• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

30 years ago today, Commodore collapsed - a computing legend!

RAIDEN1

RAIDEN1

Member
In some respects you could say the Commodore was the West's answer to the Sharp X68000, a state of the art personal computer long before the likes of IBM, Dell et all became the mainstay in that area, it was the platform where the greatest 90's sci-fi show ever or you could say the 90's version of Mass Effect had it's special FX put-together on -(I am talking about Babylon 5) ....

For the Amiga fans out there, the company is still missed today, and it's a shame we will never see the brand back again, they weren't as fortunate as Sega to have someone bail them out, but you do wonder what could have been if their first and last "proper" gaming console The CD32 had more under the hood than it did the fate of the console was very much like the Dreamcast* (*except the games catalogue wasn't half as good)...

 
Alebrije

Alebrije

Gold Member
Why it collapsed? I mean we the "poor" ones got and Atari 2600 meanwhile "rich" ones got a Comodore , well at least here in México

A friend had one , thanks to it I learned how soft floppy disk (5 inches ) worked, they even had a cassette player for some gamesand programs

I played some videogames on My Friends Comodore, so if it was the trending home PC between kids what happened ? It desappeared so soon.
 
Last edited:
RAIDEN1

RAIDEN1

Member
The A1200 was the only platform I think that would have been "close" to going toe-to-toe with the Genesis and SNES if given more time to thrive..
 
poppabk

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
It's such a shame they didn't evolve with the times. I have such fond memories of the A500 and A1200, both as gaming machines and as actual desktop computers. But they failed to make those leaps to better performance that would have kept them in the game.
 
RAIDEN1

RAIDEN1

Member
poppabk said:
It's such a shame they didn't evolve with the times. I have such fond memories of the A500 and A1200, both as gaming machines and as actual desktop computers. But they failed to make those leaps to better performance that would have kept them in the game.
Click to expand...
I mean look at the CDTV, and then you had Phillips with the CD-i which lasted for something like 1991-1998...despite the fact of it's laughable game content to hold out for 7 years is impressive
 
Laptop1991

Laptop1991

Member
My first home computer, sad day, i have fond memories of the Amiga, but i moved to PC and it got even better, didn't the Amiga try and make a comeback about 10 years ago??,
 
poppabk

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
RAIDEN1 said:
I mean look at the CDTV, and then you had Phillips with the CD-i which lasted for something like 1991-1998...despite the fact of it's laughable game content to hold out for 7 years is impressive
Click to expand...
Man remember movies on CD. What a stop gap idea.
 
M

Meicyn

Gold Member
I grew up on C64 games. Dad owned a C128 but everyone just made C64 games. I played the original Sid Meier’s Pirates extensively as a kid. Naturally, geography in the Caribbean came easily in class.

Also played a lot of Red Storm Rising, Psi 5 Trading Company, and Ultima IV. Last Ninja and Aliens were way too hard, could never get far in either game.
 
O

Ozzie666

Member
Developers were amazing on the Amiga series of computers with 512 or 1M memoery being pretty standard. What they could produce from floppy titles and ram limitations. It was just pure art.

A cartrige version would have been interesting to see what it could really do. The team sizes and budget were far lesss than most japanese teams, and dare I say more basement/garage dtype evelopers. Publishers with almost impossible time line expectations.

European game design was a lot more stiff due to less animation and limitations. The Amiga hardware was so different to the X68000 in how it handled graphics. Work bench was far ahead of any operating system for years.

The music and sounds were what really made the difference, going from C64 to Amiga was such a leap.

Definitely miss this machine.
 
Buggy Loop

Buggy Loop

Member
In primary school I was going to a place where we stayed there all week, sleeping there, etc. We had commodore 64s. Had classes for it. Wednesday we could pick an activity such as any sports, outside, biking, etc, but also computers.

Me and a 3 or 4 other geeks we programmed a replica of Star Fox SNES on it, the first stage at least because we ran out of time. But the effects of building scrolling, moving the fighter, changing sounds of it, boosting, slowing, barrel roll, the music. Thinking about it nowadays, that was insane work for a bunch of kids.
 
