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[KennyLinder]

Did you ever read Amstrad Action, or use the tapes? That was my first job. As a staff writer. And I had to sometimes manually enter the code they printed in the back (little games and demos the user could literally type in and run)

YES!
I lost my shit when AA finally started putting cover tapes on the magazine, I was always super jealous that C64 had the before. Cool job dude, I really did love that magazine (in fact I think I have boxes of them in the loft in storage!).

Fuck, I remember something else. £3.50 games from the newsagent. Amazing.. The 'Hit Squad' brand, so so so good.

 

[Hanmik]

Nobody used it for serious business - that was the Commodore PET (not more powerful, just more adopted by schools and businesses) - but as you note it had word processors and printers and disk drives and there was lots of productivity software,

of course they did... just look at Lucy..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1DKX1Jq-54

 

[Bydobob]

Have anybody here played IO?

I had IO on a 'compilation tape' if you catch my drift. Game didn't live up to its graphics but my memory is hazy. Must try it again. Cybernoid and Armalyte were my favourite C64 shooters. Armalyte still stands up today.

Same here regarding The 64. It's in production now and things seems to really come together now. Can't wait!

I had no idea about this. Is there a full list of games somewhere?

 

[Fredrik]

I remember a neighbor across the street, who was my gateway to game copying. We didn't consider it any different than ripping a tape for someone, which no one seemed to ever point out as being piracy.

Björk? Sweden? Here everyone swapped games on the school yard like it was a music cassette, I don't think anyone even knew what piracy was at that time, it was completely normal even though it's really weird looking back at it. I still bought a ton of games though because I wanted them before everyone else and they weren't all that expensive either.

 

[Lutherian]

Happy birthday, C64 ! Despite the fact that I grew up with the Amstrad CPC (and started with Manic Miner when I was five) and the fact that I always prefered the CPC color palette, I'm know starting to love the C64.

What a great system it was !

 

[Fredrik]

I had no idea about this. Is there a full list of games somewhere?

I don't think so but they're slowly dripping out info about the games included on the Facebook page, can't copy the text on the phone for some reason so you have to navigate their page a bit.
https://m.facebook.com/The64computer/
I think it'll be like the 64DTV. As in... OMG Cool!... but not a replacement for your real C64.

 

[neopokekun]

Let's not forget the demo scene.

Edge of Disgrace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIUkBa_mA0

Comaland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzQVECn3tY8

Uncensored
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJK8mS5YF7I

Lunatico
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcAUlEkU05A

Fantasmolytic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mgtY2326Y0

Desert Dream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55x-mTrXLto

A Mind is Born (all done in just 256 bytes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8

 

[tassletine]

Have anybody here played IO?

I loved this game! I even drew some kind of fanart a while ago. Extremely hard and I never finished it but it felt almost like an arcade shooter at the time from the awesome controls, precision, gameplay, presentation. Possibly the best C64 shooter ever!

Yes. Great game! Some of the best graphics and programming on the c64.

 

[pswii60]

Let's not forget the demo scene.

Edge of Disgrace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLIUkBa_mA0

Comaland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzQVECn3tY8

Uncensored
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJK8mS5YF7I

Lunatico
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcAUlEkU05A

Fantasmolytic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mgtY2326Y0

Desert Dream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55x-mTrXLto

A Mind is Born (all done in just 256 bytes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWblpsLZ-O8

LOVED the demo scene. The amount of time I spent watching demos on my C64 and Amiga, with the awesome music.

 

[bjork]

There are still pretty cool games coming out on the homebrew scene. One called Galencia recently released, it's similar to Galaga and it's fun.

https://galencia.itch.io/galencia

Björk? Sweden? Here everyone swapped games on the school yard like it was a music cassette, I don't think anyone even knew what piracy was at that time, it was completely normal even though it's really weird looking back at it. I still bought a ton of games though because I wanted them before everyone else and they weren't all that expensive either.

US here, but the same thing. I had a class one year with mock currency that you could use to buy your way out of quizzes and stuff, but I used it to buy C64 games and Pepsi from other kids.

 

[McNum]

Speaking of the Demoscene, it is still active today. And I keep being amazed by the utter disregard for hardware limitations shown.

