Commodore 64 making a comeback

[Disgustipated]

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/04/07/commodore-64-computer-lives-vintage/

I would never buy this thing anyways. I was just surprised Commodore was still around. I figured they went out of business. I'm mainly making this thread to talk about Commodore 64 memories.

My brother got a commodore 64 (I later got one myself- the 64C version). He also had a 128 later on, but I'll talk about the 64. It was a great gaming machine. Great graphics and sound for the time. At first we had a data cassette, but later got the floppy disk drive. That floppy drive was huge The 64's did seem to have a problem with their power supplies. I think ours would overheat. We'd sometimes put it on the air conditioning vent (it was a floor vent) to keep it cool. We had one of the joystick ports go out due to static electricity shock which sucked because you couldn't play multiplayer games. I think eventually the power supply did go out. And even on my 64C the power supply eventually went out. The cassette drive was funny, because if you bumped it, the game wouldn't load sometimes. And you wouldn't find out until after 15 minutes of the game loading and coming up with nothing.

Some of my favorite games were Bard's Tale 2, Wasteland, Bruce Lee (that was one of our first games on cassette), Exploding Fist, Jumpman jr., Summer games I and II, Winter Games, Jeapardy, Autoduel, Space Taxi, and some other games I can't remember. It's been so long, I can't remember many of the games I played. So you guys post some of your favorite C64 games, that should stir some of my memories.

We were fairly poor, and it took a long time to get our first Commodore 64 on layaway, but it was worth it. It's what truly turned me onto computer gaming.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I have a Commodore VIC-20. I bought it and the manuals and a bunch of software casettes all for $5

 

[kiwitt]

I had a Sinclair Spectrum+

 

[Furiey]

I had a BBC Model B.

 

[mdwh]

No, but I did own some Amigas, which it looks like they're also releasing versions of.

Elsewhere I've seen a lot of moaning that they're "just PCs". But so what? Clearly it's not the original models being relaunched - maybe some people might love to see that, but I guess manufacturing old technology is actually quite hard if the infrastructure no longer exists, and you're better off doing it via emulation. And indeed, these models it looks like do include emulation to also allow the original functionality.

But that doesn't stop them being interesting. There are lots of PC models in unusual or different cases. And let's face it, "Macs" today are "just PCs" in a Mac branded case. Whilst some people might like to see a comeback of the original Mac, Apple aren't doing that either. It's just the brand that lives on - which is what this company are doing with Commodore and the Amiga. Anything that stops the names of this great platform being forgotten to history is good with me - I get depressed at the revisionist history that rewrites computing as just Microsoft and Apple. Indeed, talking of which:

an impressively ahead of its time PC from Commodore that never quite broke into the mainstream.

Er, what? The Amiga was certainly mainstream as a home computer in its time. This may be an American bias, as it did far worse in the home in the US than elsewhere. (We get this today, with people who think that Nokia are a niche, despite them being the number one in phones and smartphones, and again all we hear about is bloody Apple; part of the reason is probably that Nokia have never had much success in the US.)

One thing I'm unclear on - do they have the rights to the Amiga name? When the original Commodore went bust, the rights got sold on to various PC companies (Escom, Gateway). But then they got split - the Commodore name was sold separately to the Amiga rights. In the 2000s, the Amiga rights have been owned by a company called Amiga, that has released various continuations of the Amiga technology (new operating systems, PowerPC hardware).

Perhaps they've properly licensed the Amiga name off the company, but I worry they're just assuming they have the rights because they own the Commodore name...

ETA: http://www.twice.com/article/466478-Rejuvenated_Commodore_64_Back_On_Sale.php claims they bought rights to the name.

 

[rugbyLEAGUEfan]

You guys had games ?

In my mums efforts to ensure the commodore 64 purchase was "educational" , instead of games we got a book with lame programs you could type in to the machine.

Result being useless game where you had to enter numbers to guide a spaceship safely to landing and such.

When we finally got Rock n Roll wrestling , ON TAPE , it was a godsend

 

[Disgustipated]

a lot of games we had were not paid for type games. You could put a whole bunch of small games on a floppy disk. They didn't take up much space. You could find arcade games like Defender on them, or miner 2049'er.

I forgot to mention Beachhead I and II, and Raid over Moscow. I never did that well in Raid over Moscow, however. I used to love Archon too.

 

[civ_king]

Honestly, Atom sucks. They should have done this on Zacate.

I'm going to do a retro project of my own, cram a MacBook Pro's innards into a Indigo iMac. I'm going to pump up the speakers and get a better display too. Or maybe I'll just stuff a Mac mini into it.

 

[Kyriakos]

I had an Amstrad cpc6128:

 

[Disgustipated]

Finally another vote for C64. I was beginning to think I was old.

 

[Psyringe]

'nother vote for the C64. It was my first computer, and its manual taught me my first steps in programming. I played tons of games, wrote documents in Vizawrite and printed them on a noisy needle printer, learned BASIC, Pascal, and 6502 Assembler, was amazed when floppy drives replaced datasettes, was even more amazed when I found a program that formatted a disk in 9 seconds instead of the 4 minutes it usually took, was somewhat less amazed when I discovered that I wrecked a drive worth several hundred dollars by using it, started to fool around with adapting/modding (levels for games, or adding a cheat mode with a disk editor), tore off the skin of my right palm while trying to beat a record in "Summer Games", learned English with Infocom text adventures, was fascinated by the philosophy of Ultima IV, typed in endless rows of numbers from books and magazines, wrote my first game, and generally had a great time with the old bread basket. Those were the days.