Commodore
Company
Documents about Commodore
Article
Book Review: Too Much Fun – The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer
The book Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64 Computer by academic and game designer Jesper Juul serves as a critical re-examination of the Commodore 64’s role in video game history.
- The Commodore 64 maintained a significant market presence throughout the 1980s, holding over 31% of the U.S. home computer market as late as 1986.
- The Commodore 64 hosted a library of over 5,000 published games, representing the largest software catalog of any platform prior to the MS-DOS era.
- Jesper Juul’s research challenges the narrative that the 1983 North American video game crash left a vacuum filled solely by the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Push to TalkDec 2024
Article
Sir Clive Sinclair: The Trailblazer Who Invented the British Video Game Industry
The primary purpose of this analysis is to examine the foundational role of Sir Clive Sinclair and the ZX Spectrum in the development of the British video game industry.
- Sir Clive Sinclair’s ZX Spectrum, launched in 1982, is credited with founding the British video game industry by fostering a massive ecosystem of bedroom coders and entrepreneurial game companies.
- Despite Sinclair’s original intent for the ZX Spectrum to be used for programming and office applications, the 16k and 48k models sold over 5 million units globally primarily due to consumer demand for gaming.
- The rise of microcomputers like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, and BBC Acorn in the early 1980s directly cannibalized the market for traditional video game arcades and the Atari 2600.
SparkersOct 2021