The Commodore 64 turned 40 this January

[Gamevet]

I got my C64 @1985. I got it from some guy selling it in the local newspaper for $200. I would later get the disk drive for a little bit more, from a mail order service. It was my go to gaming system until @1989, when I got an Amiga 500 and the NES.

I checked out this cool video on the making of the machine on YouTube.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WBqGyf8eQVk&t=78s

[Greg2600]

Saw that video a couple days, very nice. I was given an 800 at one point probably not long after you got a C64, but I was really too young to understand it. Within a couple years though, I began to see that the C64 my friends' uncle next door had was much cooler than the dumb Apple IIe's we had at school! Games were far better, and he had stacks of bootleg discs, ha ha. The last time I saw a C64 in action was probably 1991 or so, until Joe had one setup at the DP store for NAVA a few times. I got one myself from eBay for like $35 CIB plus shipping in summer 2013. I also got one of those cheapy SD2IEC things and ran games off that. The following year I was able to get onto the list for the Ultimate 1541-II which was like $150 at the time, but well worth it, because that thing runs everything. I've had some fun with it, really neat to run the old cracked roms with the off the wall 80's techo music .

Recently of course, Sonic the Hedgehog was ported to C64 and it's mighty impressive. It requires Commodore's RAM Expansion Unit (REU) or something equivalent (such as the 1541-II) to run though, but I expect we'll see more and more sophisticated games being ported/written in the future.

[Gamevet]

I saw that video. It kind of cool to see.

There’s still a bunch of games coming out for the C64. There was even a version of Sydney Hunter released a couple of years ago.

[Tron 2.0]

When i was a kid i didn't have a C64 but i all ways knew some one that did.Any chance i get to play a game on it i took the opportunity you gotta love that SID chip for it's music and sure was step above,2600.Years ago i did get a C64 1702 monitor used but that's it and i mostly use it for older consoles that have composite.Though i do have a C64 mini when it's price dropped a few years ago.

[YoshiM]

I grew up CoCo but a friend in middle school had one. He loved to rub it in my face (which, as I look back, he liked to do to people with the stuff he got) that it was better than my CoCo. My only saving grace in the argument (at least from my perspective) was that I actually USED the computer for other things, like programming. I told him programming was easier on my machine than his, but that didn't make a blip on his radar.

Many years later, I got a Commodore monitor, a C-64 C, disk drive and a bunch of disks for $15. The computer was interesting but it didn't really grab me. I think I traded/sold/gave it to someone here in the forums at a Midwest Gaming Classic. I still have the monitor, though I think it needs recapping. I'm debating if I want to do that or not.

[Gamevet]

My dad had a 32k CoCo. The games were pretty bad for it, with the best being mega-bug, or something like that.

The C64 had a ton of great arcade ports, that were often better than those on the Colecovision. It also had all of the TSR RPGs, along with the likes of The Bard’s Tale and Phantasie. There was also a really cool space ship captain game callled PSI 5 Trading company. You hired your crew and had to manage them as you took flight across the Galaxy, evading pirates and keeping your cargo intact.

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

IIRC the C-64 was announced on January 7, 1982 at Winter CES, but didn't actually go on sale until August 1982, and didn't become successful until 1983. But yes, the C-64 was feature-complete by January 1982 so I guess January 7th was its 40th birthday. Happy birthday!

January 1982 was just a year into the VIC-20's lifespan, so as far as Commodore's business that year, the focus was still firmly on the VIC-20 (which peaked in 1982, and was made until January 1985) and even the last-generation PET models, which were in their last year of production. The early production C-64's had some design flaws that I think were solved by 1983. With the PET gone and the C-64's price dropped to $300, the computer really took off that year.

My dad (born in 1968) had a C-64 as a teen himself. Now he's a computer programmer.