for a long time as a kid my father would run a Christmas music program every Christmas morning, the John Henry Christmas carols, he died when I was 17 and didn't have a working c64 to carry on tradition, the audio quality in this plug and play is flawless, emulators crackled and pop and sounded terrible, but this is perfect, can't wait to restart the old tradition again
Wow dude i had that on my c64 when was really young and played it a lot in december. Even had a wierd childhood nightmare where the stuffed teddy bear by the tree tried to eat me. Danm brings back memories. Loved that computer.
It's great to hear you talk about this MJR. I feel that people who used the C64 originally have a much better perspective on what improvements this new product offers and what users should expect. Another great video as always! :)
@@MetalJesusRocks and whoever else may be interested, Watch "35 Year-Old C(ommodore)-64 Easter Egg Hidden On Vinyl" ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-6_CZpFqvDQo.html This media cross-over production needs to come back. 👍
I just got one of these too, but haven't taken it out of the box yet because I've been too busy. I hope to try it out soon and give my opinion on the new USA version.
nEXUS Not in all caes BETTER GRAPHICS does not = better gameplay Wizball was far better a game on the C64, and don't even get me started on that half-assed Amiga port of Outrun
Amiga emulation is at a good standard these days; as long as there's minimal lag I'd certainly hook an Amiga Mini up. Hopefully it would use standard USB mice and keyboards. Wings of Fury! Carrier Command! Virus! Barbarian (with Arnie samples)!
@@lordevyl8317 Outrun was bad on the C64 too, but Turbo Outrun was one of the best racing games on C64. The only problem was the biblical loading time between levels (on cassette), and the fact that the game started right away without asking you to press fire! So if you got distracted during loading you were guaranteed to lose a credit.
in Europe we rarely used floppy disks, they were too expensive.. we used cassettes and a game load in 3-5 MINUTES - it makes me laugh every time when US people cry for ten seconds of loading from a cd, you don't know what pain is
Thanks for C64 memories.. Ghostbusters (who you gonna call :-) ) .. The Great Escape.. Pirates (many hours sailing.. fencing).. Pool of Radiance.. Secret of Silver Blades.. Spy vs Spy..
That game was cruel. I launched the girls into space one time and the game wouldn't tell you hit a dead end, just walked around trying everything getting frustrated while Ron Gilbert laughs at you
"Great vid bro!" Let's be honest here. It's not a great video. Nothing about the bad joystick that misses microswitches, nothing about the overall poor build quality. I got it for like 35 bucks and i still feel cheated.
Stay a while, MJR! Stay forever! This was my first gaming system when I was a kid. So many great games. Pool of Radiance, Uridium, Montezumas Revenge, Henry´s House, Great Giana Sisters, Wonder Boy, Zorro, Monty on the Run, Yie Ar Kung Fu, Fist 2, The Last Ninja etc. Love this system! In the end of Who Dares Wins 2 there is a phone number to the creator. We called him several times. I bet he changed his number eventually... :-)
The C64 was my 2nd console after the Atari 2600. I got it for my 9th birthday back in 88. The C64 games I remember playing the most are Montezuma's revenge (Best) Cave Fighter (2nd Best) The Human Race (Great 1st level music, not a great game but played it a lot) Chiller Dizzy Treasure Island Dizzy Gothik Kik-Start Boulder Dash Miner 2049er
Metagalactic Llama Yeah, I agree. Unless I spot a new release game, I usually only use the CSDB for demos, new SIDs and graphics. I was just offering a suggestion as the site is chock full of fixed "roms"
I love you Metal Jesus! You brought the little me back out :) My dad and 9 year older brother brought this home to me at the age of 3 and I never put this down.
I don't think it was actually an obscure title back then. It was also on Atari 8-bit - and was slated to be ported to the 5200 - and the Colecovision...
It's amazing to know that the C64 demoscene never stopped en kept improving for 30+ years. I think it tells something about what kind of fun machine it is.....
Maruko Chan 99 my biggest nostalgia for c64 is when you run your hand over the vents on the top of the old disk drive after turning it on and got that screeching sound lol
I grew up with C64. I owe a lot to this system, I learned how to program computers with it at age 12. I ended up going on to being a software engineer, but I learned the foundation of writing code on the C64 early 1980s I love this system. Thanks for the video, it brought back a lot of memories.
