I've said this for years... There was no "gaming crash", people just started playing games on the C-64.
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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...and a high percentage of those were copied illegally. I'm not judging, just stating a fact
We literally had hundreds of games and had bought maybe ten of them.
Your percentage of legal games was probably still higher than average 😉
Here there was no sensible way to buy C64 games till the early 90's. Late 80's you could find few games "under the counter" in shops specialised in electronics, if you asked. They were usually expensive garbage and picked by someone, because of the cover art. There was always the one obscure flight sim for adults that was also shit.
So 100% illegal copies.
If somebody found a good game it was quickly bartered and copied to everyone else.
That’s were I started to get a big friends base in my neighborhood. Visit friends, play some games together, and copy floppy disks.
I loved those starter pics and animations of the hacker groups.
good old times. those "starter animations" are called "intros". this one has my favorite SID music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j069Eve63iY
I kinda want a modern computer that comes with a book similar to how Commodore included one that had simple instructions on how to do pretty much everything, like making simple music all the way to programming it
Terry Davis tried to do for the PC with TempleOS what the C64's BASIC and KERNAL did for its hardware.
Terry was all the more a mad lad because he didn't get to create the hardware spec he was working with.
Could you imagine someone doing the same as Commodore did but starting with 64-bit era hardware?
Taking it another direction, there are free and paid "easy programming" platforms that provide a sandbox not unlike a modern version of what it was like to program a C64.
At a pinch, DOSBox and a copy of QBASIC might suffice.
you're right. nowadays a beginner would have to sift through a bunch of websites to figure out how to do it.
I wish it was just a website. You can't even download Android Studio or any other starter package without being forced into some kind of AI bloated IDE just to write "hello world".
I mean.... You can still technically use Eclipse if you're a masochist.... Android studio is head and shoulders above it despite all of the Jetbrains nonsense though
If you want to make a website, you still only need a text editor
If you want to make a C++/rust/go/python/Haskell/brainfuck application for something that isn't a phone? You still only need a text editor and a compiler
Literally, the new Commodore 64. Comes with a book that teaches you Basic.
And on that note, the Commodore X16 from The 8 Bit Guy is built from the ashes of what would have been a C64 successor, post 128. Documentation available is extensive. Of course, it doesn't ship with a spiral bound manual, so I guess it doesn't even apply, but, ya know. It's a cool little thing to tinker with.
The 8-bit guy is controversial. From VICE's article ( https://www.vice.com/en/article/8-bit-guy-ibm-7496-executive-workstation-computer-reset/ ) "[...] touting open carry in Texas, antagonizing the anti-gun Moms Demand Action nonprofit, and statements about gun control that have made many fans question whether they can keep watching his computer content."
Only thing is he is very aware of this and has since stopped posting content like that, nearly a decade ago, and has removed any of it from his channel, and never talks about it.
He went overboard, seemingly realized his screw up, and stopped with the gun crap. I wouldn't be following him if he was still posting the gun stuff, but that was even before I found him in 2017.
Unlike a lot of those kind of gun people, he at least seems self aware. Again, this is only since I've started watching his content in 2017. No idea how had it was prior to that.
Yes, this would be awesome, but for the love of all that is holy can it please not be BASIC?
Why wouldn’t it be? It’s meant to run all the software written for C64.
For a C64 emulator, sure, but we can do better now.
Petite who want something better probably shouldn't be shopping for a commodore 64.
In fact, recreating the computing experience of the Commodore 64 (and BBC Micro as they are a British foundation) was one of the specific purposes of the Raspberry Pi.
I don't know about supplies in rest of the world, but typically the rpi "kits" that include the book seem to be very limited and rarely in stock.
I think the book, at least older versions, can be found on ebay though. I think its just a basic into to python and GPIO so the earlier editions are probably fine.
Not a console, but PICO-8 can be installed on lots of stuff and uses lua.
Also TIC-80.
Cool, I didn't know there was an open-source alternative. Thanks!
The book that came with the C-64 was a good primer for first-time computer users, but I ended up needing more and bought the "Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide," which was far more useful, and then "Mapping the Commodore 64" and "Machine Language for Beginners."
Yes, I still have them. You never know... :D
Unfortunately, that is not really possible.
The UEFI standard, a pdf that describes in detail the unified system that all motherbpards use during the boot process, is 1200+ pages long. And that's only one of the many subsystems in a modern system (that gigantic pdf tells you nothinf about PCI, about ACPI and usb, nor any other hardware peripheral). Also, since you are talking about a modern system, you also would need kernel, drivers and operating system calls documentation. All of these exist (for an open source OS like linux, and if you follow the aforementioned standards), but bundling them in a book, and keeping them uodated, would be just impossible.
I beg to differ. They just asked for a book that explains "how to do pretty much anything" (admittedly pretty vague). i'm assuming they mean things like browsing the internet, composing simple music, editing photos etc. You can do that without knowing any of the things you mentioned - they are part of most operating systems today, so the book would just need to go to that level.And when it comes to programming, the book could just explain how to code simple stuff for example in JavaScript in the browser's "developers tools" (or equivalent).
I believe a company that tried that... would be a pile of flames, rubble and pitchforks in minutes.
You want to get some computer experts to agree on the best language, and IDE to start with, or do we need to include every one... then deciding the order.
"The Console That Wasn't"
The 64GS enters the chat
The 64GS was one of Commodore's last gasps at trying to make some money using the 8-bit parts they still had left in stock. The whole thing was a disaster.
It wasn't based on the C64. It was a C64. Without a keyboard and some of the other ports missing. A fact that came to bite anyone who tried a C64 cartridge game that needed keyboard input.
And IIRC one of the games that came bundled with it was a game like that.
They were at least smart enough to have the BASIC startup pointer (the one that otherwise caused READY. to appear) in the ROM patched to go to a neat little graphic telling people to turn it off, plug in a game and turn it back on again.
What Commodore saved by releasing the GS, the customer ultimately paid by needing to buy games in a format more expensive than disk or tape that would run on a regular C64.
... and given the time period, lots of people were buying PCs and offloading their regular C64 hardware and a ton of games for the price of the GS and its handful of games. And that C64 would run any GS game that was likely to come out.