On that note, let's put that whole "Which 8-bit machine has the best audio?" question to bed. It was always the C64, of course, because the SID chip was hilariously overkill for it, but a somewhat recent demo is just plain witchcraft. Keep in mind that the SID chip only has three channels and was never meant to play samples.

So, I present for your listening pleasure, the B-side of the Wonderland XIII demo by Censor Design.

Yes. That's played on a real C64. Yes that fits on one side of a diskette (about 170KB). No, I have no idea how it works.

 

[00ich]

I can appreciate the significance of the C64 as a gaming machine just from everything I've seen, but being born in 87, I don't really know too many of the specifics about it? I see others saying it was their first computer? Was it good for other things besides just games? I I imagine it had word processing and printer capatability for business use by that point?

It was also easy to program, allowing RasberryPi tinkering for a mere 1000-2000€ price tag.

It had a thriving add-on market:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_peripherals

 

[T-0800]

Always wanted one, but ended up with an Amstrad CPC 6128 instead.

Poor lad. We made fun of the Amstrad owners back in the day.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

The pinnacle of gaming right here.

 

[Mascot]

Fancy some nostalgia, UK-peeps?

http://www.zzap64.co.uk/

 

[Dredd97]

wow
was i really 15 when it launched?

yes i was (and now I feel old)! lol

 

[redcrayon]

8-bit gaming was far more about the c64 and the spectrum (and to a lesser extent the Amstrad) than it was about the NES for my group of friends in the 80s. Always interesting when I see US posters talking about how the NES saved the industry, I didn't even know what a console was until the very late 80s, and even then £40 games rather than swapping £1.99 cassettes made them a bit of a luxury item. The plausible argument about the educational value of a computer helped when asking for one, too.

Dizzy was bigger than Mario to my friends at the time- every time a new one came out we would be comparing notes on solving the puzzles, trying to put together the most efficient path through the games. Treasure Island Dizzy was my first multi-screen platform/adventure game, spent months playing that.

 

[Kolibri]

My first gaming machine So many classics, like Dizzy and Paperboy.

I don't miss those tape loading times though.

 

[pswii60]

Fancy some nostalgia, UK-peeps?

http://www.zzap64.co.uk/

Love that site.

I vividly remember my first ever Zzap magazine in detail (Issue 54, October 1989) and it's there in all its glory, giving me nostalgia tingles. And all the other issues after that too.

Our US and Japan friends need to remember that NES was practically non-existent in Europe. And in the UK at least, it was all about the C64 and Speccy. We didn't give a shit about Mario - Dizzy, Monty Mole and Jet Set Willy were the gaming mascots of our youth.

Honestly, I'd rather play the Dizzy games than the old Marios. They were really special indeed.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

I used to love going to Just Micro in Sheffield on the weekend to buy games with my Dad. All the options though. Did I get 3 games for £2.99 each or a 'AAA' title for a tenner?!

 

[Red Liquorice]

I still don't understand what possessed me to get a spectrum over a c64. I had the choice and I went with the speccy.

 

[Mascot]

Love that site.

I vividly remember my first ever Zzap magazine in detail (Issue 54, October 1989) and it's there in all its glory, giving me nostalgia tingles. And all the other issues after that too.

I bought them all from the very first issue. They might even still be up in the loft at my parent's house, actually. I must check some time.

 

[Dee Dah Dave]

I still don't understand what possessed me to get a spectrum over a c64. I had the choice and I went with the speccy.

My parents originally got me the Speccy for Christmas. But then they saw the better graphics on the C64 and switched it at the last minute. Dodged a bullet there!

There were some cool games on the Speccy though, and the Amstrad. But the C64 was the clear king!

 

[SpotAnime]

THANK YOU FOR INCLUDING FORBIDDEN FOREST!!!

That game was incredible. The lightning flash that revealed the giant beast...

So many great videos to bring me back. My first personal computer and it was such an amazing game machine.

 

[Deraj]

I wanted a '64 after seeing the 'arcade quality' graphics of 'Way of the Exploding Fist' at a friend's house.. plus I wanted to be a super hacker like Matthew Broderick in WarGames. So many great memories of getting home from school, doing my homework on EasyScript word processor, printing it out on a dot matrix printer, then playing Last Ninja, Raid Over Moscow, Project Firestart or Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

 

[BradleyLove]

I went VIC-20, C=64 and Amiga. So yeah, total Commodore fanboy.