I never had a C64 myself but I did play it at some friend's houses in the 80s. My favorite C64 games: Turrican 1 & 2, Giana Sisters, Rally Speedway, Pitstop 2, International Soccer, Bubble Bobble, Zack McKracken, Maniac Mansion, Summer Games, Winter Games, Space Taxi, R-Type, ...
Excellent review! The selection of games might have been driven by licensing, but I suspect it had more to do with the fact that these games required minimal keyboard input and were limited to a single disk. To include games that are keyboard-heavy or multiple disks would mean adding complexity that would not be as enjoyable. I hope that this version of the C64 Mini is a commercial success for the makers so that they have incentive to produce a "full size" version with working keyboard. At the very least, I hope that they release a fullsized USB Commodore keyboard attachment for the Mini.
Jason: I'm sure you're aware by now that the same company "Retro Games" has finally released their full-size C64 with a perfect full-size keyboard! It gives you the option to boot into either the games Carousel, or straight into C64 Basic, or even Vic 20!! Some of the built-in games have changed, and a couple of Vic 20 games are now included... I was very happy to see that they've now got the license for Llamasoft games, so we now have "Attack Of The Mutant Camels", "Gridrunner" (Vic 20), and "Pyschedelia" (Vic 20); Llamasoft were such a strange, chilled out developer!! :-D The new "The C64", as it's officialy called, has 4 USB ports, and a much-improved controller; the new one has micro-switches for the stick and fire buttons.....it feels great! The firmware supplied plays external USB-Stick games, although there is new firmware update too..... This system looks virtually identical in size, shape, colour and design to the original - no cartridge/tape/disk drive slots in the back, but there are now 4 USB ports instead. It just behaves like it's a Commodore 64..... even if you try typing in game programmes from the manuals/magazines! Not sure when the USA release date is, but make sure you're ready for it!! This will really hit you in the 'feels'... ;-)
Awesome I really have to get me one of these. Also I think one of the games that impressed me the most back in the day was Driller with it's 3D graphics, and the intro/loading screen with the 9 min long SID is just awesome.
Got one as a Christmas gift. Just put all the Ultima games (the ones that were on the C64) on there, as well as Montezuma's Revenge (one of my favorite early platform games) and a few others.
Around 8:00 I had NO idea Giana Sisters was a C64 game, I play the newest Giana sisters on my switch almost every week ! My dad brought a C64 home from work sometimes and I got to play it. I was born in 81 though so all I really remember is the winter games game and the wrestling game!!
My only real problem with the C64 Mini is that the Joystick is nowhere near the quality of a _real_ Competition Pro stick, which the look of it is based on. I'm kinda hoping someone will make and sell a proper version of a Comp Pro or even a TAC-2 stick for the Mini.
The thing is, the games on the device where hugely popular in Europe. A lot of them were never released outside of the EU The new firmware even includes a free version of Galencia which was only made last year. It won the Reset64 Magazine game of the year. A really good Galaga clone
Really? Galencia is included? I better get that new firmware version installed on mine then! As for the games on it being eurocentric that kind of makes sense. There were a ton of games released over here for the C64. It pretty much ruled the gaming stage on this side of the pond together with the ZX Spectrum until the 16 bit era arrived. The NES and its console competitors didn't get the same foothold as it did in the US.
Yeah, Nintendo never did well in the EU until the SNES came out, although the gameboy did pretty decent, but the handheld market is quite different from the console market
From what I hear. It was difficult to add more games because of licensing issues. Some games were close to impossible to track down license holders and I understand why they wouldn't risk getting sued if the license holder were to suddenly materialize and submit a claim. That's what I heard.
Awesome, thank you for this vid! I’m considering this console and it looks like I’m going to get it! I too enjoy the fact that you can upgrade with a firmware to play any other c64 title!
I'm happy to hear of the improvements. I might want to hold out for a version with a working keyboard only because the key layout on a C64 is... sliiiightly different than a modern keyboard you'd hook into the USB port. Still, I imagine the working keyboard would cause a serious jump in the price point what with having moving mechanical parts...
Fantastic video! :) Very cool you are on the FB group as well! There is just one thing I hope this thing gets updated about, left. And that would be that you can flip through disks without it resetting/autorunning, so that BASIC can be used as is, an you're practically using a real C64.
I know its been out some time now but I just wanted to say that i still enjoy playing my c64 mini today. Still looks cool and pleasing to look at. Long live the c64...
Thank you man! I used to play exact the same you did! Know them all. What I can remember I also loved some other titles like 'Thing on a spring' (best platform game I know) and I had lot's of fun with 'Rock 'n wrestle', IK+, Kickstart 2, etc.
