'Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, the breadbins were whirring, without even a mouse. - Unknown It's the Christmas eve Floppy Friday! In this episode we discover a few interesting – and largely unheard or, I believe – games, as well as a couple we've played in prior episodes. I was really surprised/impressed with the Italian motorbike game we started off playing, if nothing else that for the progress bar while loading. Could this be the first example of a game having such a feature? (I'd be very happy to hear it's not the case, of…

Well, we made it to episode 60! Just four more to go after today's episode. Today we ended up playing Eagle Empire – a clone of the class arcade game, Phoenix – and then we played an old favourite again: last time it was called Pogo, while this time it went by its more usual name of Nebulus. Then we played a somewhat disappointing Petch before failing to load Dam Busters and finishing up by actually playing the rather good Knight Games.     Here's the cover art for this week's episode: Here's the review for Knight Games from Zzap!…

In this week's episode we play five more fun (or less fun) Commodore 64 games, loaded from floppy diskettes. We start with a pro wrestling game called Rock 'n' Wrestle, followed by a couple of platform games: Miner 2049er and Mr. Do's Castle. We then played Eddie Kidd Jump Challenge and wrapped up with an educational game called Quick Thinking! Robot Tables.     Here's some cover art from this episode: Here's a review of Rock 'n' Wrestle from issue 12 of Zzap! 64 magazine: And one last thing… here's the music video for a song called Computer Games by the…

I almost thought today's episode wasn't going to happen. I started checking the directory listings for a few floppies, and suddenly things started to fail. I couldn't read any at all, and ended up trying a series of combinations of different computers, floppy drives and cables, all with similar (bad) results. I went back to cleaning the drive heads (once again – this was the first thing I tried) and eventually things started to work in time for me to record the episode. Totally surreal! I can only blame those nasty gremlins who clearly enjoy haunting 1980s equipment. Anyway, here…

In this week's episode we mostly played Summer Games II. It's not exactly how I expected things to turn out, but there you go. It's also a game I'd already played back in Floppy Friday #32 – I knew it looked familiar! (sigh) – but I chose a different set of disciplines to be awful at. Apart from the javelin, as I seem to love failing at that one. I'm pretty sure I fluffed selecting nationalities in exactly the same way, too, but hey. We did get a little time to play a couple of other games – Commando Libya…

In this week's episode we play 4 games on a Commodore 64, loaded from 5 1/4" floppy disk. We started with a game I had high hopes for – coming from Gremlin Graphics, and being based on a series of "fighting fantasy" gamebooks (although not the Steve Jackson & Ian Livingston ones, it seems) – called Blood Valley. We then played Pac-Land, an interesting game called ATF (Advanced Tactical Fighter) and then Thrust II.     Here's the cover art for this week's selection: The folks at Zzap! 64 magazine loathed Blood Valley ... … and tolerated Thrust II: As…

In this week's episode we look at 5 more Commodore 64 games loaded from floppy disk. Things kick off with Shadow Dancer, which seems like a very playable side-scrolling fighting game. We then try a logic/puzzle game called Sliding Skill before loading a German-language steam engine simulator (how cool is that?) called Dampfmaschine. We then play a game called Billiards or Pool (not sure which, to be honest) and then wrap up with a fun little game called Lazy Jones.     Here's the cover art I could find for this week's episode – I couldn't find anything but screengrabs…

In this week's episode we play five more games loaded from a single floppy onto a Commodore 64. This week's selection was actually really interesting, I found: we started with an action adventure called Olli & Lissa: The Ghost of Shilmore Castle, part of a series that apparently did quite well when released as budget titles. From there we loaded a game called Toddler, which I believe was also released as The Equalizer (I guess it sounds more compelling… it's certainly a much more 80s name!). We loaded a Breakout clone called Krakout, which had fun floating faces. Next was…

In this week's episode we start with a few obscure German games (no offence to my German friends – this is a snap judgment based on a few web searches), called Katz und Maus and then Rudi the Rat, before finding a floppy with some more interesting fare: River Raid, Sub Hunt and Raid over Moscow. As usual my ability to play these various games was highly variable, but hopefully you'll get a sense of – and perhaps even some nostalgia from seeing – how they play.     Along the way we opted not to load Batman (seen in…

In this week's episode we once again play some more games on a Commodore 64 that we find on random floppies. We start with a game I remembered we hadn't had time to try last week, which turned out to be International Karate. As the directory listing stated "Seite A" ("Side A" in German), I decided to flip the floppy and see what was on Side B. Well, it had some real crackers (mostly cracked crackers, in fact) such as Enduro Racer, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Yie Ar Kung-Fu II and Tetris. A fun episode! Here's the cover art for this…