This month the Commodore 64 which was the first machine that many will have played a game on has its 30th Birthday.  Now why do we think this is big deal well because the C64 sold between 12.5 and 17 million units during its life cycle, making it the bestselling single home computer model of all time, which you have to admit 30 years later is damn impressive.

It may have been big, ugly and bulky but it still fills many with nostalgia reminiscing about playing games such as Manic Miner, Donkey Kong and Bubble Bobble.

The C64 was relatively open natured,  this meant people in bedrooms all over the UK made games. There were approximately 10,000 commercially released software for this system, which includes applications software and games, that’s a huge amount of games and applications but the C64 sold all through the 90′s.

At launch it had a price tag of £399.00 which was more than its biggest rival ZX Spectrum. Anyone over a certain age will remember the playground arguments over which machine was better. However it was far cheaper than other rival such as computers made by IMB, Atari and Apple, who’s machines cost around £1500.00 at the time.

Hats off to Jack Tramiel the brains behind the C64 who wanted to make ”computers for the masses, not the classes” The C64 certainly achieved that.