Commodore 64 - 30 Years Old Today

The C64 is 30 years old today

BBC:

It is 30 years since the Commodore 64 went on sale to the public.

The machine was hugely successful for its time, helping to encourage personal computing, popularise video games and pioneer homemade computer-created music.

The $595 (£399) device took its name from its US maker, Commodore International, and the fact it had 64 kilobytes of RAM memory.

The firm noted that made it substantially cheaper than other personal computers on the market offered by IBM, Apple and Atari.

Commodore highlighted the fact that since it had designed and manufactured its own chips it had been able keep costs down - and the advantage helped it become the best-selling model in North America.

In Europe it faced competition from two cheaper eight-bit rivals released over the previous year: the BBC Micro and Sinclair Spectrum.

The Commodore's ability to display 16 colours, smoothly scroll graphics and play back music through its superior SID (sound interface device) chip - even while loading programs off tape - helped win over fans, but it did not become the market leader until the late 1980s.

Debates continue to this day about which was the superior system - but what would today's youth make of the C64?

BBC News invited Commodore enthusiast Mat Allen to show schoolchildren his carefully preserved computer, at a primary school and secondary school in London.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19055707

( Edited 01.08.2012 15:49 by Linkyshinks )

Nice thread! I thought the secondary kids took to it quite well. In the UK, this one had a fierce rivalry with the Sinclair Spectrum. Digital Foundry have put up a nice Face-Off article called Spectrum Vs Commodore 64, in order to mark the C64's 30th.

Both of those machines are slightly before my time. We had an Atari 2600, which is the first thing I remember playing. Looking back, it was probably already old as the hills when I had it. Still, I didn't care because I was still pissing and shitting myself at the time.

I was impressed by the C64's graphics in your video, 'Shinks. I kind of expected it to be all 2600-ish. Turns out it looks closer to the 7200. Very nice looking machine. My friend Adam had a tape-loader (was his dad's from back in the day). I really don't remember what it was, or anything we played onit. It could have been a C64.

Cool, I'll check that out, I need closure.

Well if it had that fake wood panel at the front it would have been an earlier 2600 model built in '78. I only ever had a later Jr (1985), a year or so before I got a my first NES.

The bubbling rivalry between the two, was pretty potent, that backdrop fuelled a lot of creativity, it gave birth to a productive developer community in the UK. I think that's what I miss the most, I miss British games. I think part of the reason why I liked old Nintendo Rare so much was because they designed games in a way that harked back to that earlier age, their games were thick with British humour and style.

It all evaporated very quickly, talent got eaten up and studios closed in their droves (I worked for OCEAN as a tea boy for my work experience, lol), and some big names vanished never to be seen again. We used to create games of a quality right up there with the best Japanese efforts on MSX and early PC Engine at one time...

I hope Ouya sparks something off again, because the talent is still here.

( Edited 01.08.2012 23:49 by Linkyshinks )

That's weird, my Datassette never made that screeching noise while loading a piece of software .

Commodore 64 and Atari 2600 were the first two home machines I played on, and some late Commodore 64 games look easily on par with the NES, if not superior by the end of the Commodore 64 lifespan in the early 1990's, when developers had learned to make the most of the hardware (parallax scrolling anyone? Yes it can!)

For the machine's defense, the was a little something called Turbo Loader which basically let you load a game in just a minute or two instead of 10 (never got how that worked, was turbo loader some sort of early winzip which let you uncompress a game which was compressed on tape ? The games we had that required the turbo loader only required like 20 units on the counter of the datassette instead of the over 100 for normal games, and we had like 30 games on one cassette (piracy was super easy on the system it seems, and my parents got that right back then, cause it allowed me to have a lot of games to play early on XD).

Some would argue that the sound of the Commodore 64 sounds more rough than the NES sound chip, but I kinda like the unique charm of the Commodore 64 SID sound, especially what Rob Hubbard could pull off with it.

On the topic of the joystick, I'd never put in on the table for playing, but rather hold the base in my left hand, and control the game with my right hand, it gave you a much more firm grip and dexterity.

( Edited 01.08.2012 23:21 by RudyC3 )

I would like to get a hold of a Commodore 64 some day. I've never played one. I don't think I've even been in the same room as one.

Back when I was just starting to appreciate music (a long time ago), I would download free midi songs. We had dial-up, so maybe I just gravitated to midi over other files. I also didn't really listen the radio much, so I turned to video games, and midi lends itself to video games. A midi version of this C64 tune was one of my favorites:

It's kind of odd how much nostalgia I feel for this, despite never touching a C64. It brings back memories of using my grandparents internet connection after school. My parents didn't like me tying up the phone line, but my grandparents would spoil me

Thanks Commodore 64!

( Edited 02.08.2012 08:15 by TAG )