Should Have Stayed in the Arcade: 5 Commodore 64 Arcade Port Fails

When the Commodore 64 was still being produced, arcade boards were much more advanced. This made bringing popular, current arcade games home to the 8-bit home system a challenge at the best of times. Even though concessions would be made to bring them home successfully, many versions were often good in their own right. But sometimes the stars didn’t align, and an arcade port was less than stellar. Sometimes, they downright sucked. You might find a redeeming quality in these conversions, but here are five C64 arcade ports that should have stayed in the arcade.

Pit-Fighter

Now, the question you should be asking is not “Why was this port bad?”. You should be asking, “Why did Domark feel the need to bring this subpar arcade fighter home in the first place?”. Atari’s Pit-Fighter was a one-on-one fighting game released just before Street Fighter II changed fighting games forever. Its claim to fame was the use of digitized actors for the fighters (and background characters), one of the first fighting games to do this, a full 2 years before Mortal Kombat burst onto the scene. While the game received good marks at launch and was popular, it was more due to a lack of competition than anything else. Glitchy movements and janky gameplay marred the experience over the long term.

This makes it all the more curious why Domark thought it was a good idea to bring the game to systems that couldn’t hope to meet the low bar set by the arcade. The Commodore 64’s 4-color sprites were a pale imitation of the full color digitized characters of the original. Combined with the 2-color backgrounds, the entire presentation was lackluster. Once you remove the scaling sprites and game field, you are left with a game that barely resembles its arcade ancestor. The one saving grace here is JCH’s music, which is bouncy and fun to listen to. Please take my advice: find a recording of the SID music and leave this disaster in the bin where it belongs.

Rolling Thunder

Namco’s Rolling Thunder was the perfect game to play when you wanted to immerse yourself in some ’70s spy action. You play as Albatros, a member of the World Crime Police Organization’s “Rolling Thunder” spy unit. You are tasked with rescuing a female agent from the evil clutches of the secret society of Geldra. In true run-and-gun fashion, you make your way through the levels, shooting at the various henchmen being sent to stop you. Duck into doors to evade enemies and pick up more powerful weapons, jumping between levels to pass obstacles and get the drop on the baddies.

Coming out the door, Rolling Thunder for the Commodore 64 was hampered by being developed by the infamous Tiertex, known for legendarily bad arcade ports on every platform they touched. This port suffers from bland graphics, truly irritating music, practically non-existent sound effects, and an extreme lack of the fun that the original exuded. While there is no real slowdown from any taxing of the hardware, the game still plays slowly. Your weapon, which needs to be responsive and accurate, is neither, which is unfortunate, because, unlike the original game, every enemy is shooting back at you. When you try to jump to another level, you are further hampered by the fact that the C64 has a single action button, forcing you to use a combination of the button and joystick moves to pull the jumps off. Fortunately, the controls themselves, cumbersome as they may be, are responsive. The original variety of henchmen has been reduced to a handful of palette-swapped sprites, and the original’s colorful, detailed backgrounds are reduced to a bare minimum here. It’s not fun to look at, listen to, or play. Three strikes and you’re out, Tiertex.

After Burner (UK Version)

The late ’80s saw the release of some of Sega’s most iconic arcade games. Games like Out Run, Space Harrier, and Galaxy Force looked stunning, sounded terrific, and played like a dream. One of the most popular of the “Super Scaler” games was After Burner (slightly updated a couple of months later and released as After Burner II). This was an on-rails shooter where you flew an F-14 Tomcat, firing your cannon and missiles at swarms of enemy planes, all while dodging incoming missiles and enemies sneaking up on you from behind. The smooth scaling graphics of the Sega X Board served the pseudo-3D perspective well, providing exciting action at breakneck speeds. Combined with a killer soundtrack, booming sound effects, and vocal samples that are instantly recognizable, Sega had a game that ate quarters like Pac-Man could have only dreamed of.

