50 Fun Facts About Commodore 64

The number in the Commodore 64's name refers to how many of what the home computer had?

Kilobytes of memory gave the machine its name: Commodore's boss demanded 64 KB of RAM, betting that pricey memory chips would be cheap by the time production began.

What kitchen-inspired nickname do fans give the original Commodore 64 because of its chunky, rounded case?

The Breadbin name stuck after 1986, when Commodore launched the restyled 64C and owners needed a way to tell the old case from the new.

Quantum Link, a 1985 online service for Commodore 64 owners, later grew into which giant internet provider?

AOL began life as Quantum Link: the service was renamed America Online in 1989 and opened up to PC users.

Which company sold Commodore its BASIC language for a one-off fee, earning no royalty on any Commodore 64?

Microsoft took a flat payment in 1977 after Commodore's boss turned down Bill Gates's request for a fee on every machine sold.

Before computers, Commodore began in the 1950s by importing and selling which portable office machines?

Typewriters gave Commodore its start: the firm was incorporated in 1958 as Commodore Portable Typewriter to import machines made in Czechoslovakia.

Which 1987 Lucasfilm adventure, designed for the Commodore 64, introduced the SCUMM engine that carries its name?

Maniac Mansion supplied SCUMM's last two letters: Ron Gilbert called his tool the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion, and it drove many later LucasArts adventures.

Whose first game, Raid on Bungeling Bay for the Commodore 64, inspired him to create SimCity?

Will Wright enjoyed the game's island editor so much that he kept tinkering with it as a personal toy, and it eventually became SimCity.

Which 1987 Epyx sports hit for the Commodore 64 let players try surfing, BMX, half-pipe skating and footbag?

California Games was bundled with the Atari Lynx handheld when it launched in 1989, and its surfing event was written by a real surfer.

Which Commodore 64 platformer was pulled from shops after Nintendo objected to its strong resemblance to Super Mario?

Great Giana Sisters was commissioned as a legally distinct take on Nintendo's hit, and it kept spreading through piracy long after it left the shelves.

Which 1984 Epyx game stunned Commodore 64 owners with digitized speech from its villain, Professor Elvin Atombender?

Impossible Mission got its voice from Electronic Speech Systems, which sharply raised its prices once the game had proved that talking software could sell.

Which Commodore 64 sound chip, designed by Bob Yannes, worked like a single-chip music synthesizer?

SID, short for Sound Interface Device, was planned with 32 voices, but time ran out and its one finished oscillator was simply copied three times across the chip.

The Commodore 64's processor is a modified version of which famous chip, also used in the Apple II?

The 6502 was the cheapest microprocessor on the market when it launched, and versions of it also ran the BBC Micro and the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Which chip maker, bought by Commodore in 1976, let the company build the Commodore 64 far more cheaply than rivals?

MOS Technology made the key chips in-house, so a computer that launched at $595 cost Commodore an estimated $135 to build.

What name is given to the movable graphic objects that the Commodore 64's video chip could show eight to a line?

Sprites filled about three-quarters of the video chip's surface, and games could glide them smoothly in front of or behind the background.

What trade name did Commodore give the dedicated tape drive that loaded many Commodore 64 games from cassette?

Datasette blends the words data and cassette, and the drive gave Commodore owners cheap storage on ordinary compact cassettes.

What size of floppy disk did the Commodore 1541 drive, the usual partner of the Commodore 64, use?

5¼-inch disks were single-sided in the 1541, and the drive's notorious slowness was blamed by its designers on a flawed interface chip in the earlier model it had to match.

Which 1984 Commodore 64 film tie-in did David Crane build in six weeks from an unfinished game called Car Wars?

Ghostbusters swapped the prototype's guns and missiles for ghost-catching gear after Activision gave the team six weeks instead of its usual several months.

Which BASIC command, the partner of PEEK, did Commodore 64 users type to write a value straight into memory?

POKE was the only way to reach the graphics and sound chips from Commodore 64 BASIC, which had no dedicated commands for either.

Which Berkeley Softworks operating system gave the Commodore 64 a graphical desktop resembling the early Macintosh?

GEOS came with a graphical word processor and a paint program, and Commodore bundled it with the restyled 64C for years.

Which Commodore founder, an Auschwitz survivor, quit in 1984 and bought rival Atari's consumer division?

Jack Tramiel learned to repair office machines in the US Army and was driving a taxi when he bought his first repair shop in the Bronx.

Which 1985 Commodore computer had a built-in mode that ran almost all Commodore 64 software?

The C128 gained that compatibility by stealth: two of its designers built it in without telling management until it was too late to change.

The Commodore SX-64, a 1983 luggable version of the Commodore 64, was the first portable computer with what?

A color screen five inches across was built into the 23-pound SX-64, which sold poorly against rivals such as the Osborne 1 and Compaq Portable.

In 1990 Commodore repackaged the Commodore 64 without a keyboard as what kind of product, sold only in Europe?

A games console was the plan, but the C64 Games System was a commercial failure, launched into a market that Nintendo and Sega already dominated.

In which country did Commodore launch the MAX Machine, a cut-down cousin of the Commodore 64, in 1982?

Japan was the only confirmed market for the MAX, which had a membrane keyboard and just 2 KB of RAM, and it was dropped after poor sales.

The 2004 C64 Direct-to-TV packed a whole Commodore 64 and 30 games inside what plug-in device?

A joystick held the entire computer on a single chip designed by Jeri Ellsworth, and shopping channel QVC sold 70,000 of them on the first day.

