Looking Back At the Commodore 64

An anonymous reader writes "It's the 30th anniversary of the Commodore 64 this week — news that has made more than a few gaming enthusiasts feel their age. This story looks back at some of the peculiarities that made the machine so special — a true mass-market computer well into the era where a computer in every home was a novelty idea, not a near reality."

Comments

Re:It was the computer for us commoner kids

[hazydave]

Good match... most of us on the Amiga team at Commodore weren't all that well socialized, either. We had a habit of throwing marketing people into any nearby body of water, and generally, raising hell. Fun times, good computers, good memories.

I was actually overseeing the last version of the Commodore 64, Rev E, though most of the cost-reduction work was done in Japan back then. They had nearly everything but the CSG (formerly MOS Technology) chips on a big gate array. The cost of a C64, boxed for retail, was supposedly as low as $35.00 near the end. Little wonder Commodore kept selling these long into the Amiga era.