Is Commodore poised for a comeback?

ZDNet ^ | December 16, 2005 | Ina Fried

[sadimgnik]

"Now if someone imaginative would port such great, parsimonious game designs to something like PC or Xbox, they'd have a built-in nostalgia market. Sigh"

A chipped Xbox, running a dashboard like EVO, can easily run MAME, or Multi-Arcade Machine Emulator.

I play jumpman on mine, and bank panic, and supermario, every now and then - cause they are more fun than a lot of xbox games :-)

[grey_whiskers]

I bought a used (almost new) C64 in 1984, I think. Played MechBrigade, Kampfgruppe, Crusade in Europe, Decision in the Desert to my hearts content. Those were the days. Anyone else remember those great old games?

I spent hours and hours on Nukewar. If you tried to go nuclear, half the time (since your country was a democracy) you'd be refused (i.e. the electorate said no) and your turn was wasted. Invariably your computer opponent would launch a full strike the next turn.

And if you started a nuclear war in the 1950's, 2/3 of your shots would miss their targets.

Ahhh, what a game!

Cheers!

[hoosierham]

Is it possibile that the games are becoming too complex to be FUN? I think the classic games endure because the rules are simple yet winning is neither too easy nor too hard.

[fuquadukie]

And if you started a nuclear war in the 1950's, 2/3 of your shots would miss their targets.

In nuclear war, I don't believe hitting your target directly is all that necessary. Close is good enough... sorta like horseshoes and hand grenades.

[satchmodog9]

Wow, now we can all go back to basic.

[grey_whiskers]

One of my oldest computers is a PDP-8 with and ASR-33 as its terminal. My very oldest working computer is a 1963 Minivac 6010.

Well you beat me, I only go back to the VAX 11/780.

I still remember playing Star Trek and getting stripped of my command for detonating nearby stars with photon torpedoes...
on purpose!

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

In nuclear war, I don't believe hitting your target directly is all that necessary. Close is good enough... sorta like horseshoes and hand grenades.

Not in that game, each country was an 8 x 8 grid.

A nuke hitting any square on the grid would eliminate it.

A hit next door would not affect it.

Cheers!

[Ulysses]

My wife was a first-year school teacher in 1984-85. We had the opportunity to buy a refurbished Commodore 64 for $125 that summer, due to a special deal through her school system. After much debate (we'll never use one of those things!) we finally plunked down the money. Went and bought a Star 9-pin dot-matrix printer (more than the computer!) and an external modem (for accessing the GEnie Network and the old Prodigy network). We thought we were on the cutting edge! That setup got me halfway through my master's degree.

Fast forward a few years to 1988, graduate school. We got our first IBM-compatible computer. I sold the C-64 and all the stuff for $500 to a Korean student at the seminary. (I was asking $300 - and he insisted it was not enough! Go figure!)

Anyway, our first IBM-compatible was - you guessed it - another Commodore - PC20, if I remember correctly. Had a 20 meg hard drive, 2 floppies, and - are you ready for this? - a 4-color monitor! I paid more in 1988 for that setup than I did in '03 for the Dell I'm using now! too funny!

All that to say...ya gotta love that Commodore!

[Revolting cat!]

I only go back to the VAX 11/780.

Luv those VAXes!

[supercat]

Did C64 recognize ASCII standards?

The VIC-20 and its derivatives (probably the PET, but I'm not certain) had two character sets. One character set was ASCII from codes 32 to 91, and 93. Code 92 was a UKpound sign (instead of backslash); 94 was an up-arrow (instead of caret); 95 was back-arrow (instead of underline). Codes 96-127 and 160-191 were assorted graphics characters. Codes 0-31 and 128-159 were control codes, and other codes not mentioned mirrored the functions of codes mentioned. Typing an unshifted letter would generate code 65 to 90, an uppercase letter; typing a shifted letter would generate code 97 to 116, a graphics character.

In the second character set, codes 65 to 90 were replaced by lowercase letters, and codes 97 to 116 were replaced by uppercase letters.

[Prime Choice]

Luv those VAXes!

Mmmmm...nice software!

[ADemocratNoMore]

> I remember when some of us went from 300 baud to 1200

Same here. At 300 you could read the text as it scrolled down the screen, at 1200 you had to save it to read offline.

There was a story about some professor who complained to his schools i.t. department because that was happening to him.
Almost forgot, the Techmar add on memory and hard drive for the original A1000. The memory expansion added a whopping 2 meg. for $1500 and the hard drive was 20 meg. for $2500.

[The_Reader_David]

Yup, I think it was.

That's a blast from the past. When I was a grad student we had a lab full of 'trash-80's' at Penn. I taught the best business calc students in the world in those days: for the last three years as a TA I had the class of Wharton undergrads who self-selected to take an extra half-course to learn BASIC programming along with their business calc.

[dr_who_2]

According to a lot of journalists, it didn't take off because a lot of dumb decisions by Commodore. Nowadays, I don't see what a company called "Commodore" (the real one went bankrupt less than a decade ago) has to offer.

[MarkeyD]

That's pretty good. I worked at Radio Shack in college and sold my share of them too. I already owned my Ohio Scientific by then though.

[ColdSteelTalon]

Here is my favorite computer

http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/

[derllak]

Commodore? NO WAY!!!! Cool. Going to be able to type in the programs out of the back of PC magazine again like we did with the Vic 20?

Oh, man you just brought back some great memories for me!
Those were indeed THE DAYS.

[jokar]

That was my first. Spent the next 48 hours straight programing and the next 2 years on only 4 hours a night sleep, 8 hours at work and the rest writing programs that little sucker. Was that great or what??

[Baraonda]

I still have and use one of them TI solar powered calculators. Found it at school in 1990, so could be older than 1990. Still love it, btw.

[Baraonda]

Does that one read punch cards?