5 ms·

Limbo – Commodore 64 [video]

63 points by bane 8y ago

drcode 8y ago
Nice, I like how it saves the showier effects until later in the game, really helps build the intensity.
graedus 8y ago
I was about to remark that it reminded me of the 2016 indie game Inside. According to Wikipedia, "[Inside] is the spiritual successor to Playdead's 2010 game Limbo."
- aarpmcgee 8y ago
  Limbo was amazing and worth every penny, but Inside improved on pretty much every aspect of it. I'm a huge fan of both.
  - rado 8y ago
    “Inside” is easily my GOTY 2016, it's phenomenal and the level of polish puts most AAA titles to shame. Then there is that ending... wow.
    - Joe-Z 8y ago
      Last year I played "Little Nightmares". It reminded me very much of Limbo (also loved that!). Maybe you'd be interested in checking it out if you haven't already. It's weird, because I've played through Limbo several times now and I never even heard of Inside, if it wasn't for a friend of mine who mentioned it when we played Little Nightmares together. Thanks for the reminder!
thinkingkong 8y ago
If this is indeed a C64 version thats so impressive. It really goes to show how much you can do within the constraints of a machine at any given time. I wonder what we’re totally overlooking today that might be possible with current tech.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- kawsper 8y ago
  What about a 3D engine using Ncurses that can run in your terminal? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgvLfR2zG3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgvLfR2zG3g
  - peterkelly 8y ago
    Reminds me of Quake II in text mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA And Doom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s15eJ9WMfVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s15eJ9WMfVg
- vidarh 8y ago
  It's actually very understated for a C64 game. The smooth scrolling is easy (hardware support coupled with custom character means you're effectively operating on a tiled display where the tiles only need to be moved every few frames). The parallax (e.g. trees) and enemies requires just some sprites to do smoothly, and tall and narrow is ideal for the sprites (you can manipulate the sprite registers with the raster interrupt to make them arbitrary tall; creating wider sprites is the hard bit) I think on the contrary this is a type of game that was hard to envision at the time because it doesn't really push the limits of what the machine can do. It's an aesthetic for a game that did not seem appealing because people were still predominantly focused on stretching the machine to its limits. If you look at C64 games of the era, there was a race to to cram as big enemies as possible and as many enemies as possible onto each screen, and using as much colour as possible. The evolution year by year was staggering, and few people at the time would "go back" to something simple. The crazy thing is I suspect this would have been slaughtered in reviews of the time for that reason. A lot of these type of games are possible for these platforms now because we're no longer stuck in a race for fitting as many effects as possible in. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Hunt
  - jungler 8y ago
rado 8y ago
Looks like a great port, thanks for sharing!
cronix 8y ago
It's very smooth, like Prince of Persia was on the C64. That games graphics/smooth animation really amazed me back then (mid 80s) and was unlike anything else at the time, really.
- 83457 8y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping Rotoscoping is the source of smooth animation in a number of games around this time, though I don't believe Limbo uses it
- tinus_hn 8y ago
  The Commodore version of Prince of Persia is a fan made conversion from 2011.
wild_preference 8y ago
If you're going to bother recording a video of something, why not spend the extra 5 minutes playing through it first so that you're sparing the audience of watching you figure out even the most basic mechanics? I could see them second-guess if it was even possible to interact with that vine. And then at 3:00 I'm pretty sure they put the controller down to google what to do.
- SyneRyder 8y ago
  I liked that aspect of the video. It gave me some time to think about how I'd solve the puzzles myself while I was watching. Admittedly I figured out the vine before they did, but I was slightly behind them in solving the rest. I would have preferred if the audio was in both speakers, though. It was a bit irritating listening via headphones and only having audio in the left channel.

63 points by bane 8y ago

Nice, I like how it saves the showier effects until later in the game, really helps build the intensity.

I was about to remark that it reminded me of the 2016 indie game Inside. According to Wikipedia, "[Inside] is the spiritual successor to Playdead's 2010 game Limbo."

aarpmcgee 8y ago
Limbo was amazing and worth every penny, but Inside improved on pretty much every aspect of it. I'm a huge fan of both.
- rado 8y ago
  “Inside” is easily my GOTY 2016, it's phenomenal and the level of polish puts most AAA titles to shame. Then there is that ending... wow.
  - Joe-Z 8y ago
    Last year I played "Little Nightmares". It reminded me very much of Limbo (also loved that!). Maybe you'd be interested in checking it out if you haven't already. It's weird, because I've played through Limbo several times now and I never even heard of Inside, if it wasn't for a friend of mine who mentioned it when we played Little Nightmares together. Thanks for the reminder!

thinkingkong 8y ago

If this is indeed a C64 version thats so impressive. It really goes to show how much you can do within the constraints of a machine at any given time. I wonder what we’re totally overlooking today that might be possible with current tech.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
kawsper 8y ago
What about a 3D engine using Ncurses that can run in your terminal? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgvLfR2zG3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgvLfR2zG3g
- peterkelly 8y ago
  Reminds me of Quake II in text mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRPoS2WDJA And Doom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s15eJ9WMfVg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s15eJ9WMfVg
vidarh 8y ago
It's actually very understated for a C64 game. The smooth scrolling is easy (hardware support coupled with custom character means you're effectively operating on a tiled display where the tiles only need to be moved every few frames). The parallax (e.g. trees) and enemies requires just some sprites to do smoothly, and tall and narrow is ideal for the sprites (you can manipulate the sprite registers with the raster interrupt to make them arbitrary tall; creating wider sprites is the hard bit) I think on the contrary this is a type of game that was hard to envision at the time because it doesn't really push the limits of what the machine can do. It's an aesthetic for a game that did not seem appealing because people were still predominantly focused on stretching the machine to its limits. If you look at C64 games of the era, there was a race to to cram as big enemies as possible and as many enemies as possible onto each screen, and using as much colour as possible. The evolution year by year was staggering, and few people at the time would "go back" to something simple. The crazy thing is I suspect this would have been slaughtered in reviews of the time for that reason. A lot of these type of games are possible for these platforms now because we're no longer stuck in a race for fitting as many effects as possible in. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungle_Hunt
- jungler 8y ago

rado 8y ago

Looks like a great port, thanks for sharing!

cronix 8y ago

It's very smooth, like Prince of Persia was on the C64. That games graphics/smooth animation really amazed me back then (mid 80s) and was unlike anything else at the time, really.

83457 8y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping Rotoscoping is the source of smooth animation in a number of games around this time, though I don't believe Limbo uses it
tinus_hn 8y ago
The Commodore version of Prince of Persia is a fan made conversion from 2011.

wild_preference 8y ago

If you're going to bother recording a video of something, why not spend the extra 5 minutes playing through it first so that you're sparing the audience of watching you figure out even the most basic mechanics? I could see them second-guess if it was even possible to interact with that vine. And then at 3:00 I'm pretty sure they put the controller down to google what to do.

SyneRyder 8y ago
I liked that aspect of the video. It gave me some time to think about how I'd solve the puzzles myself while I was watching. Admittedly I figured out the vine before they did, but I was slightly behind them in solving the rest. I would have preferred if the audio was in both speakers, though. It was a bit irritating listening via headphones and only having audio in the left channel.