Apple II Bits

Last month, the Commodore 64 turned 30 years old. Normally, that’d not be an appropriate topic for this Apple II blog; in fact, the wrong readers might take it as an opportunity to burn me in effigy, minus the effigy.

But the way in which Mat Allen chose to commemorate the occasion offers a cross-platform look at the way different generations interact with classic technology. Having seen this concept explored first in France and then in the USA, Allen invited several young Brits to play with his C64, to demonstrate that the game system of his youth was as entertaining and relevant today.

The video focuses primarily on the loading times, which is so obsolete an experience as to almost have faded from memory; I’m not surprised Allen’s audience wandered away. Still, I wish he’d run a second experiment where the game was already loaded, so that the kids could provide feedback based more on interacting with the software instead of the hardware.

It was cute to hear the students couch their words to be as delicate as possible; referring to the C64’s rudimentary graphics, one child commented, "For them, it must’ve been pretty incredible."