Loved the System 3 titles such as Last Ninja, Vendetta and Tusker. Loved Armalyte, Paradroid. Turrican 1 & 2 were immense. Had International Soccer on cartridge too.

Super fond memories of all three Commodore machines.

 

[Trunx28]

my second computer after the c16. Had tons of fun with it, fonded memories of Zak McCracken, Maniac Mansion, Turrican, Katakis, Zamzara und Last Ninja. Still got the 1st CD edition somewhere, but without the adapter for any CD-Player to load the games

 

[pswii60]

I went VIC-20, C=64 and Amiga. So yeah, total Commodore fanboy.

Loved the System 3 titles such as Last Ninja, Vendetta and Tusker. Loved Armalyte, Paradroid. Turrican 1 & 2 were immense. Had International Soccer on cartridge too.

Super fond memories of all three Commodore machines.

Armalyte! Forgot all about that, love it and all the other Thalamus games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUFAmJPqxK8

I don't think the pics in the OP do the system justice. C64 games looked far better in motion, many were 50fps (PAL limit).

 

[Ranma]

Happy birthday C64.
The best home computer ever made.

 

[ISee]

Oh my dear, old 'brotkasten'. You were my first gaming experience. I'll never forget you.

BTW I still love to listen to some SID tunes from time to time.
People often prais turrican or batman, but this is my favourite

https://youtu.be/KaxJK2c9Onk

 

[samwyse]

If you had a disk drive and a turbo loader you'd be playing your games in 10 seconds. Beats modern loading times.

Tape loading legit games was indeed slow. However, loading turbo taped cracked games was much faster. Also, never play multi-load games on tape (games that load every level separately).

 

[UpUpDownDown]

Happy birthday buddy!

Loveed this thing so much growing up.

 

[Sweep14]

Good memories indeed. Got one during summer 1985, it was my second computer (first one was a Brazilian TK-85 : Think of 16KB ZX-81 inside a ZX Spectrum shell) Spent hours on it with Summer Games 1 & 2, Winter games, On Court Tennis, Infiltrator, Impossible Mission, Beach Head 2 etc...Ah and also the infamous Karateka by Jordan Mechner which was running at 10-15 fps at best...😂

 

[pswii60]

If you had a disk drive and a turbo loader you'd be playing your games in 10 seconds. Beats modern loading times.

Tape loading legit games was indeed slow. However, loading turbo taped cracked games was much faster. Also, never play multi-load games on tape (games that load every level separately).

I was a peasant tape player with the long-ass load times - and as we all remember, some times the games wouldn't load at all... and an azimuth alteration was required on the cassette deck.

I also remember trying to copy tapes from my mates (shock horror!) using our Sony dual-cassette hi-fi. But the copies never loaded, was a bummer for my 10 year old inner-pirate self. I'm sure I tried several hi-fis and blank media but never got it to work, was there some integral copy protection built in to the C64 I wasn't aware of back then?

I had Radar Rat Race (Rally X clone) on cartridge though.. my only cartridge aside from the reset cartridge I used for cheats.

 

[El-Suave]

This was my childhood, happy birthday! I still remember exactly how our neighbor brought over a cassette full of games, illegal of course but we had no concept of that back in the day. My mind was blown how this all worked.

The first game I bought myself was "Airwolf". I quickly developed a better taste and still remember buying "The Eidolon" and "Koronis Rift" from Lucasfilm Games.

 

[halfbeast]

Spoiler

(she's bi)

 

[Diablohead]

I was way too young with my grandfather bought the c64 over and we tried to use it, I think we might still have it around but as a little boy I just had fun pressing keyboard buttons, wish I took care of it more then I did.

 

[Shane]

I have a C64 in storage with adapters for using a dual shock controller.

Definitely check out http://www.rgcd.co.uk/p/games.html for brand new C64 games.

There's a mix of original games and demakes.

I have a copy of Soulless which is pretty neat:

 

[Dr Funfrock]

The Commodore and Amiga years certainly was an explosion in good games output and coding. My C64 and most of its games still work!

 

[jellies_two]

The 6502 was the secret
It was so .. rounded. 1 perfect MHz, 64k of memory, lower 256 bytes for faster 8bit access many 1 cycle instructions.

