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 central thesis challenges the prevailing industry narrative that the 1983 North American video game crash created a vacuum filled exclusively by the Nintendo Entertainment System. Juul argues that this perspective ignores the significant, ongoing influence of the Commodore 64, which remained a dominant force in the home computer market throughout the 1980s, representing over 31% of the U.S. home computer market as late as 1986.

Utilizing media archaeology, the work categorizes the history of the Commodore 64 into five distinct eras, ranging from its initial role as a functional home computer to its eventual status as a historical, stylistic artifact. The research highlights the platform's massive software library, which included over 5,000 published games—the largest of any platform prior to the MS-DOS era. To overcome the limitations of missing sales data due to rampant piracy, the analysis reconstructs popularity trends using historical reader surveys from the UK magazine Zzap!64.

Beyond technical history, the book explores the concept of technological imaginaries—the fictional or conceptual expectations that shape how users interact with hardware. A notable historical anecdote detailed in the text involves a missed business opportunity between Commodore and Nintendo. While some have speculated that CEO Jack Tramiel’s refusal to license Nintendo games was influenced by concerns regarding the organized crime associations of his existing partner, Bally/Midway, former Commodore product manager Michael Tomczyk clarifies that the decision was driven by professional loyalty and business ethics rather than fear.