C64 twenty years after

This summer was my 20th anniversary of owning a Commodore 64. Yes – I got mine when it was already the dusk of C64′s commercial life. But still for many years to come it was the most popular gaming machine among my friends. But why do I still play around with mine? What it gives you in 2010? Of course a great deal of my C64 hobby is nostalgia. But there’s more.

After I had moved away from using the C64 in favour to then-modern PC, I found my interest to the good old Commodore in late 90′s when I found some demos on a BBS and ran them on a C64 emulator. I wasn’t expecting that the C64 could run such effects that could be seen in e.g. Smash Designs’ Triage demos. I was amazed and I wanted to be able to run the most amazing demos I could find on a real machine as the emulation was far from perfect by the time. At this point I had few different models of C64s and I was transferring floppy images to 5,25″ DD floppies with Star Commander.

Assembly Summer ’09

It’s now a week since this year’s Assembly, the demo one. I’m all but excited about the huge lan-party thing, but still went there to see what’s there to be seen. Of course, masses of un-fit teenagers with clumsy motoric skills and other stereotypic nerds almost to comical extent. Also, I have never seen so many blue leds at the same time.