Commodore Follows Up TV Game With ROM Selling

An anonymous reader writes "Since Commodore recently re-appeared selling a Commodore 64 joystick 'TV game', as previously mentioned on Slashdot Games (the company is now owned by Dutch computer builder Tulip), they're now expanding their efforts, and have set up a legal emulation site where you can buy classic Commodore 64 titles, initially including Epyx and Hewson titles. Apparently, in a later stage, Commodore will release a Gentoo Linux based set top box which plays MP3s and runs Commodore 64 games."

Comments

I wonder how long before

[FunkyRat]

some company just brings about an updated Commodore 64. With modern day integration it seems to me you could easily get a 2.5" harddrive in the old C64 case, modem, ethernet port and even video and TV out ports. Make it dual boot Contiki OS and old school C64 OS and I'd buy it.

No real point to this post, just basking in the glow of potential off-the-shelf nostalgia.

Re:I wonder how long before

[John Harrison]

You wouldn't even need the hard drive. Just use a flash card. How much storage would it take to hold every C=64 game you ever played? I would guess not much. What did the disks hold? 360k? Maybe less? I had a large C=64 game collection on about 200 disks, which I am sure weren't all full. That is about 70MB. So I am sure that a 256 MB flash card could hold every game I ever even thought about playing.

Make it the size of a Palm device with a built in control pad and thumb board. Then add USB ports to hook up the joysticks and a full size keyboard along with a S-Video out so you could hook it up to the TV. Even simpler, have a dock that hooked it up to the TV, keyboard and old-school joysticks.

Oddly I am now willing to pay for games that I pirated as a child.

Gentoo?

[ameoba]

What kind of crackhead decided that Gentoo for an embedded device was a good idea?

I mean, for a static box that does one job & doesn't need any user configuration, what does Gentoo give you? Most of the functionality of Gentoo classifies as 'bloat' on this kind of device.

The same could be said for any real distro, of course.

Bad Economic Model

[blacklily8]

I don't understand companies like Tulip or Cloanto (who's been trying to do the same thing with Amiga). I see them more as rom squatters than people who are serious about supporting the existing retro-computer community. It's all about how they can squeeze a few dollars from some fossils, and, Oh! if someone tries to get around paying the toll, how they bite the hands that feed them! What I don't understand is why these people don't try to add some value to these products. They need to provide another answer than "It's illegal" when someone asks, "Why not just download the ROM for free?" Can Tulip or Cloanto offer *ANYTHING* of value other than the "good conscious" of paying people a toll who had nothing whatsoever to do with the development of these games? I can see value in Cloanto's games in a stick--but selling these old roms is just flat out silly. If I owned the patents or copyrights to this old stuff, the first thing I'd so is release it all into the public domain and spend the rest of my time trying to get people to take advantage of it and build some new markets.