Category: games

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 1st, 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

1988 demo party invitationOn 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 1st, 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 Tommerup demo party

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

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 10th: 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 1st, 2024: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 1st, 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 3rd: 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 1st, 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 27th: Object #9 – Final Cartridge – fixing the C64’s flaws

 

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

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 1st, 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.

Wizball instructions

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).

Wanted: Monty mole

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

 

 

The History of the Commodore 64 in Twelve Objects #2: 10 PRINT “HELLO”

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 1st, 2024:

Turning on the Commodore 64 launches us into a comforting interface in dark and light blue colors. It is a machine where interface, programming, and housekeeping take place using the same BASIC programming language. We can type immediate commands such as:

?10+20
30
READY.

BASIC (Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Code), originally developed by John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth College in the early 1960s, was designed to make computing universally accessible, at first for Dartmouth students. BASIC became a central platform for games in the 1960s and 1970s, and David Ahl’s book BASIC Computer Games (1973) compiled and distributed the games made in computer labs on paper, the only viable form of mass-market program distribution of the time. One central early aspect of Commodore 64 culture was to type in pages and pages of programs from manuals, magazines, and books.

I think a core joy of programming is that we can make the computer do sustained work for us. The Commodore 64 User’s Guide coming with the machine encourages us to make a program printing “COMMODORE 64”, but the text was almost always the user’s name.

10 PRINT “HELLO!”:GOTO 10

Try making your own 10 PRINT program on the book’s website:

https://www.jesperjuul.net/c64/history/#obj2

Coming November 15th, Object #3: “We Promise You Won’t Use the Commodore 64 More than 24 Hours a Day” – Commodore 64 ads

 

 

PhD opportunity in practice-based research

At the Royal Danish Academy, we are inviting applications for prequalification for an upcoming fellowship opportunity: the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s 2025 Mads Øvlisen PhD fellowships in art history and practice-based research.

There is definitely a possibility of a game-related Phd project, for example one that combines game-making and research, or a curatorial one.
This is a two-step process where applicants first need to send a short project outline, and if approved it gets developed into a full application in collaboration with us.
Follow the link for more info or email me.