I just got one for $10. It’s super cool takes me back. The only reason why I bought it was for the look , but then I found out it was really easy to put in games and it’s so much fun. Feeling like a kid again thanks for another great video. Keep it up.🤘😎
Update: I found the game its called Questron and I found it for the C-64. I need to know the name of a game I played a LOT. You were on an island and was to protect the towns where you can buy and sell item. You fought to protect the towns and went in to buy supplies or upgrades and sell what you got from fighting. In another town you buy items to get around the island better. But if you wanted to you can rob the towns fight your way out and then come back into the town to sell what you stole. But if you did that too many times the store was empty. It was a great game that I want to play again. Great review and I am getting the mini US version. Thanks.
If you think that is small, check out the ODROID-GO handheld console. It emulates the C64 very well with its recent update and addon keyboard. I have several videos about it. 🙂
I've picked up one of these but haven't had the time to take it out of the box yet. I had one of the Commodote Vic-20s back in the day. Loved playing games and writing programs on it. Good review.
As the C64 is my favourite home computer, I really enjoyed this video, I have over 1200 original C64 cassette games, now I can play them on the Mini C64 :)
Brilliant summery of the system. I played a lot of Hero back in the day. Mainly because I couldn't afford many games back then so it was good to see you mention that. My mate still has my original machine as I gave it to him a few years back. He was beast when it comes to the machine. Even built hardware mods for the thing with another mate of mine. I used to go round and they'd have the disk drive in bits. Apparently my original drive no longer works but the C64 itself is still fully functional. It'd be great to see a slightly bigger version of the mini with a keyboard. I'd buy one of those in a heartbeat (especially if they put a few more usb ports on the thing. Two isn't enough).
There is a new version of Sam's Journey that is optimized for the C64 mini. Of course, since it's a relatively new game, yes, you have to pay for the download. Although I'm NOT sure if it works for the NTSC (US/Canada) version
Bard's Tale and those decoder disks...oh the memories. I also remember playing contract with two joystick with one on the floor (with micro-switches) so I could press the button with my toe to jump.
Yes we played winter games and california games too all the time. Other classics: Sid Meiers Pirates, Football Manager, Microprose Soccer, Elite, Mule, Strip poker, Commande, Rambo. Now with this new firmware I think it top my christmas list.
Well said! Choplifter stunned me with what it did on the baby Commodore. Other VIC favourites: Snake Pit (by the late, great Mike Singleton), Omega Race, Alien Blitz, Bongo. Happy days.
First games I’d put on this would be Stunt Car Racer, Turrican 1+2, Creatures 2, Outrun, Power Drift, Green Beret, Silkworm, SWIV, R-Type, Saint Dragon, X-Out, UN Squadron, IK+, Ivan “Iron Man” Stewart’s Off Road Racer and the Dizzy Series ... for starters. Fuck this was a great gaming system!!!
Awesome! Looks like they were trying to keep the spirit of the system with this. I wonder, would a powered USB hub work with this so you could have the keyboard, joystick, and flash drive plugged in at one time?
@Metagalactic Llama Both...and then have a "Null Modem Cable" option via USB to hook them up together for Lotus, Falcon, and other games that supported it. I'm not sure if USB would be capable of hooking up 16 said Atari ST(e) Minis for "MIDI Maze" though...would be cool to try it though!
Ok, i'm buying it... will look awesome on my 85". Havent played any of those since the belts in my tapeplayer transformed to black chewing gum... But, is it possible to store games into the console or does it require a usb stick each time? How about game save for those added ones?
Very cool that it's actually a official way to do this instead of hacking it. A good alternative to this is the C64 Forever by Cloanto, if you want to run the games and software in Windows. It also comes with a lot of licensed classic games. They also have a great Amiga Forever as well. Worth checking out.
It's a fun little box. Just for giggles, I hooked up a USB keyboard, opened Commodore Basic, did a 'load "$", 8' and found out that there is an emulated disk available to store programs that you type in while playing around with basic programming.
Really cool! I have been seeing these on the shelves here in Canada lately and was avoiding them thinking that you couldn't add more games! Especially at the $100 price point. I still have a real Commodore 64, so it didn't matter to me much. But now I might think about picking one up. :)
Knight Games is an awesome game with some really cool music. Murder on the Mississippi was a really cool game too where you had to find clues, trying to solve a murder that took place on a river boat. I never beat the game and would love to play it again. Caveman ughlympics, Montezumas Revenge, Racing Construction and so many other games I'd love to play again. Oh and Aliens. That game was awesome as well. Flying through those rings was tough but there was some killer music playing on that part.
