$595 = $1525 today

I guess this was made by the devs using the systems features as intended. So comically shit compared to what the games devs/demo scene were able to get out of it later.

A C64 got me through college from 1986 to 1990. I used it 95 per cent for word processing. I wrote a short story that was never published, but got an encouraging note from the one editor I submitted it to. I wrote a terrible novel about a lonely 63 year old man who worked as a protectionist in a porno theater. I thought I was Earnest Hemingway Motherfucker.

The word processing software I used was a machine language program called Speedscript. It taught me an important lesson about computing, that sometimes hard to learn is easy to use once you've learned it. Later I'd apply that lesson to the Linux Command Line.

Lots of memories, here.

My parents bought me a secondhand C64 that came with a 1541 5.25" floppy drive, 1530 datasette and a few games for only $200. One of the owners of the HVAC company my dad worked for at the time had bought his family the new Commodore 128 and got tired of seeing the old 64 gathering dust so he sold it to my dad. We would never have been able to lay out money for a new system at the time.

This program was on one of the floppy disks we got with it. I remember mom had me temporarily move the 64 & the little portable TV I had it hooked to into the living room so this could run on it during the Christmas party that year. I also ran "Swinth" to show it off.