A History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects #12: The Commodordion – two C64s = one accordion

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

Linus Åkesson’s Commodordion

The final object: In the very first post of this “History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects” series, I talked about the Commodore 64 itself – the iconic beige machine. Since then, I have explored ten other objects, from games and floppy disks to cartridges, BASIC programming, music, magazines, and even a paper invitation to a demo party.

It is now 43 years since the Commodore 64 was introduced at the 1982 Consumer Electronics Show. Amazingly, it went on sale the same year as the first CD player.

The C64 is now a historical device, but its story isn’t over. Users and developers are still finding new uses for it. When I started writing Too Much Fun in 2022, the charts for best demos and best games on CSDb and Lemon64 were dominated by old releases. Today, most top spots belong to new creations. There is a real resurgence of activity on the Commodore 64.

There also is a culture of Commodore 64 hardware experimentation. For my final object, I choose Swedish hardware hacker and musician Linus Åkesson’s 2022 Commodordion. It is a charming, musical, technically impressive, and obviously absurd project, making an accordion by combining two C64s connected by a bellows constructed from floppy disks.

Åkesson’s work exemplifies the continued fascination with the C64. It is about discovering new tricks and properties of the C64, Amiga, and other hardware, it is about programming expansive and minimal demos, making new hardware. Here the hardware is sometimes musical instruments used for musical performances.

Of course, the C64’s resurgence is also fueled by the availability of high-quality emulators. As I discuss in Too Much Fun, you can now experience the C64 without needing the original hardware. But this easy access makes projects like the Commodordion even more appealing, a way to connect with the physicality of the machine and experience it in a completely new way.

What song is the Commodordion playing? Ragtime tune The Entertainer by Scott Joplin, which has its own C64 history as music for excruciatingly difficult game China Miner.

The Commodordion symbolizes how exploring the Commodore 64 today is not just nostalgia. The C64 makes us think about forgotten pasts, re-evaluating our current relationship to technology, and blending ideas from different eras to create something entirely new.

Thank you for reading
Jesper Juul
Copenhagen, January 2025

A History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects #11: Turrican II – keeping up with the Amiga

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:

The final boss in Turrican II for the Commodore Amiga (source)

By 1991, the Commodore 64 was waning as a commercial platform – yet games were still coming out, especially in Europe. There had been little reason to expect that the C64 would be produced for so many years, and Commodore had assumed that the Commodore Amiga would be the replacement.

Launched as a professional computer in 1985 (Amiga 1000) and later as a consumer model in 1987 (Amiga 500), the Amiga was technologically in a completely different league. Designed by Jay Miner and the team behind Atari’s 8-bit computers, the Amiga had a faster CPU, digitized sound, a graphical multitasking OS, and a graphics system geared towards hires, multilayered and fast-moving graphics.

Where the original 1990 Turrican was a C64-first release, Turrican II was released in 1991 for the Amiga and later for the C64, PC, and other platforms. According to interviews with developer Manfred Trenz, Turrican II development started on the C64, but this platform apparently was no longer the primary focus. In this way, the space between Turrican I and II is the moment where the C64 became the secondary platform for the developer. The Turrican games also mark the time where the C64 action-adventure tradition discussed previously became influenced by Japanese action games too.

How would the C64 version stack up to other platforms? As the Zzap!64 review stated, “This game is the sort of program you’d expect … on some exotic, super expensive Japanese console. … The walkers are terrific too, they look like Amiga characters”. While the hardware of competing platforms was improving, C64 developers were also improving their skills, sometimes with inspiration from the demoscene.

The final boss in Turrican II for the Commodore 64 (source)

Developers were trying to keep up with more capable platforms, especially with the Amiga. In C64 reviews, the recurring question in the late 1980s and early 1990s became, “how good is it, compared to the Amiga version?” – or to a newer computer or console? This was raised for games (Defender of the Crown, Lemmings), user interfaces (the graphical GEOS interface), and demos.