It was designed 7 years before the c64, and started the home computer revolution, as it cost 15% of an 8080. It was designed by Chuck Peddle (who turns 80 this year).

What blows my mind today is the 6502 had about 4000 transistors. An i7 has 1.4 ... billion.

Some fascinating history here

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V6brbp75T4k
From 1:47:00 onwards Chuck talks about Jack at commodore who fired him because Chuck said commodore should get into an msdos business, and then sued him to take his shares, leaving him penniless.

 

[nicoga3000]

I've sadly never played any C64 games (not even through emulation). It's a system that has always fascinated me, though.

 

[Clear]

The important thing historically about the C64 ironically came about because of weaknesses in its design:

Specifically as a pure computer it was saddled with an archaic version of Basic, and its CPU was effectively running half-speed due the way it interfaced with the video chip.

What this meant was in order to get the most of the hardware you had to learn proper assembly code, and how to program "to the metal". At which point it quickly became apparent that the device was far more capable than it first appeared, particularly as the hardware could be "tricked" into doing stuff that was never intended.

C64 was a true hacker's dream. And the great part is that it was such a simple piece of tech that a single (relatively cheap) manual gave you full insight into the workings of every register in the system.

 

[Snoopycat]

There were some amazing games out back then. Daley Thompson's, Jetpack, Way of the exploding fist, Elite. There were also a whole bunch of great home made indie games.

Pub Crawl was probably the most infamous one and got swapped around our school. The aim of it was to get as drunk as possible and get laid. You were supposed to get a prostitute but nobody could work out where she was so we never finished it.

A rock star ate my hamster was a really cool manager style simulator where you put a rock band together and had to make them as famous as possible. It was addictive as hell.

Turbo esprit. That was a driving game and was probably the first free roaming one because you could just ignore the story and go round the city

Movie. This was an isometric detective thing. I can't remember much about it except you had to go through various rooms searching for clues and I think you could shoot people. They don't look special now but at the time these graphics were mind blowing. This was the speccy's Horizon Zero Dawn -

 

[watership]

I adore my 64, my commodore 64. Brown F keys, represent! Busted sprite chip, yet no regrets. Double notched verbatim floppies still are found randomly in storage.

 

[eso76]

Those rainy winter afternoons spent trying to load the pirated stuff that came on those "30 incredible games !" tapes you'd buy at newsagents and summers spent tinkering with SEUCK knowing in your heart gaming would never feel this good again.

And you know what ? it never did.

 

[Venture]

I can appreciate the significance of the C64 as a gaming machine just from everything I've seen, but being born in 87, I don't really know too many of the specifics about it? I see others saying it was their first computer? Was it good for other things besides just games? I I imagine it had word processing and printer capatability for business use by that point?

As you said mostly word processing and printing. Print Shop was really big on the C64. There was actually even a graphical user interface available, GEOS, but it was fairly limited.

 

[Gazunta]

Best thread for the best ever gaming platform.

By the way guys in case you want to know about the games being made for the C64 now and in the future, I am shamelessly plugging our magazine Reset 64. It's a free PDF download but we also sell a fantastic, professionally printed version. There's dozens of new games being released for the C64 in 2017 and the future is just looking brighter every year.

The Bear Essentials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVTsGL9xd-E

Galencia:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9AaseSTkVE

Planet Golf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzxpFTu7PQ8

 

[SnowTeeth]

Happy birthday C64. Thanks for the good memories. Also holy shit at hearing Smack My Bitch Up sounding that good. Incredible.

 

[Oppo]

As you said mostly word processing and printing. Print Shop was really big on the C64. There was actually even a graphical user interface available, GEOS, but it was fairly limited.

I had a mouse and GeOS for my C64 and I used it to sell the thing for a ridiculous price to a totally blown away couple who had never seen or heard of a GUI before.

Good times. What a machine.

POKE 53281,0

 

[Chairhome]

One of my first video game systems. Loved it. A few games I loved that never seem to get shout outs:
Aztec Challenge

https://youtu.be/77SfuLtetY0
A mini game collection that they should remake on mobile

CliffHanger! Featuring his brother, Coat

https://youtu.be/hkb3thB5ilo