Party of One: The Jeff Gerstmann Home Game: C64

Those Battle Through Time bombs sound like they were straight outta Two Tigers. Ditto for the way the planes fall.

Me then: I have no idea how to play these games or what the point is, this is pretty cool

Me now: I have no idea how to play these games or what the point is, this is the worst experience of my life.

@jamesdane said:

These streams are among my favorite content

Eh, a lot of times, the biggest problem with these is Jeff can't remember how to play, or how parts of the game work. I was stunned he was so bad at Impossible Mission, and then on Beach Head, you have to aim at the dude in the middle once he shows up, you can't keep shooting at the dude on the side at all, you can go back to him once you kill the guy in the middle with the grenade. Being on an emulator doesn't help either.

It's too bad, because I think a series where they did a little prep, or where Jeff explained the games while someone else played them, could be amazing. Not that some old 8-bit computer games weren't crazy hard, or had complicated nonsensical systems.

Yay, Neuromancer.. Boy, it's been a while.

A breakdancing game where a character named D-Dog dances across the street to breakdance? This proves that no matter what kind of creature it is and what it's doing, anything named D-Dog will be the best.

Impossible Mission is my favorite game of all time. I am sure I spent hundreds of hours playing it as a kid, learning how to (sometimes) effectively clear every room (edit: you also have to learn the possible robot behaviours! There are about a half dozen different attributes the robots can have, in combination with each other; quickly determining what you are up against, or taking chances on what you think they might do, is a huge part of the game). It takes that kind of time to make the game not-impossible - I remember only finishing the game once in my childhood but now it's a bit like riding a bike and there's some muscle memory of that game permanently stored in my hindbrain.

I now play Impossible Mission through about once every 6-18 months - it takes about 30 mins if all goes well, but I still sometimes lose since sometimes a run just goes bad or you're in a bad headspace.

I'm going to play it through from start to finish for Extra Life in November (along with a bunch of other C64 games I remember from my childhood, and of course a bunch of other stuff) and I cannot wait!

@jeff please let me know if you'd like a primer on how to play Impossible Mission. It can be really tough if you don't have tons of experience with it, have poured over the manual for hours and hours as a kid, etc, etc. There are a lot of things you won't know to look out for or do, because it was all in the manual or has to be learned through lots and lots of play time.

I'd be happy to help out if you're game for some tips. Alternatively - as I mentioned in my message above, I'll be streaming a complete play through of Impossible Mission on Nov 5th for Extra Life and plan to talk a fair bit about the game's ins and outs.

Airborne Ranger looks like it could be a metal gear game.

Love to see more Commodore love on the site

An oddly large proportion of that was top music.

OMG Airborne Ranger, so many good memories. I must've played that game for ages.

Impossible Mission was my white whale when I was very young - I first encountered it at like age 6-7 and thought I'd never, ever beat it. When time ran out, the bad guy laughs at you and the screen shakes, first video game jump scare that ever terrified me.

I discovered the DS version in '07. Even loading it up 20 years later I was nervous! Then I proceeded to blaze through it on my first try. One of my most satisfying finishes of all time.

I would LOVE a full playthrough of Neuromancer. I just read the book in the last year and what I've seen of the game looks great, but I know, starting out fresh, that I'd never go through the game myself.

This is the song on the Neuromancer: Devo - some things never change

Awesome, I love this stuff, thanks Jeff.

Accidental 2 player might be because port 1 makes one direction of the joystick input the number 2.

Let's see what should you play... Katakis because it's the Giana Sisters to R-Type (hit space to detach force pod). Morpheus because it's strange (a shmup where you fly a gigantic ship?). Wizball because wat (has a Gradius powerup system that's triggered by shaking the stick left and right). Cybernoid of course. IO - Into Oblivion because it's probably the fastest C64 game. The Train because it was my introduction to train simulators :P. Eliminator was fun too.

I had a very catchy song stuck today inside of my head I spent hours trying to figure out what it was. I listened to dozens of tracks in winamp and went to youtube looking for this mysterious song

only to realize it was the C64 dance game

that track is fire (one syllable)

Yo, this first game's music is mah JAM.

Oh neat, it's like Prince of Persia, this guy's animations in the 2nd game.

"IIIII'm hiiiiiuht" is so entering my lexicon.

Ocean: always great music, always crappy gameplay.

I love these streams, because I've never seen any of these games before and would never be able to see them played by my own means. These are always the most fascinating videos to watch.