In Too Much Fun, I call this the Fourth Life of the C64, characterized by anxiety about the status of the machine. But that anxiety was to dissipate, as I will discuss next week.

Did you worry that the C64 could no longer keep up with newer machines? When did you stop worrying?

Coming Jan 17th: Object #12 – The Commodordion – two C64s as a musical instrument

A History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects #10: You are Invited to a Demo Party

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:

I have told this Commodore 64 history through objects. And indeed, the C64’s commercial life ended before the immaterial internet became widely available. Though dial-up bulletin boards (BBS) gradually made it possible to communicate over telephone lines, the more or less underground (and more or less illicit) technical culture of the C64 was tangible and completely physical.

Parties started taking place during the late 1980s especially in Northern Europe, meetings of almost exclusively boys and young men bringing their computers and CRT monitors to crowded rooms, sharing software, and later competing in making demos, audiovisual programs demonstrating skills.

The first parties were strictly noncommercial and invite-only events. You felt part of an elite club, receiving the paper invite by physical mail.

Looking back, the bigger parties started in smaller towns, using municipal buildings like schools and community centers as well as support from non-profits like scouts. The 1988 Tommerup party was in the latter, a scout center. According to legend, organizers were overwhelmed by attendees, and the party was moved to an also overcrowded community center.

The 1988 Tommerup party in a much too crowded room. (Photo by Björn Fogelberg)

As I began participating in such events around 1988, parties tried to shed the association with piracy and became “demoparties” with formalized competitions for the best demo.

New Limits demo by The Supply Team

In Too Much Fun I tell the story of a 1989 demoparty, what it was like to write demos and to participate, but for now it is enough to say that early demos were often focused on showing one technical trick, like in The Supply Team’s “New Limits” demo release at Tommerup, which shows a scrolling text that fills the entire screen including the border.

Crest/Oxyron’s 2000 Deus Ex Machina demo.

Demos later evolved into more elaborate designs, often structured around a theme or visual composition, like in Crest/Oxyron’s 2000 Deus Ex Machina.

What demos have you enjoyed?

Coming Jan 10^th: Object #11 – Turrican II – keeping up with the Amiga

A History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects #9: Final Cartridge – Fixing the C64’s Flaws

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:

It wasn’t all great. The Commodore 64 came with glaring, everyday gnawing flaws that Commodore never fixed:

The tape drive was slow.
After a series of unfortunate events, bugs, bug fixes, workarounds, and last-minute botches in the production process, the C64’s disk drive was not slow, more like glacial.
C64 BASIC lacked proper commands for dealing with the disk drive, and even seeing the contents of a floppy involved the LOAD “$”,8 command, erasing the current program in memory.

The 1985 Final Cartridge was your solution to these flaws, creating a new tape format, speeding up the disk drive, adding new BASIC commands and utilizing the function keys (F7 to show the floppy directory).

In today’s parlance, Final Cartridge was a monumental quality of life upgrade. You could already do almost everything without the cartridge, but the cartridge made life easier and faster, allowing you to quickly shuffle between disks, make copies, modify programs, or just load games faster.

Final Cartridge’s additional features also accommodated technically minded user:

A machine code monitor for reading and modifying the program in memory.
A reset button.
A “freeze” button (in later iterations) for ostensibly backups, or even saving your game progress in games that lacked suck a function.
Better printer support.

How could you make the disk drive faster? You might expect that the bottleneck was reading and writing the floppy disk itself, but that was already plenty fast. The bottleneck was communicating the data over the cable between the C64 and the drive. The disk drive could be sped up because the 1541 disk drive is a small computer of its own, and because there are disk commands for sending small programs to the drive. A fast loader like Final Cartridge thus sends a program to the drive with a faster “protocol,” a faster way to send data between computer and drive.

Did the Final Cartridge make the C64 everything it would have been with more development time and a higher price? Perhaps, but there was a joy in plugging in the cartridge for the first time, making your computer faster, nicer, and more enjoyable.

