On the occasion of my new book Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer, I am writing The History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects, posted weekly from November 1^st, 2024:

Object #7: The SID Chip – Commodore 64 Music

It is said that writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but nevertheless:  The 6581 SID (Sound Interface Device) chip of the Commodore 64 was designed by Robert Yannes in 1981. According to Yannes, he was inspired primarily by synthesizers, hoping to create a chip for use in other musical instruments.

In practice, the SID chip became the sound chip of the Commodore 64 and has the magical quality that it still sounds modern after 43 years. Why? Because it encapsulates the classic analog synth sound of simple waveforms (pulse, triangle, sawtooth, noise) played with an ADSR envelope, controlling the fade in and out of a particular note. There are also filters and ring modulation facility. The SID chip was an unusual combination of digital and analog components, and different versions and individual chips sound different. Just like analog synthesizers.

Though Yannes had hoped for more voices, time and physical constraints reduced the 6581 to three simultaneous voices (though developers later figured out how to play samples as well). The limited voices gave C64 music its characteristic fast and rhythmic arpeggio style, where chords are played by quickly playing its constituent notes in turn.

Oscilloscope view of Rob Hubbard’s Monty on the Run music.

Rob Hubbard’s Monty on the Run music is among the more famous pieces of C64 music, developing over time, and switching between impressions of different instruments. European video game orchestra events will often include Monty on the Run.

Danish Broadcasting Corporation Symphony C64 game medley

As C64 programming advanced, the famous composers, including Rob Hubbard, Jeroen Tell, Chris Hülsbeck, Ben Daglish, and Johannes Bjerregaard, learned to modify the properties of the individual voice on the fly, such that a given note could be a combination of multiple waveforms, or perhaps pitch bend or feature vibrato. As the image shows, individual voices were used to combine many waveforms, giving the expressive quality of later C64 music.

C64 game music was also distributed separately, ripped, from the original games they came from, and the C64 thus served as a media distribution platform before there was anything like MP3s.

What was your favorite C64 music?

 

Coming December 20^th: Object #8 – Floppy disk (with pirated games)

 

 

On the occasion of my upcoming book Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer, I am writing The History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects, posted weekly from November 1^st, 2024:

Object #5: Zzap!64 and other Magazines

On the magazine cover, a spaceship swoops across the glowing city, laser beams across the sky summarily disposing of enemy crafts. Zzap!64 was the preeminent UK Commodore 64 game magazine, launched in 1985, published until 1994 ( “Commodore Force” in the end), and reanimated as commemorative issues and annuals from 2002 and onwards.

Early covers, by artist Oliver Frey, borrowed from the world of fantasy posters, obviously not referring to the actual images on the computer screen, but to the imagined worlds of games and computers. Frey’s covers often commented on the games reviewed (as in Dropzone on this cover).

 

Why magazines? Obviously pre-internet, and absent widespread use of BBSs, magazines were the news sources and the public sphere of games and computers. At launch, Zzap!64 declared itself to be a pure C64 game magazine free of four things: free of other computers, non-game applications, nerdy programming, and type-in program listings. (All made their way into the magazine over the years.)

Loved for its cheeky, very UK irreverence where it is impossible to write even a single image caption without some twist, the magazine promoted its young reviewers, whose cartoon images would appear with speech bubbles, giving personal and sometimes contradicting opinions on games.

 

Commodore 64 games were usually so challenging as to be impossible – playtesting was not yet formalized or required – and especially European magazines regularly published cheat codes in the form of programs and POKEs that would modify the game program, making the games playable and completeable after all.

US Compute’s Gazette (1993-1990/95) was the magazine for the serious computer user – accommodating games, yes, but neither giving too much space to game reviews, nor going overboard with technical tricks. I think of Compute’s Gazette as the truly respectable of the magazines here.

German 64’er Magazin (1984-1996) was also a general C64 magazine, covering everything from word processors (“how to use the C64 instead of a typewriter”) to music, games, and programming. 64’er was far more technical than Zzap!64 or Compute’s Gazette, covering the demoscene, discussing graphical tricks in detail, and featuring classified ads that early on offered clearly pirated software.

As the only viable mass distribution channel for software, 1980s magazines featured interminable program listings for the user to type in, offering free software at the cost of typing and proofreading, but also offering the bonus of learning about programming.

Magazines were your source for what was going on, for what to buy, how to program, how to talk about the games, and how to cheat.

What were your favorite magazines?

Coming December 6^th: Object #6 – Wizball and other scrolling games

 

On the occasion of my upcoming book Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer, I am writing The History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects, posted weekly from November 1^st, 2024:

“Another Visitor. Stay a while, stay forever!“

The hammy voice of the evil scientist greets the player. The 1984 Impossible Mission by Dennis Caswell at Epyx was a technical marvel when it came out.

The “Another Visitor” sample and the “Destroy Him by Robots!” sample were shocking because the Commodore 64 did not have any facility for playing sampled sound. The sample was played by quickly changing the volume of the sound chip, creating clicks of different volume. The animation, based on pictures from a book about athletics, was fluid and expressive, combining multiple high-resolution sprites of different color.

Sound and graphics were amazing and high tech, exploiting and showcasing your C64’s abilities, making it the game you would show visiting friends to cement that yes, the C64 was the most advanced game platform.

The game, on the other hand, was painfully difficult. You die constantly by falling down, running out of time, or merely grazing an enemy robot. This was normal. Yet Impossible Mission was also inspired by Rogue, and the layout of the levels was randomized at every playthrough, which did not really become mainstream until the release of Spelunky in 2008.

Impossible Mission came on tapes or floppy disks. The exciting-looking box evoked sci-fi and the cold war and the pictures were – as everybody understood – nothing like the actual game. Inside the box was a manual, as was the custom, and the tape itself.

To play the game, you’d put the tape into Commodore Datasette deck, rewinding the tape before typing “LOAD” and pressing play.

(Photo by Evan-Amos, public domain).

Most users also had stacks of regular audio tapes onto which pirated software had been recorded, and the little counter on the Datasette was paramount for finding the location where the game was stored, noting the location on the tape inlay. If you had a tape deck, you would do this a lot.

(Imgur)

Some radio stations even broadcast C64 programs on air, giving a wall of modem-like screeches to be recorded on a regular tape recorder, and then inserted in the Datasette.

What are your memories of games and tapes?

 

Coming November 29^th:  Object #5 – Zzap!64 and other magazines.