I’ve said this for years… There was no “gaming crash”, people just started playing games on the C-64.
The Console That Wasn’t: How the Commodore 64 Outsold Game Consoles
Submitted 17 hours ago by monica_b1998@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://slicker.me/retrocomputing/c64_vs_consoles.htm
Comments
jordanlund@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
monica_b1998@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
…and a high percentage of those were copied illegally. I’m not judging, just stating a fact
UnspecificGravity@piefed.social 9 hours ago
We literally had hundreds of games and had bought maybe ten of them.
DrunkenPirate@feddit.org 9 hours ago
That’s were I started to get a big friends base in my neighborhood. Visit friends, play some games together, and copy floppy disks.
I loved those starter pics and animations of the hacker groups.
bufalo1973@piefed.social 13 hours ago
“The Console That Wasn’t"
The 64GS enters the chat
A Commodore 64GS console based on the C64 with a white Cheetah Annihilator joystickpalordrolap@fedia.io 4 hours ago
The 64GS was one of Commodore's last gasps at trying to make some money using the 8-bit parts they still had left in stock. The whole thing was a disaster.
It wasn't based on the C64. It was a C64. Without a keyboard and some of the other ports missing. A fact that came to bite anyone who tried a C64 cartridge game that needed keyboard input.
And IIRC one of the games that came bundled with it was a game like that.
They were at least smart enough to have the BASIC startup pointer (the one that otherwise caused READY. to appear) in the ROM patched to go to a neat little graphic telling people to turn it off, plug in a game and turn it back on again.
What Commodore saved by releasing the GS, the customer ultimately paid by needing to buy games in a format more expensive than disk or tape that would run on a regular C64.
... and given the time period, lots of people were buying PCs and offloading their regular C64 hardware and a ton of games for the price of the GS and its handful of games. And that C64 would run any GS game that was likely to come out.
CaptainBasculin@lemmy.bascul.in 16 hours ago
I kinda want a modern computer that comes with a book similar to how Commodore included one that had simple instructions on how to do pretty much everything, like making simple music all the way to programming it
palordrolap@fedia.io 4 hours ago
Terry Davis tried to do for the PC with TempleOS what the C64's BASIC and KERNAL did for its hardware.
Terry was all the more a mad lad because he didn't get to create the hardware spec he was working with.
Could you imagine someone doing the same as Commodore did but starting with 64-bit era hardware?
Taking it another direction, there are free and paid "easy programming" platforms that provide a sandbox not unlike a modern version of what it was like to program a C64.
At a pinch, DOSBox and a copy of QBASIC might suffice.
monica_b1998@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
you’re right. nowadays a beginner would have to sift through a bunch of websites to figure out how to do it.
bstix@feddit.dk 16 hours ago
I wish it was just a website. You can’t even download Android Studio or any other starter package without being forced into some kind of AI bloated IDE just to write “hello world”.
aeronmelon@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Literally, the new Commodore 64. Comes with a book that teaches you Basic.
THE_GR8_MIKE@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
And on that note, the Commodore X16 from The 8 Bit Guy is built from the ashes of what would have been a C64 successor, post 128. Documentation available is extensive. Of course, it doesn’t ship with a spiral bound manual, so I guess it doesn’t even apply, but, ya know. It’s a cool little thing to tinker with.
dhork@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Yes, this would be awesome, but for the love of all that is holy can it please not be Basic?
bufalo1973@piefed.social 13 hours ago
Something like the Raspberry Pi 500+?
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
In fact, recreating the computing experience of the Commodore 64 (and BBC Micro as they are a British foundation) was one of the specific purposes of the Raspberry Pi.
bryndos@fedia.io 5 hours ago
I don't know about supplies in rest of the world, but typically the rpi "kits" that include the book seem to be very limited and rarely in stock.
I think the book, at least older versions, can be found on ebay though.
I think its just a basic into to python and GPIO so the earlier editions are probably fine.
Rhaedas@fedia.io 16 hours ago
The book that came with the C-64 was a good primer for first-time computer users, but I ended up needing more and bought the "Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide," which was far more useful, and then "Mapping the Commodore 64" and "Machine Language for Beginners."
Yes, I still have them. You never know... :D
Zombiepirate@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Not a console, but PICO-8 can be installed on lots of stuff and uses lua.
balder1991@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Also TIC-80.
bobo1900@startrek.website 15 hours ago
Unfortunately, that is not really possible.
The UEFI standard, a pdf that describes in detail the unified system that all motherbpards use during the boot process, is 1200+ pages long. And that’s only one of the many subsystems in a modern system (that gigantic pdf tells you nothinf about PCI, about ACPI and usb, nor any other hardware peripheral). Also, since you are talking about a modern system, you also would need kernel, drivers and operating system calls documentation. All of these exist (for an open source OS like linux, and if you follow the aforementioned standards), but bundling them in a book, and keeping them uodated, would be just impossible.
monica_b1998@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
I beg to differ. They just asked for a book that explains “how to do pretty much anything” (admittedly pretty vague). i’m assuming they mean things like browsing the internet, composing simple music, editing photos etc. You can do that without knowing any of the things you mentioned - they are part of most operating systems today, so the book would just need to go to that level.And when it comes to programming, the book could just explain how to code simple stuff for example in JavaScript in the browser’s “developers tools” (or equivalent).
TheFogan@programming.dev 16 hours ago
I believe a company that tried that… would be a pile of flames, rubble and pitchforks in minutes.
You want to get some computer experts to agree on the best language, and IDE to start with, or do we need to include every one… then deciding the order.