[citation][nom]mister g[/nom]I wasn't born yet when these things were released. Can anybody clue me into how it used to be?[/citation]
All I can say is mister g.. it was a great experience to live through.
The orginal C64 is of course somewhat primitive by today's standards, but back then the concept of owning your own 8-bit computer was considered a privilege. It was also very addictive. As you see here the idea of an all-in-one device is still popular.
The C64's main UK competitors were machines like the BBC (used in schools), Dragon 32, Oric 1/Atmos and also the immensely popular Sinclair ZX Spectrum range. I was a Sinclair patron, but later on was lucky enough to own all manner of hardware. The C64 was generally more robust than the Speccy: the keyboard's look and feel; the decent graphics that didn't have as many artefacts; the sound hardware. These two machines vied for supremacy right until their demise.
Like many people the one drawback I had with the C64 was the difficultly associated with backing up the games, which came on cassette tapes and had to be loaded via a proprietary data recorder. This was a far cry from the Speccy, which could use almost any old tape recorder, dirt-cheap tapes and leads. If the games didn't load on the Speccy first time a common trick was to alter the equalisation and/or volume, and try again..most times it worked. Owners would often swap stuff on C120 tapes, too, that chewed up in the recorder; you could even see the effect the mangled bit of tape had on the game whilst it loaded. This may seem hard to believe, but games took minutes to load back then, not seconds like today.
A lot of titles were 'platform' games, whereby you run around a 2D map collecting objects to make it to the next level. Then games progressed to using isometric views (anyone remember Glider Rider and Alien Highway?!), but that was about as much as these machines could handle since it was almost entirely CPU-bound. A few games did come out in 3D and 4D, however. Despite their smaller memories - 48K for the Speccy and 64K for the C64 - the games were incredible. Some even had 1,000 rooms and it just goes to show what people could do with so little. What could you do today with 48K of RAM?
Mister g, millions of us lost so much time playing and programming these machines, but we loved every moment. This was something new..something powerful..and it was in our hands. It was also something many of us would get into trouble over, either through nicking games or bunking off school/college/work to play them. The games later came out on 'budget ranges', including compendiums where you could have a variety of titles. Add to this the fact you could get the games from almost anywhere: petrol/gas stations, supermarkets, along with magazines crammed with fine print from start to finish, and you had a cultural phenomena that lasted for years. It was cool that so many people could get into this craze and not feel ripped off.
Even when 16-bit machine like the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST were cornering the market, there was still an active 8-bit user base. It seemed like everyone in the UK was into this technology, so it bridged a lot of social bridges and spring-boarded many careers.
And yet, with all this going on there were still other interests available for those that weren't hooked on playing games such as Manic Miner or Monty Mole..things like films and music, or just going out with your friends. Maybe this was because despite it's popularity this technology was still something new and therefore had yet to mature or even stagnate. I do miss the days of buying cheap computer games and magazines, talking to my friends about the newest thing..swapping C90 tapes
Fortunately I didn't have to wait long to get the same kind of buzz since Commodore went and released the 16-bit wonder machine named Amiga, a machine way ahead of it's time..
Exiting times for many people
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