A Tribute to Commodore

Recently I found some interesting videos on youtube from the Amiga time, and the memories just kept coming. I am a member of a generation that started out on a Commodore 64 in 1985, moved to Amiga in 1990 and only bought a PC when I had to, in 1996.

The time spent with Commodore computers marked my childhood but also me as a person. Those were some wonderful times and this is a tribute to them.

Elite on C-64

This is the game that got me sucked into the computer world. After playing it for the first time I knew computers were what I wanted to do in my life.

I used to carry my C64 to our family vacations on the seaside, and while everyone else was enjoying the beach I stayed home and played Elite. I played it day and night. Brilliant game.

Dawn of Amiga computer

We were a gaming generation. But different to today's kids because we also liked to hack our computers, write little programs and push them to the limits. When Amiga first appeared it brought a revolution. Beautiful graphics, sound, speed and Workbench operating system. It was a perfect computer able to do almost anything while running on only 7.14 MHz. Today, your mobile phone might have up to 500 Mhz processor and it will still struggle to play some simple games.

Amiga was years ahead of it's time. It is the platform that made PC what it is today. PC manufacturers had to compete with Amiga and that's how PC evolved. I remember 100MHZ 486 PC's having problems doing what a 14MHz Amiga 1200 did with ease.

This is a very clever commercial for Amiga.

State of the Art demo

There is no Amiga owner who didn't see "State of the Art" demo by Spaceballs. It produced a jaw dropping effect at the time it appeared. It was a revolution on it's own. Remember this is running on a 7.14 Mhz computer with half a megabyte RAM.

Games, games, games

Amiga was famous for large number of games. They very extremely good. This is a period when game developers liked to experiment and the games were much more creative then today.

Instead of counting them all, here is a compilation of 100 most popular. I am sure you will recognize at least a fifthy.

Dusk of Commodore

Commodore was run by creative and brilliant people. Unfortunately they were not businessman. This lead to Commodore's demise in the 1994 as a result of series of bad business decisions. One of them was to make typewriters in the age when the computers were almost becoming a part of every home.

Here is the video of the last day in Commodore factory 27th April, 1994. It is sad as it marked an ending of one era.

Commodore may not exist any more, but the spirit of Commodore is still alive among many people who grew up with these wonderful machines and made their first steps to an adulthood using them. Have we ever really grown up?