Which cartridge did you use?

Coming Jan 3^rd: Object #10 – You are invited to a Demo Party

A History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects #8: Floppy disk (with pirated games)

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:

These two floppy disks came with a second-hand Commodore 64. Such flat objects for storing programs were called “floppies” because they were easily bendable, as opposed to fixed disks, and hence quite fragile. 5 ¼” was a common type of floppy disk, shared with IBM PCs and many other computers. As was common, this second-hand C64 had a collection of disks (twenty) with pirated material, and only two pieces of original software.

The 1541 disk drive. Photo by Evan-Amos.

Compared to tapes, such disks were the more expensive storage option for C64s, the 1541 disk drive often costing as much as the computer itself. Already with their first computer, the PET, Commodore had decided that devices should be connected to computers using USB-like cables, rather than through opening the computer and installing hardware. This was an elegant and surprisingly modern solution but also made the devices quite expensive, as they needed to be small computers by themselves.

To read the fragile disks, the 1541 disk drive often needed to do a “head alignment”, where the disk drive adjusted itself by banging the head against an internal stop, giving a surprisingly violent loud sound. To be a C64 disk drive owner was to live with and listen to the recurring sounds of the drive.

According to the label on the floppy disks themselves, the disks originated from a course in WordPerfect for IBM PCs (“WP Kursus” 1-2) and were later appropriated for less “serious” C64 use. The paper sleeve lists the software: Donald Duck’s Playground, Duck Shoot, Falcon Patrol, Frogger, Ghost ‘n Goblins, Grand Prix. Piracy was pervasive on the C64.

There were two types of floppy disks: single- and double sided, the latter being more expensive, but it quickly became known that you could cut a little notch in the side of a floppy, allowing you to use both sides of the cheap disk.

This was part of the impetus behind this history of the C64 through objects : Owning a C64 was an intensely physical thing. When it comes to floppy disks, be a C64 owner was also to be adept with scissors.

Coming December 27^th: Object #9 – Final Cartridge – fixing the C64’s flaws

A History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects #7: The SID Chip – Commodore 64 Music

On the occasion of my new book Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer, I am writing A 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)

My new book, Too Much Fun – The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer

It is real: I am thrilled to announce that my new book, Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer is out today on MIT Press.

Too Much Fun is a book about two central mysteries. First, why is the best-selling Commodore 64 computer absent in many computer and video game histories, and what is the influence of its games from SimCity to IK+ to Paradroid? Second, why did this early computer, destined for a shelf life of just a few years, live so long, and end up being produced from 1982-1994?

Writing Too Much Fun has been an incredible journey with twists and turns. I’ve interviewed Commodore engineers, played the games, read the magazines, learned to program the machine again, and connected with new and old friends on the demoscene. All this just as the Commodore 64 is experiencing a renaissance with new games, operating systems, hardware, and events!

Full of interviews, surprising anecdotes, and color illustrations, Too Much Fun tells an epic story of the C64. Too Much Fun is for anyone interested in computer or game history, in how devices can be made to live longer, and for anyone who had, or didn’t have, a Commodore 64. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

How to get the book: Too Much Fun is available as ebook, from your local independent bookstore, MIT Press, or your favorite online retailer.
The book’s support site has extra material, ads, videos, source code, and emulators. https://www.jesperjuul.net/c64/

Official description: The surprising history of the Commodore 64, the best-selling home computer of the 1980s—the machine that taught the world that computing should be fun.

The Commodore 64 (C64) is officially the best-selling desktop computer model of all time, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. It was also, from 1985 to 1993, the platform for which most video games were made. But while it sold at least twice as many units as other home computers of its time, like the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, or Commodore Amiga, it is strangely forgotten in many computer histories. In Too Much Fun, Jesper Juul argues that the C64 was so popular because it was so versatile, a machine developers and users would reinvent again and again over the course of 40 years.

