Breadbin-shaped family computer

Often, the first computer to grace the family home would not be bought as a present for the kids, but borrowed as another toy for a tinkering dad. Commodore Business Machines had already dangled their PET, one of the top “take home from work for the weekend” computers, in front of inquisitive parents across the globe, but it was with the introduction of the VIC-20 and Commodore 64 in the very early ‘Eighties that they cornered the younger (i.e. games-obsessed) micro market¹.

More eccentrically-named than their closest competitors, Commodore computers also pretty much outclassed any in their price range. As any owner wouldn’t tire of banging on about, the C64 had much better – that is to say, more arcade-like – graphics than the Spectrum, thanks to something called “sprites”². Its sound chip was also more sophisticated, leading some very zingy music to accompany the on-screen action rather than the usual bleeps and boops.

On top of that, the C64 also had a purpose-built matching cream lozenge colour-scheme tape deck or floppy disk drive, a “proper” keyboard and that extra wodge of actually-not-very-important-in-the-event DRAM memory (a full 16K more than the 48K Spectrum; still some 6000 times less powerful than the average 3G mobile phone). But it did mean that a few classic programs were unique to what modern technologists would deem “the platform”: Dig Dug, Gilligan’s Gold and the assault-on-Hoth-apeing Attack Of The Mutant Camels to name but three³.

More than any other micro, though, the C64 was positioned as a grown-up’s office tool with all kinds of spreadsheet, word processing and accounts applications available. All that processing power! However, once computer and accompanying colour portable telly took up residence in the spare room, so did we. Come on, it was 1982! We could close the curtains, watch the first edition of The Tube on Channel 4 then play Defender ‘til bed time. You can catalogue your record collection later, dad.

Worthy, wealthy households instead chose to purchase the distinctly public service remit BBC Micro, which at least had a couple of Sunday morning computer literacy TV shows to back it up - although precious little in the way of games at first. Price wars and a failure to keep up with the increased specifications in the industry did for most of these machines in the end. Time has been kind, however, and a thriving retro scene keeps emulated versions of the C64 and all its contemporaries alive online somewhere out there on the Internet.