The Commodore 64 is 30 years old this year and it went on sale in August 1982 so I think it’s about time I wished it a happy birthday. Back then I was messing on a Commodore Vic 20 (or more likely it was 1984 or so), then I had a Speccy and I didn’t get my hands on a C64 until 1989. It was already declining somewhat but it still had a few years of life left in it. Issue 50 of Zzap! 64 was the first issue of that famous magazine I owned. My brother and I bought it in Paul’s Street Shopping Centre! The newsagent is long gone but I have that issue around here somewhere ..
Matt Allen visited a primary school and a secondary school and asked kids there what they thought of the Commodore 64. I don’t think they were impressed by loading errors and long loading times. He probably should have brought a 1541 disk drive and an Action Replay cartridge!
Hopefully the embed code below still runs. The BBC website has a ridiculously long parameter that I’m sure WordPress is going to eat.
6 replies on “Happy Birthday Commodore 64!”
I’ve written an interesting piece on the 30th birthday of the Commodore 64 for Retro Gamer issue 106, in shops August 16th – has to be my favourite computer of all time
Great! I’m subscribed to Retro Gamer so looking forward to it!
Only after reading this page on the Mayhem64 website I realise that Matt Allen is the author of that site too. Great read!
OMG I feel so old now. 30 years, I remember well waiting of a game to load with giddy excitement. Ah precious memories
Damn BBC and their auto playing advert. I put a “more” tag in the post so it won’t show on my homepage.
I used to love reading Zzap! 64 and it’s Spectrum-focused sister magazine, Crash, cover-to-cover every month; I think I actually got more enjoyment out of the reviews and previews than playing the actual games.
At one point, my future career plan essentially consisted of catching the ferry and just turning up in Ludlow, where they were based.