Pocket C64 Review
All right, before I begin the review of this product and the company who makes it, please let me give you a little background to understand what this is about.
The CBM C64 was one of the most successful home computers of the 80s. Not only an excellent computer for the day, it also was one of the best game machines of its time as well. The unit was basically a keyboard that attached to a television. The keyboard contained all of the computer based hardware, and was capable of using two joysticks, had an advanced sound system, and used color graphics.
Like all other computers of that long-gone age, you would laugh at it today. It had 64 Kb of memory, with only 32 Kb usable (Does this remind you of anything?). It had significant limits to the number of colors on the screen at one time, and had lousy resolution for the screen. Back then, the fastest modem was a 2400, and that was considered fast.
Pocket C64 is a product that emulates this almost-forgotten piece of hardware.
So the qustion is: Why would you want to buy this emulator, when it just allows you to use programs that have been passed up by modern technology?
Three reasons:
1. If you grew up with the hardware, you still know how to use it. You also know what you had back then, and the quality of the games. It was a great era known as 'THE RISE OF VIDEO GAMES' (Big pat on the back for the first one to tell me what LOAD"*",8,1 did...)
2. It is still possible to get much of the software that existed for the machine from the internet. Anyone here remember Jumpman Jr? How about Elite? Transformers? GI Joe? Bard's Tale? They're still out there, just waiting for you to come home.
3. If you were too young (or out of touch) to have gotten access to one of these great machines, consider this: This one of the units that created the computer industry you now enjoy the fruits of. Considering that the technology is about 15 years old, it still looks pretty good. Come on, take a look. A doubt you'll regret it.
Now, on to the actual review of the product and company:
First, I downloaded the copy from the website at
http://www.clickgamer.com/moreinfo.htm?pid=4
When first using the emulator, I noticed a few things. It needs copies of the C64 ROM code to work. A link to this can be found on their website. It then came up with the standard light blue C64 startup screen with the 'READY.' prompt and a blinking block cursor.
I downloaded a few games I remembered, (Yes, I own the games. They're in storage) and loaded them using the disk drive interface. I started with Archon II. It ran perfectly. I had to change the joystick choice for the D-pad, and was playing away.
The best thing about this emulator, is you don't even have to remember the command to load a game in most cases. The unit does it for you when you 'autoload' a virtual disk from your axim's memory. Only failed on a few occasions, and that was due to the files on the disk not being in the correct order. I just specified the right file (look for one with 'loader' or the name of the game as an example...) and away it went.
It also has the option to turn off and on certain speed increasing shortcuts that work fine in 95% of the programs out there, but confuse a few.
When I first downloaded the program, it had a series of memory leaks that forced the occasional need for a soft reset when using the emulator often. I contacted the programmer of the software, and after about 4 versions the problem was fixed.
This debugging process took about 48 hours.
Read that again: They got my e-mail and released 4 version in 48 hours to fix a problem I was having, that nobody else was complaining about.
48 hours...
Over the weekend.
Try that with microsoft...
I bought it for a dollar. Now it's about $7.
It was $15 at one point.
I'm writing these guys a check for the full amount as soon as I recover from x-mas spending.
Do business with them. If not for this software, then something else they make. These guys have earned our support.
Mr. Oberon
Are you an SEC sports fan?
Did it hook up to a TV? I thought we bought a moniter for it, but that was a long time ago.
