$9ff                    Memories of the C64 - by Phil98
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$ff0
The  Commodore 64 was in a different class to the Spectrum - it had cool
sound,  hardware  sprites,  multicolour  modes,  joystick  ports  and  a
"proper"  typewriter  style  keyboard.   It  also  had  a highly dubious
wedge-shaped   power  pack  that  doubled  as  a  room  heater!   (These
resin-filled-wonders  weighed  a  tonne  and  were  notorious  for their
unreliability, but I have to say, although noisy, ours never failed..)

The  built in BASIC was of course dire; if you wanted anything useful to
happen   you'd  have  to  consult  the  manual  for  a  series  of  Poke
instructions.  But hey, nobody was really interested in BASIC on the C64
anyway right?  (And if you were, you could always buy the "Simons Basic"
cartridge.)

No,  it  was  the games that were the big attraction.  In the early days
though,  most  of  these  were  pretty  awful!  The expanded sprite mode
proved  very  popular  early on and was used in all its blocky glory far
too  often  (which  gave  Spectrum  owners  cause  for  mirth).  The C2N
datacassette  loading  routines  weren't  exactly brilliant either..  20
minute loading times were not uncommon (and we curse when Meg size files
take a second or two to load these days!).  In anycase, you could always
upgrade to a disk drive.  Talking of which..

The  CBM1541  drive  is  the stuff of legend.  A weighty shoe-box with a
gargantuan  transformer,  it  was  actually  slower than some tape turbo
loaders!   Just  what  was  Commodore's  problem??   The  most  annoying
"feature" however, was the hammering-disk heads.  Format a disk, and the
"whirr-ratatatatat"  was  enough  to  knock  the heads out of alignment.
You'd  then  spend  ages  trying  to  get  the damn thing working again!
Thankfully, third party software soon appeared allowing fast loading and
quiet formatting, phew!

For  games  review  magazines,  here in the UK you had two main choices,
Commodore  User  and  Zzap!64.   CU  had a pretty stuffy attitude in the
early  days  and the reviewers seemed to be all old fogies!  Zzap!64 was
much  better,  with  its highly amusing Liddon/Penn/Rignall reviews, Oli
Frey  artwork  and annual April fool jokes.  "Mindsmear" ring any bells?
Eventually, the CU bacame the better of the two with Zzap!  degenerating
into childishness after the aforementioned staff left.
  
It  was  in Zzap!64 that we first learnt about Compunet, the closest you
could get to the Internet in the UK at that time.  "For the price of ten
aliens",  ran  CBMs  advert,  "you  can contact much friendlier beings."
Yeah,  £100  for  a  1200/75 baud modem (wow!  Almost 8 bytes per second
upload  speed!!).   But  such was the state of modem technology in those
days and for its brief existence, Compunet was the place to be.

Commodore's bizarre development dept.  certainly came up with some prime
turkeys in its time (The C128, C16, C+4 to name three) but also produced
some "interesting" peripherals.  For example:  The CBM sound sampler and
the  C64  FM Music Expansion System (not to be confused with that cheapo
plastic keyboard "music maker" effort!).  As with almost all peripherals
though,  there  was  little software support so they were to become mere
novelties.

A few games appeared in cartridge form; "International Soccer" being the
most  famous,  but games cartridges were a short-lived phenomena.  Other
classic  cartridge-port  add-ons  were  Trilogic's  Expert  Cartridge (A
godsend!   -  though  my  Restore key was knackered in no time!), Datels
Action Replay, Freeze frame and a myriad of dos enhancers and such like!

As  time  went on, the software scene improved drastically.  Programmers
and games just got better and better.  Andrew Braybrook's Uridium showed
how  things  should  be done and I'm sure inspired many coders to tackle
the  64's  internal  gubbins..  Demo writers began to produce clever new
effects  (EG:   sprites  in  the  border  / digisound) and Robb Hubbard,
Martin  Galway  and  Benn  Daglish  amazed  us  with  their  SID  music.
Meanwhile, Jeff Minter just had a wild trip...

In  the  hey-day  of  the  C64  scene, there was an unbelievable flow of
software.   European  groups  like  "The Judges" with their the stunning
"Think  Twice" demos became the front runners in the demo scene.  Later,
a new wave of musicians like The Maniacs Of Noise pushed the SID chip to
its  limits  and demos became complex multipart affairs, each part being
increasingly  impressive...  Meanwhile, games ranged from the pants that
was  US  Gold's  "World  Cup  Carnival"  to the excellence of Sensible's
"Wizball" and Thalamus's "Armalyte".

The  bubble  eventually  burst with the arrival of first the ST and then
the  Amiga.   The  ST  was  something  of a false dawn but was enough to
signal  that  time  would  soon  run  out for everyone's favourite 8-bit
micro.   Still,  the  C64  kept on going right up to the early '90s, (in
fact  I believe there may even be a scene of sorts still going now!) and
while it was on top, we sure had a great time!


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