T

he video started off with an explanation of the new Commodore 64 display setup. This was possible thanks to a device I purchased in 2017 called the Diamond HD GameCaster. It contains the ability to capture input from the Commodore 64 that with the help of RCA cables allows you to run a miniaturized version of the C64 on the Windows desktop using video capture software.

In this demonstration series I had the game Pole Position on display for a short interval of time. Once again that inner excitement dominated my inner child and I couldn’t wait to show off this classic game. Pole Position was developed around 1984 for the Commodore 64, but was spawned somewhere in the early 70’s on a console unit called the Atari 2600. The game became so popular in the arcades that occupied store fronts in that era. It even echoed out words with an audio chip that declared “Prepare to qualify.”

Since I had my Commodore 64 system running in the background, I swapped out the floppy disk for Pole Position and replaced it with Superman the game. It was created likely a year later for the C64, but didn’t offer exactly the same form of entertainment. Probably the most enjoyable part of the game, was watching the animated title screen that introduced the game with the title of Superman. Soon after a graphic appeared on the screen in a flying motion, which was the fictional character, Superman himself. He waved for a few seconds then quickly soared off to the right of the screen until he could be seen no more.

After this faded from view, the screen suddenly materialized by forming pixels to create an image of Superman as recognized in appearance in the comic books. This is actually a graphic mode that took advantage of some multicolor displays for the Commodore 64 to delight us with a nice picture. The screenshot can be seen here. The next image that remateralized over the Superman setting, was the enemy known as Dark Seid. Each session was followed by a small fanfare.

The playability of the game was fair at best. You controlled your Superman character sprite by moving him around in a boxed area that is supposed to depict a city. You can shoot your laser eyes at Dark Seid, obtaining a count on your score and the enemy could retaliate with his own beams as well. This carried on relentlessly until you either shut off the game or depleted Dark Seid’s energy that eventually forced him into defeat for the second battle scene to load. Unfortunately, the next screen may have had a little more definition on the graphics, but the game playability seemed to plummet even further as you were faced with endless amounts of zapped each other’s strength.  Also you have civilians running away to escape while you touch them and transport them to a safe area to build the game score.

Author’s Post Mumble

Well there really wasn’t much to be learned from this session, other than seeing the games that were on display. On my part, this was to get a feel for using the OBS Studio tool so I could get better at transitioning between screens in such. This article was not meant to bore you, but rather to invite you to the path I was treading as I began to grow a small Twitch.tv stream for the time being. Twitch.tv takes a long time to really gather a following, so I feel short of reaching any surmountable goal since I surrendered defeat much later, after Twitch kept deleting my videos and had no backups to recover from. That was a hard lesson to learn. Ultimately though, it was still fun using the tool, casting a few live streams, engaging with a small audience, while sharing simple little tricks and games I had in my collection.