Discussions on vintage and retrocomputing
The Pacific Commodore Expo NW is being held this weekend June 24th and 25th! Please feel free to stop by and play with your favorite Commodore and Amiga computers.
Location: 3100 Airport Way S, Seattle WA 98134 (old rainier brewery at Intraspace in front of Lula Coffee) Hours: 11am - 5pm Saturday and Sunday Admission: FREE - (Donations can be made to SDF.ORG)
Setup
Such pretty machines! The C64 was my first computer. I still remember it fondly.
I got mine 2nd hand with its manuals and several BASIC books in spanish. A diskette drive called 1741 was presented to me for free. At first it got no software or knowledge at all, so I got playing writing "x" on the TV and erasing those. The "x" were soldiers. ASCII games could be fun, they require very few memory, but lots of human imagination...
Then I would program BASIC games (a dice game from a large C64 book). After that a very long sound-making program called DEMOSON. It required saving it in the diskette, it took so long to write and correct errores.
Once I learned about its routines, I used those to write my first own game: it was a Russian Roulette simulator! It included a gunshot sound from DEMOSON, some randomized routines for the revolver chamber, and even red flashing screen and a loud scream for effect. Not bad!
It was better than play russian roulette with a real gun for sure.
Then I got COMMANDO, a C64 run and gun game, with great music. With SPACEBAR you throw hand grenades. It's the first diskette game I can remember. But it was so much better than my BASIC game. :D