Penguin-keeper
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This year, the Commodore 64 home computer - the best-selling single-model computer of all time - turns 40! I'm a little younger than the C64 but because it was still going strong in the UK well into the 1990s (it was one of the top two gaming platforms here, behind the ZX Spectrum, before consoles eventually started gaining widespread traction around the mid-1990s), I grew up with it, so I just wanted to pay a little tribute to it here. 
The Commodore 64 was first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show 1982, which ran between January 7th and 10th that year, and was released in August 1982, before ultimately being discontinued in April of 1994, though the system remained in use by many for plenty of years after that. It even co-existed alongside its successor, the Commodore Amiga, pretty much until the collapse of Commodore. Even as late as the 2010s, long after its discontinuation and the collapse of its parent company, brand-recognition for the C64 was still at almost 90%! It's still very high even today, and that's also been helped by modern revivals such as "The C64 Mini" and "The C64 Maxi", as well as plenty of ongoing community efforts around the world.
For my part, the Commodore 64 was my first computer and my first games machine; I had originally wanted a NES, but my parents opted to pay a little bit more to get a Commodore 64 instead, and they absolutely made the right choice because it set me up with practical transferrable skills for life, which I still use today and most likely always will. Not only that, but its games, which due to the cost of living in the UK were sold almost exclusively on cassette-tapes (elsewhere, floppy-disks were the norm, but not here), typically cost £2 to £5 each (with £10 considered to be a rare "high-end" price), instead of the £40 to £60 that was the norm on consoles, and the sheer variety played a big part in shaping my taste in video games as a youngster. It was one of those systems where everyone's experiences of it were usually completely different.
The dominance of cassette-tapes as the primary medium in the UK shaped the sorts of games that were popular here, too - the smaller storage-space meant that arcade-style games (be they conversions of popular titles released into arcades, or original titles created for the home) were the most popular of all, whereas the larger space offered by disks meant that different genres, such as simulations and RPGs, were popular in countries where disks were the dominant format. This made for a great deal of diversity for the system's library when viewed as a whole - and that library is still growing even today!
Due to the popularity of arcade conversions on the C64 and other home microcomputers, in the UK the Taito arcade games Bubble Bobble and The NewZealand Story occupy the same cultural space that's occupied by Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES in North America (the NES was completely unknown throughout at least half of the UK due to Nintendo UK's distributor of the time not allowing all stores to carry their products, so those games didn't have the same impact here).
Sometimes I still revisit the Commodore 64, both to revisit old favourites and to discover new ones, so, to mark today's anniversary, I'll be picking up some modern-era C64 titles;
Polar Bear in Space! (2021)
It's Magic 2 (2001)
Ice Guys (1997)
Pac-Wor (2021)
Bagman Comes Back (2021)
Happy Anniversary, Commodore 64!
Was anyone else here a Commodore 64 owner back in the day? Do you still have one? What were your favourite games for the system? Please share!
The Commodore 64 was first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show 1982, which ran between January 7th and 10th that year, and was released in August 1982, before ultimately being discontinued in April of 1994, though the system remained in use by many for plenty of years after that. It even co-existed alongside its successor, the Commodore Amiga, pretty much until the collapse of Commodore. Even as late as the 2010s, long after its discontinuation and the collapse of its parent company, brand-recognition for the C64 was still at almost 90%! It's still very high even today, and that's also been helped by modern revivals such as "The C64 Mini" and "The C64 Maxi", as well as plenty of ongoing community efforts around the world.
For my part, the Commodore 64 was my first computer and my first games machine; I had originally wanted a NES, but my parents opted to pay a little bit more to get a Commodore 64 instead, and they absolutely made the right choice because it set me up with practical transferrable skills for life, which I still use today and most likely always will. Not only that, but its games, which due to the cost of living in the UK were sold almost exclusively on cassette-tapes (elsewhere, floppy-disks were the norm, but not here), typically cost £2 to £5 each (with £10 considered to be a rare "high-end" price), instead of the £40 to £60 that was the norm on consoles, and the sheer variety played a big part in shaping my taste in video games as a youngster. It was one of those systems where everyone's experiences of it were usually completely different.
The dominance of cassette-tapes as the primary medium in the UK shaped the sorts of games that were popular here, too - the smaller storage-space meant that arcade-style games (be they conversions of popular titles released into arcades, or original titles created for the home) were the most popular of all, whereas the larger space offered by disks meant that different genres, such as simulations and RPGs, were popular in countries where disks were the dominant format. This made for a great deal of diversity for the system's library when viewed as a whole - and that library is still growing even today!
Due to the popularity of arcade conversions on the C64 and other home microcomputers, in the UK the Taito arcade games Bubble Bobble and The NewZealand Story occupy the same cultural space that's occupied by Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 on the NES in North America (the NES was completely unknown throughout at least half of the UK due to Nintendo UK's distributor of the time not allowing all stores to carry their products, so those games didn't have the same impact here).
Sometimes I still revisit the Commodore 64, both to revisit old favourites and to discover new ones, so, to mark today's anniversary, I'll be picking up some modern-era C64 titles;
Polar Bear in Space! (2021)
It's Magic 2 (2001)
Ice Guys (1997)
Pac-Wor (2021)
Bagman Comes Back (2021)
Happy Anniversary, Commodore 64!
Was anyone else here a Commodore 64 owner back in the day? Do you still have one? What were your favourite games for the system? Please share!
![Vaxson 3-Pack Screen Protector, compatible with Tamagotchi Connection Version 5 Celebrity /V5C/V5.5/Dream Royal Family Plus TPU Film Protectors Sticker [ Not Tempered Glass ]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51ipUKPjAWL._SL500_.jpg)
![Vaxson 3-Pack Screen Protector, compatible with Tamagotchi Connection Version 3 V3 TPU Film Protectors Sticker [ Not Tempered Glass ]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41zSjSBo1mL._SL500_.jpg)
It's my favourite home-console of all time, in fact - it's just a pity that its homebrew scene isn't quite as far along as that of the NES, yet. That said, the SNES ROM-hacking scene is getting to be pretty excellent, so that's something.
