Homage to the Commodore 64
December 11th, 2020 / By Andrew Currie
I was 7 years old when the Commodore 64 was released in 1982. At the time the popular systems were the Apple II, the TRS-80, and the Atari 800 but in the late 80’s the Commodore 64 was king, having over forty percent of the market share and continuously selling 2 million-plus units each year. The retail price for the Commodore 64 when released was $595, approximately $1,627 today. The Commodore 64 is often credited as the first widespread home computer. Today, you can use emulation programs to enjoy the Commodore 64 experience on your current computer and it’s a lot of fun! 😊
As a kid in the 80’s, my introduction to computers was the TRS-80 at my elementary school and the Commodore VIC-20 at home. We later upgraded to the Commodore 64 and my middle school purchased a few Apple IIc’s. The Commodore 64 was my favorite out of these systems and my first PC gaming experience. I relished loading Space Taxi on a painfully slow external cassette drive and often ate dinner while waiting. Recently, I’ve been playing around with Commodore 64 emulation on macOS. Below is a list of ways you can emulate the old classic Commodore 64 computer on your macOS system:
- Emudore - JavaScript web-based Commodore 64 Basic ROM emulator (Git repository, Demo).
- VICE - The versatile Commodore 64 emulator.
- Virtual C64 - User-friendly Commodore 64 emulator written in C++ with high compatibility.
- OpenEmu Experimental Build - Now includes support for the Commodore 64.
- StartC64 - Java based emulator with disk drive and joystick support. Issue the command below in your Terminal (Requires Java SE Runtime).
java -jar Commodore64.jarIf you are running on a Windows system you can use MAME to emulate the Commodore 64.
For Linux users with JRE you can use Z64K.