Ozzy Onya A2Z

Ozzy Onya A2Z

Member
Fond memories of setting up high school computer labs with my teacher for 2 classrooms of 24 x C64 each. Network games were a thing on terminated networks back then too.
 
Futaleufu

Futaleufu

Member
A local low budget TV channel running Video Toaster was the only chance I had to watch an Amiga booting and displaying something back in the day. My country was all about Atari and IBM PC, Commodores were extremely rare
 
Last edited:
Hoddi

Hoddi

Member
I adored my Amiga. Their monitors were also to die for back then when almost everything else just ran on RF or composite.

I had a small shock the first time I saw video running over RGB SCART on mine. It was like seeing DVD for the first time except it was just plain VHS.
 
Fess

Fess

Member
You had to be there. Commodore was so ahead of everybody else for awhile. PC was trash. Consoles were for babies. Commodore ruled the earth for almost a decade in my world. True love ❤️

I still have an Amiga 1200 and I still use it, it’s modded with DVI port and Compact Flash drive and proudly plugged in to the same screen as my 4090 PC.
 
Optimus Lime

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
The Commodore VIC-20 and the C64 were incredible systems at the time. I remember playing the Nintendo licensed version of Donkey Kong for the VIC and marvelling at it - even though, in hindsight, it's a very rudimentary port. They did manage to pack in four screens, though.

And the C64 was the king. Still is in some ways. NES/Master System were for babies. The C64 was for real men.
 
C

cartman414

Member
Fredrik said:
You had to be there. Commodore was so ahead of everybody else for awhile. PC was trash. Consoles were for babies. Commodore ruled the earth for almost a decade in my world. True love ❤️

I still have an Amiga 1200 and I still use it, it’s modded with DVI port and Compact Flash drive and proudly plugged in to the same screen as my 4090 PC.
Click to expand...

C64 made the hardest NES games look balanced.
 
Topher

Topher

Identifies as young
Commodore was pretty cool back in the day. Most kids I knew who owned a computer, owned Commodore. I was an IBM guy from the start. And have to say, although IBM did not intend things to turn out the way they did, I'm really glad they went with off the shelf computer parts in designing their PC. Set the stage for companies like Compaq to reverse engineer their bios and effectively created a standard that is the basis of PC's today.

But Commodore was a hell of a company and they lasted a lot longer than some others. The Amiga had a loyal following for years after IBM had become the defacto standard.
 
M0G

M0G

Member
Badlucktroll said:
Are current AmigaONE os 4.1 computers shit? i was thinking about getting one
Click to expand...
My understanding is that the "next-gen" Amigas are all but dead and buried now. The specs were always terrible and over-priced, but now development for them has pretty much dried up too. I think the future of Amiga is back with 68K, as far as I can tell. Whether it be classic hardware, FPGAs or PiStorm etc. Please correct me if somebody more knowledgeable thinks I'm wrong.
 
T

Thanati

Member
The story of the downfall is really interesting/infuriating. If you ever want a case study on bad business decisions and when CEO's don't listen to people smarter than them, read up on Commodore's downfall.

Love my Amiga 500 and 1200 though (even though the 1200 was rushed and severely underpowered).
 
kruis

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Thanati said:
Love my Amiga 500 and 1200 though (even though the 1200 was rushed and severely underpowered).
Click to expand...

It was also overpriced. But that was even more true of the Amiga 3000 and 4000, which were the machines I really wanted at the time. I had owned an A500 since 1987 and waited a long time for a more affordable version of the A4000 after it released in '92 but then Commodore got in financial trouble in '94 and everything went south. First Commodore went bankrupt, Commodore UK took over the reins for a year, then Escom bought the rights and the remaining assets, then Escom got into financial trouble and Tulip took over, and then Tulip got into financial trouble ...
 
Angry_Megalodon

Angry_Megalodon

Member
demigod said:
How much did commodore’s cost? Had a friend who had it back in the day.
Click to expand...

