Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Description of the talk from Jesper: The Commodore 64 is officially ”the world’s best selling home computer” and was – in the number of titles launched – also the dominant platform for video games from 1984 to 1992. Yet did we also forget this machine, relegating the history of the home computer to Silicon Valley, Apple and IBM, and the history of video games to Nintendo and Sony? Through game examples, I will tell a history of the C64 platform where cultural ideas of the platform always intertwined with the realities of developing software and games for the machine’s quirks. This history spans the C64’s conception as a system for arcade games, to unimaginative ports from previous computer generations to an experimental phase through the demo scene where bugs were exploited to expand platform’s abilities, to today where the C64’s once new technology is now a historical style of graphics and audio that we can choose at will.
This talk was streamed live at twitch.tv/NYUGameCenter on Thursday, March 24th, 2022
Splash music is Solace by Qix provided to us by Martin Nayeri qixx.bandcamp.com/releases
Description of the talk from Jesper: The Commodore 64 is officially ”the world’s best selling home computer” and was – in the number of titles launched – also the dominant platform for video games from 1984 to 1992. Yet did we also forget this machine, relegating the history of the home computer to Silicon Valley, Apple and IBM, and the history of video games to Nintendo and Sony? Through game examples, I will tell a history of the C64 platform where cultural ideas of the platform always intertwined with the realities of developing software and games for the machine’s quirks. This history spans the C64’s conception as a system for arcade games, to unimaginative ports from previous computer generations to an experimental phase through the demo scene where bugs were exploited to expand platform’s abilities, to today where the C64’s once new technology is now a historical style of graphics and audio that we can choose at will.
This talk was streamed live at twitch.tv/NYUGameCenter on Thursday, March 24th, 2022
Splash music is Solace by Qix provided to us by Martin Nayeri qixx.bandcamp.com/releases
