Commodore Free 15/Commodore_Free_Issue_15_2008_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/t.rose tint

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 7KB | 234 lines

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Commodore with Rose Tinted Glasses

Everyone looks back fondly & remembers
the Commodore years; its like when you
remember being young & how everything
was better, cheaper & more exciting
back then. I dont really recall finding
anyone who said something like I
purchased a C64 & the machine was
rubbish I only used it once & sold it
also the fact everyone has some form of
favourite game, from there childhood be
it Tetris Pacman or another title. I do
still play Commodore games although I
tend to stick to well known titles.

To many the Commodore is something they
remember with great affection, also
something worth fight about, many see
their favoured machines as superior,
however we know Commodore machines were
the best machines ever created so I
dont want to debate about that fact.
Nothing in the design of any Commodore
machine can be faulted, the design &
build of the machines was superb all
the games release were brilliant titles
& well worth the money we paid for
them. Remember in the school yard
people would chant My Commodore is
better than your, 'insert other 8 bit
system here.'

Was it all good; have I remembered my
childhood correctly or am I wearing
rose tinted glasses as they say has my
memory been clouded with age & the
nostalgia of our youth? Was the C64 the
best machine of all time & were all the
games so good, was the hardware built
quality & design so good that no faults
can be found even after all this time?

How many Cassettes did you purchase
only to wait 20 mins for an error to
appear on screen with the dreaded words
syntax error or worse the machine just
reset back to the Commodore boot up
screen. How many disks were mangled by
your 1541 drive while trying to read
the vast amounts of copy protection on
the new game you personally paid good
money for, only to load it 3 times &
have your drive die. Did Commodore
always get it right?

I remember waiting eagerly for the
Amiga 4000 with Custom DSP new AAA mode
graphics only to find I had purchased a
slightly faster Amiga 1200 in a big
box.

Dont get me wrong I have a great time
with the Amiga finding out I cant draw
& my music skills really werent that
good after all. So yes I am afraid even
Commodore had its faults, rushing
products & producing half finished
machines. Some things were right
though. The C64 design seemed to be
perfect at the time, 16 colours on
screen hires displays & the custom SID
music chip.

Then the C128, 3 machines for the price
of 1 with CPM & C64 compatibility,
maybe this was more of a marketing ploy
but it was a really useful machine. The
fact we still use these machines today
must mean something was right with
them.

With the surge of Retro enthusiast many
of who are little more than avid
collectors do they actually use the
machines or are the machines just
trophies or collectors items gathering
dust, sat on shelves in someones
personal museum, a fad we must collect
every one ever made. I prefer to use my
machine, I have gone mad & purchased
some items I couldnt afford in my youth
for example my SX64, & 128CDR are more
items to have rather than something I
needed.

I do own a number of other Commodore
systems an Amiga 500, a 600 & an Amiga
1200. I also own a number of C64s & a
few C128s, & my Commodore 4000 Although
the machines are regularly used, I
confess the Amigas dont see much in the
way of gaming action as the C64 handles
these needs well enough for me.

I was a big fan of Doom when it arrived
on the PC but apart from the odd
adventure never really played anything
else on the PC. or even the newer
consoles, I owned a play station 2 for
a couple of weeks, purchased via eBay,
but soon sold it, I purchased it mainly
for the retro games collections I
always go back to the C64 & some
classic games.

I am not claiming every C64 game was
superb, I do have a large collection of
lets just say purchases I regret, but I
also have some superb games that really
get you hooked & have a one more time
effect, I still get into trouble for
sitting there thinking, if I just have
another go I could get to level 5,
although this time instead of late for
school I am late for a meal or theatre
night out, & its my wife rather than my
father shouting.

Everyone I would suspect looks back to
their childhood with fond memories,
childhood I am sure for the majority of
people was a happy time, a time when
everything was new & the whole world
was just there to be explored.

Commodore was a large part of that
childhood for me but the machine is
just as good now as it was back then!
And the great games I played are still
that; great games & the games that were
rubbish are still just as rubbish.
I could load Tetris or its many clones
& play it all day if I had the time,
likewise I spent many a day locked in
my room playing hover bovver & dont
regret a single moment of wasted
childhood.  I still load games like
Defender & am I just amazed that such a
game could be created, the time that
must have been spent designing the
sound & graphics & then getting the
game play to work, maybe I am just as
sad an boring now as I was when I was a
young child, small things still amuse
me.

I still sit through tape loading
screens & listen to the music waiting
for the game, even now with emulation &
hard disks & the IDE interface, I still
love loading games from tape, watching
the loading screen & then the music
appearing is great, & takes me back to
the first time I played the game. Maybe
all games are some form of drug, an
addiction woven into my small brain.

Of course the games could be played in
different context a tetris speed trial
who can gain the most points in X
amount of time, this goes with Jason's
comments about retro

Rose tinted Glasses
Comments from Jason Kelk

Of course games weren't all that good;
it's like anything "retro" Because
everything gets filtered; in the same
way that most of the songs released in
the 1970s or 1980s werent classics & a
lot of the design decisions made were,
looking back now, absolutely hideous
(talk about beige overload... it's fine
on a computer case but an entire
room?!) the majority of 8-bit games
were at best average & quite a few were
appalling.

That said however, an average game can
also be entertaining & even bad titles
have some enjoyment value, first from
realising just how low they're stooping
& then trying to play them in ways that
aren't in the instructions like
hammering around the course of a
driving game backwards & trying to
cause pile-ups!

Packs like Midway Arcade Treasures or
the Taito collections are a bit like
the 80s compilation CDs, "Now That's
What I Call Midway Volume Whatever",
mostly crowded with the titles that
went well & the odd one that has a
"cult" status, but the simple fact of
their existence proves a point; these
games, selected from the overall pool
of average-ness, do stand the test of
time very well indeed. The same can be
said of a lot of 8-bit computer titles,
the C64DTV went on sale with twenty C64
games &, whilst a few like Sword Of
Fargoal were questionable choices for a
direct-to-TV device without a save
option or mains power.

Action-oriented games like Uridium,
Head The Ball or Zynaps & the sports
titles stood up very well indeed.
Stories abound of younger children
discovering their parent's DTV &
enjoying the game & kids are probably
the greatest barometer as regards the
quality of a game because they don't
sugar coat their opinions.

.:[ Jason Kelk ]:.

Web developer/game coder/IT bod/very
confused!