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h look, you’ve dredged up the
brownest computer ever.
Sure, the C64 wasn’t pretty. It had
chunky brown keys that you had
to smash as if your fingers were tiny hammers.
These were baked into a beige case, because
by law every computer from the USA had to
be that colour in the 1980s. And then there
were the graphics, which were often various
shades of murk. But let’s not get bogged
down in the negatives, because this computer
didn’t become the biggest-selling micro of its
era by accident – there are loads of ways in
which it was amazing.Sorry, wasn’t listening, I was reading about
the ZX Spectrum – a proper micro.
Ah, it’s like all the ’80s playground arguments
never went away and they’ve now found a
new home here on the last page of Stuff. Yes,
the ZX Spectrum was a decent piece of kit,
with some superb games. But every Speccy
owner would go wide-eyed on hearing tunes
pumped out of the C64’s SID chip, felt pangs
of jealousy at the use of joysticks rather than
rubber keys, and could only dream of their
system running arcade classics like Turrican II,
Mayhem in Monsterland and Paradroid even
half as ably as the C64 could.We’d console ourselves with non-brown
vector games that played at more than 1fps...
Don’t even trying throwing Elite at us. No-one
in their right mind plays that on a Spectrum
these days. But some C64 classics still pack
a punch, as evidenced by the C64DTV and the
recent C64 Mini. And a full-size take on the
latter is due in December, with switchable
modes, HDMI out, a revamped joystick and
that very brown keyboard. Maybe that last
part’s not the smartest move, but we can’t
wait to have another crack at Gridrunner
while fending off angry Spectrum owners
with a rolled-up copy of Zzap!64 magazine.
[^ WordsCraigG
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]RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES 1982Commodore 64
O
Electric
fright orchestra
Tunes from the C64
have formed the heart
of a decades-long retro
remix scene, which recently
surpassed itself with a full
orchestral concert
courtesy of 8-Bit
Symphony.