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When I got my first C-64 as a kid in 1983, I knew assembly, but didn't have the $30 for the macro assembler cartridge. So I wrote my own, which supported the complete 6502 instruction set along with address labels, and an edlin style editor. In Commodore BASIC. I used it to program a simple Q*bert game using sprites. I guess it was the best $30 dollars I didn't spend.

Throughout the 1980's, I had C-64s and C-128s, and the graphics and sound were awesome. In 1987, the VIC-II graphic architecture was 5 years old, but the graphics and sound still beat almost everything else except the Amiga. There were a lot of great games I played then, Gunship, Defender of the Crown, Aliens, California Games, others

I just downloaded a C-64 emulator and the ROMS for some of my favorite games from the 1980s. The first time I tried Aliens, the graphics and sound seemed cheesy. Then I remembered that PCs had 4 color CGA graphics and no sound back then. I started playing the game, and immediately forgot about the graphics. The first level on the planet has you controlling 4 marines in the aliens nest on a split screen. I was addicted again! In California Games, I can even get my skateboarder sprite to catch air off the screen, just like 20 years ago.

You can get a working C64 emulator here:

http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64/

... for a used C64.

There are quite a number of those wonderful things called emulators :

http://frodo.cebix.net/
http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64/
http://www.viceteam.org/

and even a Java one (in fact, it's an applet) : http://www.dreamfabric.com/c64/

Download win UAE and CC64.

There were some great two/multi players

Wizball
Bruce Lee
Defender of the Crown
Mario Bros [orignal version!]

Hope this helps!

I cut my computing teeth on a Commodore C=64 back in 1985. I was 5 years old, and didn't have the slightest clue what anything was.

The machine was 2nd-hand, had an Altai tape deck instead of the Commodore one, and (more unusually - none of my friends with C=64's ever had one) also included a Commodore 1541 5.25" floppy disk drive.

I learned how to write some BASIC programs on the built-in copy of Commodore BASIC; nothing fancy, but enough to get a head start. I'm still not any good at programming, really...

The machine really was awesome for gaming; some of my favourite games are still C=64-only releases and have had no modern-day equivelants - classics such as Street Beat, where you play a Rastafarian with a ghetto blaster, and you have to find songs for your record label, and show how popular the songs are by making people dance. All the while, people are trying to kill you, break your ghettoblaster, steal your tapes, and what's worse, sometimes your record label won't like the songs you bring them! True classic.

Then there was the wonderful text/graphic adventure game, "Twin Kingdom Valley". I spent many hours trying to beat that one (never did). Also, "Knight Games", where you participate in medieval sporting events - sword fights, pike fights, crossbow and archery competitions... beautiful graphics, wonderfully detailled, and lots of fun to play.

Other favourites :-

- Way of the Exploding Fist
- Fist II
- IK+
- Ace of Aces
- The Dambusters
- Ranarama
- Archon
- Elite
- Parallax
- Rescue on Fractalus
- Paperboy
- Desert Fox
- Skyfox
- Zaxxon
- Super Zaxxon
- Tapper
- Spy Hunter
- Up 'n' Down

Think of all the major game franchises these days that have their roots in the C=64 - the "Microsoft Flight Simulator" series started life as Sublogic's "Flight Simulator", which was a C=64 release. "The Sims" is a far more advanced version of "Little Computer People" (a.k.a. "House-On-A-Disk"). There will be many others.

For all you C=64 lovers, whose C=64's have sadly gone to Silicon Heaven, download the CCS64 emulator (http://www.computerbrains.com/ccs64/), and find a whole bunch of C=64 games and applications over at http://www.c64.com/

My C=64 was quietly retired after we got an Amiga A500 for Christmas in 1990 - the A500 gave similar computing joy for a long time thereafter, but that's another story (we're not being asked about our 2nd computers, after all).

CCS64 has better emulation of a real 1541 drive. Most fastloaders I've seen work with it.

URL: http://dunkels.com/adam/contiki/links.html

System information and emulators

Commodore 64/128

The Commodore 64 is based on the 6510 CPU, which is a 6502-derived 8-bit CPU. It has 64k of RAM and 16k ROM which includes a BASIC interpreter and some basic I/O services. Graphics is provided by the VIC chip which has 16 colors and a maximum resolution of 320x200 in hi-res mode. It provides a 40x25 raster of characters in character mode. The three voices of digital sound is produced by the SID chip.