Great video!!, I still have probably 3000 games magazines with all the demo disks back to the early 90's, used to be a great part of PC Gaming in the 90's a way of checking out games before you bought them.
Hi I'm in UK and just bought c64 mini. Will I be able to add games and is it legal? Sorry if you answer I haven't finished the video yet! Thanks for any reply!
yes, "programs from a magazine"!!! I still have a few of those from the 80s and remember typing them into my Apple IIgs. 2 hrs later you had a free "game"!
Looks cute. My friends and me we played the hell out of California Games and Boulder Dash. Good ol' times. I have forgotten about so many titles on the C64. Impossible Mission was a great game too. Summer Games was exhausting! We have broken so many joysticks. :D "Little Computer People" was my favorite game on the C64.
Oh man! I LOVE The Commodore 64! I had Epyx everything! World Games, Summer Games, Epyx Wrestling, Winter Games, etc! We didn't have reviews and such back then, but you knew if it had the name "Epyx" on it, you were getting something EPIC! This was also back when Electronic Arts actually cared! I spent a bazillion hours on Racing Destruction Set! I'll be getting one of these ASAP!
Got mine today for $29.99 Canadian at a local Wal$%$&. Another store had it priced at $74.99. Had to take the leap. I have already updated the firmware and tried a few other games beside the included games. I owned a Commodore 64 back in the day. Used it mostly for Basic programming. I did not own games and had no idea of the games available for it at the time. I still have the original and have used it to play games in the past couple of years via a tape drive and a cassette linked to a phone with roms. This beats it hands down and a HDMI connection to boot.
When I was young, it was impossible for me to have one C64, I remember my cousin getting a C128 and he never really appreciated or used it, don't know why??. Now I can make my younger years dream come true and for a fraction of the price!!!! Thx Metal Jesus you REALLY ROCKS!!!!!!! UR THE MAN!!!!
Is it easy to find pretty much any game I may remember from back in the day? Or is the selection limited? My favourites were Emlyn Hughes International Soccer, Cloud Kingdoms, Rainbow Islands, Skool Daze, Creatures 2, Mayhem In Monsterland, and many more.
I am a tad bit too young for the C64, also here in Norway such things cost a bloody fortune so I had to make due with the Sega Master Drive for a good couple years (around 91 to 93) before we went into PC. So it goes to say that I am unfamiliar with the C64 library. I was actually fucking STUNNED to see Defender of the Crown. It left me way more awestruck than even the best of graphics does today. Genuinely surprising to see that the capabilities of the C64 was clearly underused and the quantity mentality, or just simply inexperience, clearly held back what it could do in 99% of the cases.
Almost all the bigger games on this were on the old DTV joystick they had. And the rest are mostly UK stuff instead of the amazing RPGs, Flight Sims, and Wargames we got tons of here in the US. Which were mostly multi disk titles and not stupidly abusive action games with up to jump.
It's not only UK, plenty of German games too (including the Turrican masterpieces). European games were influenced by Japanese titles, both consoles and arcades, which at the times were huge, arcade games were the AAA titles of the time.
Hi. A have a question: If a game needs to play with the virtual Keyboard (like type words), does the USB keyboard can be used instead the virtual one? Or in the games only the virtual keyboard can be used and the USB is not recognized?
I'm surprised you didn't have a problem with the controller. With it not being micro switched, the plastic was really stiff and I found it awkward to use when I reviewed the system. I also tried a PS4 controller, but it caused glitches that crashed the games. Perhaps they fixed this compatibility in the update. I hope there is support to .TAP files, as most of my old games were on cassettes.
