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The rarely updated blog of Joel Dixon
Viewing blogs posted in December, 2007
Sunday, December 09, 2007
My Video Gaming History - Part I: The Commodore 64
# Posted by Joel Dixon at 09/12/2007 14:39:54Updated by Joel Dixon at 20/12/2007 13:57:25
Video games have played a big part of my life. NHL 94 encouraged a love for the sport of Ice Hockey. Samantha Fox's Strip Poker and others have introduced me to digital bewbies during my important formative years. And Distruptor for the PlayStation was an important game for me, as it was the first time that my older brother beat me to the end of the game (crushing). I've decided to do a little retrospective of my video game history, and hope that some of you will enjoy the walk down memory lane.
LOAD "*",8,1
This actually looks a lot like our system. Getting the disk drive was a huge time saver!
Excluding some generic "Game and watch" clones, the Commodore 64 was my first real introduction to video gaming - and I liked it! The Commodore was released in January of 1982 as a system designed to offer advanced hardware at a cheap(ish) price. I really took to the system (as did the rest of my family) and was sitting in front of it whenever it was "my turn". Turns got to be a bit of a problem whenever a cool game was acquired, with lots of fights between the family for play time. I can vividly remember my eldest brother waking up at 5 or 6 am before school to get a few extra hours playing California Games. I also remember feeling cheated because I was unable to wake up earlier than him!
You may have noted that I used the word "acquired" in the above paragraph - not many of our games were actually store bought. Pirating was rife - my eldest brother had a friend, who had a "contact", someone that provided us with as many copied Commodore 64 games that we could play. Those that know me now know that I am against piracy of any kind (except for amusing pirate jokes), but back in the day I didn't know any better. FastHackem fueled our piracy, allowing a game disk to be copied in 3 minutes instead of around 20.
That Commodore 64 was also life changing as it introduced me to the pastime of Basic programming. Basic in more than a name, my first program was probably something like this:
Basic Code:
> 10 PRINT "JOEL IS RAD!"
> 20 GOTO 10
> RUN
I also loved reading through the Basic books that were provided with the 64, and typing out the hundred line example programs. Armed with this extra programming knowledge, my coding skills were greatly expanded:
Basic Code:
10> FOR I = 1 TO 10(the first two lines is now an obvious loop. I had no idea what it did, but included it in my own programs because it looked cool)
20> NEXT I
30> INPUT "ENTER YOUR NAME: ", N$
40> PRINT N$; ", DID YOU KNOW THAT JOEL IS RAD?"
50> GOTO 40
RUN
For me, the Commodore 64 was the golden age of video gaming, and it kept me entertained even after we received more modern systems (such as consoles). A pictures is worth 1,000 words, so this video of 100 Commodore games should be worth a fair bit. Go to the YouTube page to see the list of games displayed.
100 Commodore games in 10 minutes
# Posted in the Gaming section and tagged as: Commodore 64
This is the 1st in the My Video Gaming History series
Part I - My Video Gaming History - Part I: The Commodore 64Part II - My Video Gaming History - Part II: The Sega Master System
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