I had a C64. Though I don't remember the price, it must have been cheap (like 8-bit consoles) otherwise my parents wouldn't have bought it. The Commodore Amiga was the one for "rich kids". I wanted it so much.
 
Setzer

Setzer

Member
Friend of mine had a C64 and I had an Apple IIc. I was jealous because there were more games easily available for the C64 than for the Apple IIc. So any chance I got I went over to his house after school and we'd play on it for hours. The command to load a game from disk is forever ingrained in my mind: Load"*", 8,1.
 
T

Thanati

Member
kruis said:
It was also overpriced. But that was even more true of the Amiga 3000 and 4000, which were the machines I really wanted at the time. I had owned an A500 since 1987 and waited a long time for a more affordable version of the A4000 after it released in '92 but then Commodore got in financial trouble in '94 and everything went south. First Commodore went bankrupt, Commodore UK took over the reins for a year, then Escom bought the rights and the remaining assets, then Escom got into financial trouble and Tulip took over, and then Tulip got into financial trouble ...
Click to expand...
Yeah, it was a shit-show.

They pushed the CD32 development instead of putting in new tech that could have made it actually stand out.
 
Fess

Fess

Member
I don’t know if there was specific hardware or if it was just framerates but the mouse cursor movement on the Amiga 500 felt so much smoother and more responsive compared to the PC for a long long time.

And the C64 SID chip was incredible, I still think that C64 tunes are always better than other 8-bit versions.
 
SirTerry-T

SirTerry-T

Member
Commodore fucked up when they cheaped out on the A1200’s processor and chipset.
The Atari Falcon was closer to what the A1200 should have been ..more expensive though.
 
Last edited:
Fess

Fess

Member
SmokedMeat said:
Commodore 64 was keeping me happy during the console crash.

We used to borrow and copy each other’s floppies in school.
Click to expand...
Yeah swapping C64 cassette tapes and floppies on the school yard was very very common. That era was like the mp3 era for people 10 years younger, everybody was a pirate but nobody thought about it, was 100% normalized. Giana Sisters was pulled almost directly after the release and still became one of the most popular games through the widespread piracy.
 
Trunx81

Trunx81

Member
My first video game was Moon Buggy on the Commodore 16. After that, the whole family got hooked on Kickstart. My dad even recorded his best run on tape.
After that, I played C64 till 1994 when I got my SNES.

So many great memories. Playing Maniac Mansion, every time panicking when you got caught. Maxing out the credit card from Zack McCracken. Listening to the amazing SID Soundtrack of Turrican 2 while blasting away enemies. Conquering the seas in Pirates! … Those were the days. We even had the first CD ROM for the C64.
 
RAIDEN1

RAIDEN1

Member
The other point being on how Commodore took their eye of the ball, was the (true) story of picking the largest advertising spot outside Sega Europe to practically shout out from the rooftops about the arrival of the CD32 as they were gunning for the Sega CD, yet the Sega CD had more impressive games then the CD32 ever did..
 
P

pachura

Member
I really loved my A500, then A1200...
listening to ProTracker modules...
enjoying the best demoscene prods on any platform...
programming in AMOS (the only programming language which has commands "Boom" and "Shoot")...
waiting >24h as my 320x256 picture slowly renders in Maxon Cinema 4D or Imagine...
ripping music and graphics by resetting the computer (memory was not cleared!) and then running MultiRipper
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Indiana Jones: let's take a look at some of the most important games in the series (1982 - 2013)
Analysis Retro
21
5K
ArgleBargleFooferah replied
Let's take a moment to celebrate the golden age of Japanese design
2
68
22K
Trojita replied
Has the lack of brands make computer gaming less exciting over the years?
2
62
9K
petran79 replied
Preserving tapes and floppies and other dying mediums
2
75
17K
Krejlooc replied
The more things change: Usenet posts from rec.games.video and more
5 6 7 8 9
442
153K
Spladam replied
Top Bottom