The fact that Jumpman is on there is AWESOME, because, back in the day, which you might forget, that game was on,y ever released on _compact cassette_ (i.e., "(audio) cassette"), and so, to play it, it always took about twenty minutes, if I remember, correctly, from my days using my Atari 800 and its 410 cassette drive. I assume it took just as long, on the C64, back then. I actually don't remember a "Jumpman 2," but only ever a "Jumpman Jr.," which was cool, but it didn't have _nearly_ the number of different boards that the original Jumpman had. The inventor actually wasn't even a fan of the game, in large part because of that. So, is "Jumpman 2," the same as Jr.? Either way it will be great to just play the original Jumpman, without the 20-minute load time -- and people complain about Anthem load times, today... 😂 j/k The Commodore 64 was the best selling, single-model personal computer, ever, and that record will never even comes CLOSE to being beaten, even if there were 20 billion people on Earth, because of the myriad of computer models -- and "sub-models" of those computers -- that are available, at any given time, which will only grow. Only if someone like Bezos were to set out to break that record and sold a single $1,000 PC model, for 100 bucks -- and produced enough to sell 13 million units, relatively very quickly, which, at that price, wouldn't be too hard, I don't think. They'd probably sell out 13 million units, within a week. Some might be asking, "Why _only_ 13 million? The C64 sold 30 million units... " Well, that's because there are plenty of data to suggest that only a _total of about 7-8 million "Commodore 64s" were ever sold (see __www.pagetable.com/?p=547)__ -- which equates to the number produced... Also, that's even including the various small changes, which changed the Commodore model number, but that's a bit nitpicky. However, that 12.5 million number even includes the "64C" model of the Commodore 64, which, although it was functionally the same, was sold in a _completely new, modernized case,_ which matched the Commodore 128 -- basically a 64, with twice the RAM, which was pretty unnecessary, because, with all those 64s out there, almost _everything_ sold for that basic motherboard model was compatible with both the 64 and the original 1541 drive, because, to do otherwise would be to lose a perhaps tens of millions of dollars, by excluding those 12.5 million total 64K RAM Commodores. Commodore, itself, even made the 128 with a "64 mode," which would ensure _complete_ backwards compatibility, for essentially the same reason -- so that consumers wouldn't be afraid to upgrade and potentially not be able to play Bruce Lee, which _was_ legendary... I would argue that the modernization of the design led to an elongation of the 64's lifespan, especially considering that most of the units, in the last few years of production, were sold in Europe, which had been dominated (especially in Britain) by Sinclair computers, which had gone away, and the 64C model seemed a "newer computer," even though that was "only" an aesthetic difference. As we know with almost every consumer product -- for instance, consider the array of Raspberry Pi cases on the market, for aesthetic personalization, and people bought a shitload of Dodges, just before Dodge was on its way out of business, after their rebranding and especially making their existing (and older cars that were brought back, such as the Charger) cars look very cool, which started a bit of a revolution in auto aesthetics. (I do realize that Chrysler bought Daimler (who, in turn, owned Mercedes) which also led to changes in Dodge engineering, simultaneously, because Dodges rightfully had a reputation of being total shit cars that broke down, constantly, prior to that, but that was only ever advertised in their very short-lived "Dr. Z" campaign, with the stereotypical German, who represented putting German engineering into Dodge cars -- hence the rebranding... ). In any case, no pun intended, just to make sure that there would be no question/argument as to whether the record were broken -- except for those who think that more 64s were sold than were made -- I think that it would be "safe" to sell 13 million and put questions about the new case, etc., to rest... The Commodore 64 was an _incredible_ computer, especially for the price, versus Apple and IBM, but the Atari 800, made 2.5 years earlier, definitely gave it a run for its money -- the argument about which was better _still_ rages on, about that, on some pretty intense and deep, computer-engineer-level software/firmware/hardware debates, in threads, online). However the Atari 400 and 800 8-bit computers _are_ the first mass-produced computers to have ever had specialized chips made and installed, for graphics and audio, etc., to take processing load off the CPU. Also, the POKEY was definitely the better audio chip, and the 800 has two cartridge ports, the "Right Cartridge" slot with which one can actually burn cartridges to firmware, to make sure their owners who were programmers could both homebrew their software and distribute it, as well as to make sure their hard work wasn't subject to floppy failure -- because, despite the motto, an Elephant disk does *_not_* "Always Remember," as their slogan stated. Trust me. I lost a lot of programs to Elephant disks having failed -- especially over time -- although, besides TDK, those Elephant disks were arguably the best on the market -- and they had the price, to match... This video definitely makes me wanna go out and get a C64 mini, but last week, the same company revealed a full-size model, with working keyboard -- and I believe working, original-type I/O ports, as well, but I can't confirm that... Anywho, cheers to a truly great computer, from what was, most definitely, the greatest decade, like, ever!
You mentioned that the lag/latency issues have been resolved for the US release. Is it really totally gone or just alleviated a bit? It wasn't so much the selection of games on the EU version that put me off, but the lag. Any thoughts on this after playing with it? And will the EU versions get some sort of firmware update as well?