The Commodore 128 is an extended version of the Commodore 64 that contains a 8510 CPU which is capable of 2 MHz operation and can address 128k RAM (hence the name Commodore 128). It also has a Commodore 64 compatibility mode which is extremely similar to a regular C64 but with a few minor differences.

The SuperCPU is a 20 MHz 16-bit 65816-based computer that is plugged into the back of the Commodore 64 or 128. It uses the C64 keyboard and joysticks for input and the VIC and SID chips for audiovisual output. The SuperCPU is capable of addressing several megabytes of memory and is usually used together with a 16 megabytes RAM expansion board.

There are no SuperCPU emulators avaliable.

• The VICE emulator is capable of emulating a large number of Commodore machines. It emulates the C64, the C128, the VIC20, most of the PET models, and the CBM-II. VICE runs under Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and a number of other host systems.
  
• Joakim Eriksson's Web C64 emulator, written in Java, runs as an applet within a web browser.
  
• Per Håkan Sundell's CCS64 emulator works under Windows and DOS.
  
• The ec64 emulator is developed for Linux and was originally written entirely in x86 assembler.
  
• An article by Simon N Goodwin about C64 emulators.
  
• The Commodore emulators category in the Dmoz has more links.
  

Commodore 64/128

There are plenty of alternative operating systems for the C64, mostly written in 6502 assembler. Some of them are far from complete, however, and only appear as dark shadows on a few web pages - MagerValp's SMOS and my own osT are among those.

• GEOS from 1986 probably is the most well-known graphical operating system for the C64. It is still sold commercially by CMDKEY.com.
  
• LUnix NG is an open-source multi-tasking operating system with TCP/IP/PPP-support, a *nix-like command shell, and a number of *nix-like utilities such as ls and cp.
• Craig Bruce's ACE is a text-based single-tasking operating system for the 64 and the 128. It provides a *nix-like command shell, a text-editor, a terminal program for the SwiftLink RS232 interface, as well as device drivers for a lot of devices
  
• GeckOS/A65 is a multi-tasking operating system with TCP/IP support and a *nix-like command shell.
  
• Wheels is a version of GEOS that requires RAM expansion to run.

With its 20 MHz and megabytes of memory, the SuperCPU is powerful enough to run fully-fledged graphical operating systems that rival early Machintosh or Microsoft Windows systems.

• Wings is a TCP/IP-enabled graphical operating system for the SuperCPU. It includes a MOD music player, JPEG viewer, web page download utility, etc.
• JOS is an older version of Wings.
  

TCP/IP and PPP connectivity

To surf the web, send or read email, etc., the first step is to actually get in touch with the Internet. This requires both physical access to an ISP, either via a modem and a phone-line or an Ethernet broadband connection, and the TCP/IP software running on the C64.

There are a number of programs that make it possible to reach the Internet with a C64/C128.

• LUnix NG contains a TCP/IP stack and a PPP implementation which makes it possible to reach the Internet using a modem and a dial-up ISP.
  
• GeckOS/A65 also contains a TCP/IP stack, but no PPP dialer.
  
• My own uIP TCP/IP stack has been used for some time to run a web server on a Commodore 64. uIP currently does not include a PPP dialer.
  
• Novaterm 10 contains a PPP dialer and enough TCP/IP code to be able to run telnet over the Internet.
  

SuperCPU

All of the above mentioned SuperCPU operating systems have TCP/IP support.

• The Wave is a web browser for the SuperCPU (and not for the Commodore 64/128 as the web page claims) that runs under the Wheels operating systems. Here is another page with information about The Wave (that also falsely claims that The Wave is for the Commodore 64/128). The latter page also includes screenshots of The Wave in action.
  

Small graphical user-interfaces (GUIs)

User interfaces for embedded systems range from the simple buttons on the front of a washing machine to those of fully fledged web browser type interfaces on information stations. The underlying technology varies from simple electronic circuits to full-scale PC compatibles.