Given the original’s heavy reliance on scaling graphics, the 8-bit micros had little chance of replicating it at home. Two different companies gave it a try. Mindscape was responsible for the US version. And while it is by no means good, they did a passable job at replicating the feel of the original game, even if the graphics and sound left something to be desired. But Activision’s attempt for the UK market failed in nearly every way imaginable. The play area has inexplicably been shrunk to a fraction of the screen by filling both the top and bottom with the HUD. If this were done to make the gameplay smoother, it might have been excusable. But that’s not the case here. The “scaling” graphics of the original have been replaced with jumpy objects that wouldn’t go amiss in a Tiger LCD game. Enemy planes show up in the distance, and then, with no warning, they jump near enough to crash into you. Of course, their missiles behave in the same manner, which makes getting shot down almost guaranteed. Combined with the extremely janky movement of your jet, you’ll be hard-pressed to do anything that isn’t accomplished through pure luck. The music is passable, which is good, because that’s all you’re going to hear in this version. No guns, no explosions, certainly no “LOCK!” being screamed at you constantly. Please pick up a copy of Activision’s Thunder Blade conversion or EA’s Sky Fox. Give After Burner a wide berth and steer clear.

Hard Drivin’

Often, arcade games were as much about the experience of playing them in the arcade as about the game itself. Developers could take a simple concept, say, racing around a single track, and, using advanced features, turn it into a memorable encounter. Such was the claim to fame of Atari’s Hard Drivin’. This was one of the first driving games to use 3D polygon graphics for the driving environment. Combined with a sit-down cabinet that utilized haptic feedback for the steering wheel, it was an extremely impressive driving experience that only an arcade could provide. The game has you racing around a stunt track, hitting jumps, taking high-speed corners, and even a loop-the-loop, trying to qualify to race against the computer. You conveniently forget that you’ve only a single track to race on, because the event, created by the combination of state-of-the-art graphics and impressive hardware, is second to none.

Once again, poor Domark is tasked with bringing a unique arcade experience home to the 8-bit micros. This was never going to go over well on systems that weren’t designed to do filled polygons at more than a couple of frames per second, much less the considerably higher frame rates of the arcade original. Further hampering the enjoyment of the Commodore 64 conversion was the fact that the graphics were rendered in monochrome, making it look more like a ZX Spectrum port. While this likely raised the frame rate, which rarely exceeds 5 fps, it isn’t enough to make the game playable. Add to that the fact that the draw distance doesn’t give you time to react to anything that appears in the road ahead of you, and you have an absolute disaster of a port. The fact that this game was only ever available in a bundle with other, marginally better racing games at least saved those unlucky enough to be saddled with it the embarrassment of paying full price for just this game.

Double Dragon

Before SNK and Capcom deluged the arcade with side-scrolling beat ’em ups such as Final Fight and Ninja Combat, developer Technōs Japan unleashed the granddaddy of side-scrolling brawlers on the public with the release of Double Dragon. The setup is classic ’70s brawler movie kitsch: your girlfriend has been kidnapped, and you (and maybe a friend) need to kick and punch your way through waves of enemies to rescue her. Technōs did an excellent job of developing a fighting system with a wide range of moves, from headbutts and body slams to simple kicks and punches. The wide variety of enemies will also often come equipped with weapons that can be liberated or found lying on the floor and used against them. Great sound and excellent graphics round out a classic package that spawned several sequels, an animated series, and a legendarily bad movie adaptation.

While home conversions for the NES and Atari Lynx faired quite well, the Commodore 64 port is just as bad as the movie adaptation. You are presented with an impressive SID rendition of the theme music when you load the game. Unfortunately, this is the extent of the game’s music. And the sound effects that do exist in the rest of the game are nothing to write home about. But this is far from the worst sins this game commits. The bevy of brawler moves your protagonist was capable of in the arcade original has been decreased to a punch, a kick, a jump, and an ineffective headbutt. And pulling anything but a simple punch is further hampered by the fact that you have to use awkward combinations of the single button and joystick moves to do anything else. The graphics are bland. While the backgrounds offer some detail and variety, any background interactivity, such as ladders and conveyor belts, is entirely missing here. The wide array of enemies had been reduced to a handful of palette-swapped dullards. The character graphics also include a well-known glitch: they are composed of two stacked sprites, with a line of missing pixels between them, making them appear bifurcated at the waist. I viewed this one with nostalgia-tinted glasses, as it was the first brawler I had ever played. Looking back at it with a critical eye, I can see how past me was led astray. If you must brawl on your C64, pick up a copy of Target Renegade or Bruce Lee, and let Double Dragon fade to black.