First it was a serious computer, next a game computer, then a computer for technical brilliance (graphical demos using the machine in seemingly impossible ways), then a struggling competitor, and finally a retro device whose limitations are now charming. The C64, Juul shows, has been ignored by history because it was too much fun. Richly illustrated in full color, this book is the first in-depth examination of the C64’s design and history, and the first to integrate US and European histories. With interviews of Commodore engineers and with its insightful look at C64 games, music, and software, from Summer Games to International Karate to Simons’ BASIC, Too Much Fun will appeal to those who used a Commodore 64, those interested in the history of computing and video games and computational literacy, or just those who wish their technological devices would last longer.

Endorsements

“Jesper Juul has provided a long-needed addition to the Platform Studies series. It’s a wonderful book, as readable as it is informative.”

Jimmy Maher, author of The Future was Here: The Commodore Amiga

“A beautiful, sincere, and rich account of everything that makes this influential computer so special to me: that unique punk stew of technology, creativity, culture, people, and zeitgeist.”

Gary Penn, editor of Zzap!64; inaugural Games Media Legend; author of Sensible Software 1986–1999; Creative Director at DMA Design

“In this standout contribution to the Platform Studies series, Juul illuminates the overlooked career of the Commodore 64 home computer by integrating the perspectives of hardware designers, marketeers, game programmers, demo creators, and retrocomputing enthusiasts.”

Thomas Haigh, lead author of ENIAC in Action and A New History of Modern Computing

“As someone who has a wealth of knowledge on this subject, this book is ‘highly recommended reading,’ so do not hesitate—just buy this book and rejoice.”

David John Pleasance, musician, former Managing Director, Commodore UK, author of Commodore: The Inside Story

Scheduled book talks

December 5th at Videojogos’24.
December 12th at MADE in Oakland CA.
Jan 30th at Dansk Datahistorisk Forening.
Feb 7th online at ROMchip.
Feb 20th at New York University Game Center.
Feb 25th at CMS/W at MIT.
Mar 27th at Subotron, Vienna.

The History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects #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:

Wizball
(C64 Wiki)

Object #6: Wizball and other Scrolling Games

What even is the 1987 game Wizball (Sensible Software)? With glowing reviews and a spot on many “best C64 games ever”-lists, in this game you are a wizard wrapped in a ball, at first hard to control, but gradually acquiring new skills and a cat companion. The world has lost its color, and your job is to collect colors, making the world whole and saturated.

Like many early C64 games, it is unclear what genre the game belongs to. This horizontally scrolling game is a bit like Defender in its shooting, but more like an action-adventure platformer in the way you traverse the world and collect objects. Like other C64 games, it is famous for its music, this one by Martin Galway.

The Commodore 64 came out in 1982, and the first smoothly scrolling games followed in 1983 (International Soccer, Son of Blagger, Neoclyps, and Wanted: Monty Mole). When did PCs have smoothly scrolling games then? This is usually said to be ID Software’s 1990 Commander Keen. IBM appears to have made a conscious decision not to add game-related features, and hence THE PC WAS NEARLY A DECADE BEHIND.

Along with the Atari 8-bit computers, the C64 could do what its main competitors (ZX Spectrum, Apple II, IBM PC, Amstrad) could not: The C64 video chip, the VIC-II, allowed for games that smoothly scrolled around a larger world. “Scrolling” is not a genre today, but the scrolling facility allowed for the early C64 tradition of action-adventure games and action-adventure platformers (predating say Nintendo’s games by many years).

The 1983 Wanted: Monty Mole instructed players to REMEMBER IT’S NOT JUST A PLATFORM GAME ITS AN ADVENTURE, emphasizing the newness of combining action with exploration. The C64 hardware thus enabled a whole subgenre of action-adventure games.

When European developers later made games of open exploration, say Grand Theft Auto, it was not surprising, as these were the kind of games they had grown up on.

What scrolling games do you remember?

Coming December 13^th: Object #7 – The SID Chip – Commodore 64 Music