What became of the Commodore 65, the successor to the Commodore 64 that engineers developed in 1990 and 1991?

It was canceled in 1991 by Commodore's chairman, yet prototypes later reached the open market, with estimates running from 50 machines to 2,000.

Which earlier Commodore home computer, the first of any kind to sell a million units, did the Commodore 64 succeed?

The VIC-20 was also the first computer sold in Kmart, and its successor was code-named VIC-40 before the name changed for launch.

Which calculator giant quit home computers in October 1983 after losing a bruising price war with Commodore?

Texas Instruments had nearly ruined Commodore's calculator business in the 1970s by undercutting it, so the price war was widely seen as revenge.

The Commodore 64 is often credited with starting which subculture devoted to showy real-time audiovisual programs?

Demoscene groups grew out of the intro screens that software crackers added to pirated games to claim credit for removing the copy protection.

Which 1987 System 3 hit for the Commodore 64 mixed martial-arts combat with exploring an isometric world?

The Last Ninja was begun by a Hungarian team that missed its deadlines and went uncredited, so the engine was rewritten in London by John Twiddy.

Which publisher began putting its star designer's name in game titles with Pirates!, a 1987 Commodore 64 release?

MicroProse hoped the name on the box would draw fans of the designer's earlier combat simulators to a very different kind of game.

Which 1985 Activision game for the Commodore 64 gave every copy a unique character living in a three-story house?

Little Computer People was also sold as House-on-a-Disk, and it has no way to win: players simply look after the resident who moves in.

Which 1990 run-and-gun game, designed by Manfred Trenz, debuted on the Commodore 64 before reaching other systems?

Turrican borrowed its huge levels and morph-ball move from Nintendo's Metroid, and its designer programmed the Commodore 64 version himself.

Which British composer wrote celebrated Commodore 64 soundtracks for Commando, Monty on the Run and Sanxion?

Rob Hubbard wrote his first game theme for Thing on a Spring and later moved to America to work for Electronic Arts.

Which British-made rival was the only home computer more popular than the Commodore 64 in the United Kingdom?

The ZX Spectrum kept the Commodore 64 in second place in Britain, where it also had to fight off the BBC Micro and later the Amstrad CPC 464.

What happened to Commodore in April 1994, ending production of the Commodore 64 after more than eleven years?

It went bankrupt a month after announcing that the Commodore 64 would finally be retired, having noted that its disk drive cost more than the computer itself.

In which country was Commodore, the company behind the Commodore 64, incorporated in 1958?

Canada was home to Commodore's first headquarters in Toronto, although its Polish-born founder had started out with a repair shop in New York.

At which annual Las Vegas trade fair did Commodore unveil the Commodore 64 in January 1982?

Consumer Electronics Show visitors from Atari were reportedly left open-mouthed, asking how Commodore could sell such a machine for $595.

Bob Yannes, designer of the Commodore 64's sound chip, later co-founded which maker of synthesizers and samplers?

Ensoniq let him build full digital synthesizers after he left Commodore in 1983, having finished the famous chip with a tiny team in just five months.

What is the name of the Commodore 64's built-in character set, an extended form of ASCII first used in 1977?

PETSCII takes its first three letters from the Commodore PET, the 1977 computer it was created for, and was designed largely by the founder's son and the PET's own designer.

Which key did Commodore 64 users press with RUN/STOP to reset the screen without erasing their BASIC program?

RESTORE is wired straight to the processor's interrupt line, and many machine-code games deliberately disabled the key combination.

Which 1985 Andrew Braybrook game for the Commodore 64 has players take over hostile robots aboard a space fleet?

Paradroid has players win each robot takeover through a quick minigame, and it was later remade for the Atari ST as Paradroid 90.

Which English programmer, nicknamed Yak, wrote the surreal 1983 Commodore 64 shooter Attack of the Mutant Camels?

Jeff Minter co-founded Llamasoft in 1982 and filled his psychedelic games with llamas, sheep and camels.

Which online world, beta-tested on the Commodore 64 in 1986, is regarded as a forerunner of modern MMORPGs?

Habitat was the first attempt at a large-scale graphical virtual community, and two of its creators received a First Penguin Award for it in 2001.

Which British studio made the Commodore 64 favorites Parallax and Wizball before moving on to Cannon Fodder?

Sensible Software was started in 1986 by two school friends from Chelmsford, and Wizball was later voted game of the decade by a leading Commodore 64 magazine.

Which System 3 fighting game, rebuilt for the Commodore 64 by Archer Maclean, became a major hit in America?

International Karate sold over 1.5 million copies there, but it looked so much like the arcade game Karate Champ that Data East sued its American publisher.

Which single word did the Commodore 64 show on startup to signal that BASIC was waiting for a command?

READY appeared the moment the machine was switched on, because BASIC doubled as the operating shell and nothing had to load from disk first.

Before the web, Commodore 64 owners with a modem dialed into which hobbyist-run online message systems?

Bulletin boards were often run from a Commodore 64 itself, using packages such as Punter BBS and Color 64 that operators customized.

Besides computer dealers and college bookstores, the Commodore 64 was sold in which family-friendly shops?

Toy stores and discount chains put the computer in front of families, a mass-market approach that soon dragged rival makers into a price war.

What name is given to electronic music made with the sound hardware of vintage machines like the Commodore 64?

Chiptune is also called 8-bit music, even though not all of it is made on 8-bit machines.