Friday, March 16, 2007

Commodore lives again

The Commodore 64 was my first exposure to the digital world. It is a world of its own when I think about it now. It is what introduced me and my dear brother to computers. It was plugged into a 21" colored TV. Eventually, we also owned a Commodoe 128 which also had a "Commodore 64 mode". Me and my brother would do sprite animations just for the sake of it without the ability of saving them since the disk drive (which is a huge 5.25" diskette drive bay that looks like a large HDD enclosure now) is broken.


We lived in Bulacan back then and my father brought this from Saudi when he used to work there. I don't really remember how we learned to use the thing, but we were probably taught how to type in its commands in order for us to load games. We had a huge library of games then in diskettes. 5.25" diskettes in different colors. I always played "Beach Head" and "Bruce Lee" with my brother then. I also remember some Olympic-game-themed title but can't remember it's name now. "Pitfall" and "Pitfall 2" was another favorite. Then there's "Impossible Mission". I do remember trying a C64 emulator years ago and did have it working.

Anyway, I just saw in tipidpc that this beast is back...only this time, it's a branded gaming pc. It is now running under the name CommodoreGaming. They have 4 setups to fufill your gaming hunger: Commodore G, Commodore GS, Commodore GX, and the ultimate Commodore XX. Curious as I was, typing in "Commodore" in google brings about another site named CommodoreWorld. They have 2 products available right now, Commodore Gravel and the C200. There isn't much product specs on the site, but a PDF specification sheet is available. Check it out here. I don't think their products are available at the present right now.


Going back, CommodoreGaming does offer midrange to high-end gaming rigs. What's notable is that even their lowest (but still fast looking at the specs!) model is equipped with 2Gb's of RAM. There is no comparison table available on the site, but I've listed them down here anyway for convenience:


There is no price yet on the website but the specifications are indeed intended for those who have an apetite for serious gaming. I have hopes that the price is reasonable enough in order for good ol' Commodore to be a name once again in the computer market.


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