Gaming Commodore 64 turns 30: What do today's kids make of it?

[Keatah]

Pac-Man has been re-written several times since the original. Each homebrew variant has gotten better; enough to the point that the VCS has a quite credible "arcade" version. no flickering, different colored ghosts, good maze layout.

It is important to note that even today, new tricks and secrets are being uncovered in the VCS. Part of the reason why modern homebrews are so good now is because of the amassed knowledge on how the machine works and better dev tools. None of this existed back in the day.

It's interesting to observe that the VCS had better sound and graphics than the Apple 2 series when it came to action games - despite it costing 1/8th the price.

 

[Andy44]

Proof that Pac Man should've been done better came early on when Ms. Pacman was released by Atari for the 2600 and it was beautiful. To this day it is one of the best 2600 games. That was later on when Atari finally got the message that they need to step up their game to compete, both with other game systems and with 2600-games from third parties like Activision. Too late, alas, Atari pretty much went bottom up. But the corporate name is still around and 1972 founder Nolan Bushnell is now in charge again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari#Atari.2C_SA_.282009-.29

About knowing how to use every last bit of memory: that's another lost art for techies these days, since we are now spoiled by unlimited cheap memory and gigantic hard drives. Because spacecraft components undergo many years of bench testing before being trusted on a one-way risky space mission, people who write flight software for satellites and other spacecraft are still good at this, since they have to work older hardware.

 

[Linguofreak]

Proof that Pac Man should've been done better came early on when Ms. Pacman was released by Atari for the 2600 and it was beautiful. To this day it is one of the best 2600 games. That was later on when Atari finally got the message that they need to step up their game to compete, both with other game systems and with 2600-games from third parties like Activision. Too late, alas, Atari pretty much went bottom up. But the corporate name is still around and 1972 founder Nolan Bushnell is now in charge again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari#Atari.2C_SA_.282009-.29

About knowing how to use every last bit of memory: that's another lost art for techies these days, since we are now spoiled by unlimited cheap memory and gigantic hard drives. Because spacecraft components undergo many years of bench testing before being trusted on a one-way risky space mission, people who write flight software for satellites and other spacecraft are still good at this, since they have to work older hardware.

Not quite as old as any of the systems being discussed here, though. Plus, some of the tricks used to save memory on the early microcomputers are fine for non-critical applications like games, where you can just reboot and continue from your last save if the thing crashes, but would be huge no-no's in spacecraft flight software. So while the art of squeezing big programs into small amounts of memory isn't dead yet, some parts of it are, for better or for worse, probably lost forever.

 

[Quick_Nick]

Not quite as old as any of the systems being discussed here, though. Plus, some of the tricks used to save memory on the early microcomputers are fine for non-critical applications like games, where you can just reboot and continue from your last save if the thing crashes, but would be huge no-no's in spacecraft flight software. So while the art of squeezing big programs into small amounts of memory isn't dead yet, some parts of it are, for better or for worse, probably lost forever.

Like Keatah mentioned, take a look into AtariAge. The old knowledge is by no means lost. Some people even take it a step further.

 

[Ghostrider]

So while the art of squeezing big programs into small amounts of memory isn't dead yet, some parts of it are, for better or for worse, probably lost forever.

Not really. Apart from it being thoroughly documented, there are still "frugal programming" competition where participants must write their code within strict memory and processing power requirements. The art is alive and well, it's just that only artists now practise it.