I never had a C64 but we had some Christmas disk for the 386 my dad brought home from work, finally with state of the art VGA graphics (!) Like Binro's though, the songs were only 30 seconds long and just that horrible PC speaker sound and only 30-or-so seconds long, so we didn't have it on for very long (there was probably an option for Soundblaster or Adlib or something, but we didn't have those.) I never really paid attention to the quality of the C64's sound, especially circa 1985.

Also (forgot to star) you said Software Etc. My friend worked there in the 90s and gave me a bunch of his old employee shirts, some of which I converted to tanktops, but some of which have probably only been worn a couple of times. Just various promotional shirts and regular employee shirts. I wonder if there's any money in them, as they're just collecting mothballs at my parents' place. Like, I'd probably drop 10 bucks if I saw an old Macromedia t-shirt at a thrift shop that was my size..

Well, Software Etc. originated as a department in Waldenbooks, which was where I got most of my C64 games in the early 80s. It was literally just a section called "Software Etc." which later expanded into it's own chain. Crazy times. My last vivid memories of that place, before it became a chain, was going in and buying one of the Dizzy games which was so abhorrently terrible that it was, I think, the only game I ever returned.

Haha I never knew that. There used to be this Pick-and-Save (sort of the local supermarket chain in Wisconsin) that always had an aisle sign that just said "AND CAT LITTER" and it became sort of an inside joke, like if I ever wanted to start a pet store, that's what I'd name it. Good to know that Waldenbooks had the same sense of humor.

I always liked Waldenbooks more than our local chain, Powells Books. It's hard to put my finger on it but there was always this esoteric nature about Powells that I didn't like, vs. Waldenbooks where.. I dunno, it was just more fun especially as a kid. If people were still buying books like they were before amazon and kindle and such, Powells would've taken Waldenbooks' place in a heartbeat. It's a pretty heartless corporation that disguises itself like a wolf in sheep's clothing.