favourite games.

When you take a shot in Microprose Golf, you follow the ball flying through the air in 3D until it lands, which makes for another visually interesting game.

There is plenty of ways to set up your shot, including feet placement and tee height. You can also look ahead to see what the green looks like.

There is also a nice pre and post-shot map that shows how your shot went.

Capone (Amiga)

A fun shooting game that you could even play with a light gun. Remember them?

Mercenary (C64)

Another visually interesting and enjoyable space exploration game.

The wireframe graphics may look simple today, but at the time there was nothing like Mercenary.

And more...

I also remember enjoying International Soccer (or was it Microprose Soccer) on the C64 and Way of the Exploding Fist, although I was never good at it.

I also recall Mindshadow, Bruce Lee, Spy Hunter, Gridrunner, School Daze, Raid over Moscow, Super Huey, Rambo: First Blood, Tour De France, Ghostbusters, The Last V8 and Impossible Mission. And of course, the various versions of Summer Games and Winter Games.

At some point I got the book Commodore 64: Games Book. It contains BASIC code for over 30 games that you can type in. I think I went through all of them. Notable games are Flight Simulator (it's actually pretty bad), North Sea Copter and Moon Buggy. They are pretty simple but amazing what can be achieved in a few pages of code.