Commodore 64

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A Commodore 64 with peripherals.

The Commodore 64 is an 8-bit personal computer sold by Commodore and first released in 1982. It was the premier gaming computer of the early 1980s having good audio and graphic capabilities built into the base model.

I never owned a Commodore 64, but I first used one in 1987 in second grade. Each room in my elementary school had either a Commodore 64 or Apple II, and there was a computer lab with dozens of Commodore 64s daisy-chained together. I really liked the way the computers looked with their brown and tan keyboards and cryptic symbols on each key. Some of the games were just for fun like Logo, a hot dog stand game, and a basic artillery game, but most of the software was educational and dealt with simple math and reading comprehension. I don't remember any of the titles, but there was a game with several math-related mini games, one included counting beans, in another you played a frog who raced against other animals, and you had to solve math problems to hop. There was also a poorly-made Oregon Trail clone, a dull dragster math game, and a haunted mansion game where you progressed by solving math problems, and a reading game where you read a short story and were quizzed on the story. If you got the quiz correct, you were allowed to discover an item from the attic to add to your list. Then, the game would ask you to recall three of the items at random, but we never played the game enough to ever win, though some kids collected a pretty complete list from everyone else.

Games

I didn't get into Commodore 64 gaming until the 2000s when access to emulators and disk binaries became more popular. As such, I don't have any fond memories of playing the games when they were the height of technology. This makes me a bit sad because I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of games because it's now very difficult for me to get past their technical limitations, but at the same time, I'm happy that my opinion isn't rose-tinted.

Here are some of the C64 games I'm most impressed with:

Fonts

The blocky font used by in the original Commodore logo is Microgramma D Bold Extended. When the logo was updated, they switched to Futura SB Bold.

Links