• PicoGUI is a GUI architecture designed for embedded systems to desktop machines. It does not require any supporting GUI system and can be used on anything from graphical screens to text based systems. Their smallest target system are handheld terminals and the compiled object code size is on the order of hundreds of kilobytes.
  
• Microwindows/NanoGUI is a graphical user interface system designed to run without support from an underlying system. On 16-bit systems Microwindows is about 64k large.
  

The smallest web browsers are usually specially designed for the limitations of embedded systems and other specialized computers such as car navigation systems, set-top boxes and medical equipment. There are also a few small web browsers for old DOS PCs available.

• Interniche's NicheView Portable Embedded Web Browser is probably the smallest full-featured web browser around with its 35 kilobytes code footprint. There is also an additional JavaScript module available.
  
• AU-systems' AU Mobile Internet Browser supports both HTML/TCP/IP and WML/WAP as well as SSL. It occupies 340 kilobytes of code (plus an additional 190 kilobytes for the protocol stacks) and uses 5 kilobytes of RAM when idle (plus 8 kilobytes used by the protocol stacks). Extra RAM is used when downloading web pages.
  
• The Fusion WebPilot Embedded Micro-Browser supports much of the features found in modern web browsers including frames, authentication, and JavaScript. The web page does not specify memory footprint.
  
• MicroDigial's Graphical MicroBrowser supports tables, frames, images as well as FTP as uses 260 kilobytes of code memory and requires a minimum of 210 kilobytes of RAM apart from that. A demo version is available.
  
• The 2net Alice Web Browser is intended for handheld computers and PC based architectures and requires 400 kilobyte of free RAM and 200 kilobytes of code memory. It includes a TCP/IP stack.
  
• WebBoy is a fully-fledged browser with SSL support intended for 386 DOS boxes with more than 4 megabytes of memory. Includes a TCP/IP stack.
  
• The Arachne web browser runs under MS-DOS or Linux and requires at least 1 megabyte of memory. Does not include a TCP/IP/PPP stack.
  
• Lynx is probably the most well-known text-based web browser around. It is ported to many different operating systems and architectures including MS-DOS.
  
• The Off by One Web Browser has been labeled as the smallest web browser ever, but is quite large in comparison with other small web browsers. It is 1.1 megabytes large and requires support from an underlying Windows operating system.
  
• Mirko Sobe's BOSS-X HTML browser for 8-bit Ataris is not a full web browser, but an off-line HTML viewer with hyperlinking abilities written in three days.
  
• The pre-alpha v0.3 GEMWeb browser supports 640x480x16 VGA.
  
• The Atari Phoenix Web Browser is a non-existant vapor-ware web browser project intended for the 8-bit Ataris.
  

Piracy can only be halted by popular respect for copyright law. This respect is born in people when they see how copyright benefits society. Century-long copyright is clearly harming society, so to convince people to stop pirating we need shorter terms.

DRM won't get us anywhere, what with darknet and all. On the contrary, DRM degrades the value of legally purchased products as compared to pirated. (Not to mention fair use, open source etc.)

I have no illusion that we can stop piracy altogether, but if copyright actually had obvious benefits piracy could become socially stigmatized. Piracy would only be acceptable in situations where it didn't hurt - like "How am I supposed to pay for the vic20 games i downloaded in a fit of nostalgia?". Of course, this would also need a bit of propaganda on the benefits of copyright, but I think the ??AA's could fix that once they've painted themselves out of the corner again...

I recently downloaded CCS64 to be able to play Paradroid once again.
I don't know, but this will remain my ultimate favourite game ever. Can you believe, that a videogame is still the same big fun to play after almost 15 years? I haven't seen anything like this ever since.

Of course, newer games are fun too and looking at the graphics and sounds of Paradroid, there have been many improvements since then.
On the other hand, there was a version for the Amiga (Paradroi '90) which had better graphics. Though, it just didn't have "it".
I think, the main reason that the C64-Version is more fun is in the fact, that all robots were symbolized the same as balls with a three-digit number. It was left to your own fantasy how those robots really looked. At least, this is why I like it more.
Maybe someone will come up with a totally refurbished 3D-Version of that game. I claim it still won't be that much fun.

Like the original 2D-Lemmings were far more fun to play than the latter 3D-Versions.