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 ClassicGaming.com's Museum
Commodore
VIC-20 - 1980-1984
"The Friendly Computer"
System History
By Ward Shrake of
Digital
Archaeology: VIC-20
 Commodore Business Machines
(CBM) had been in business long before handheld electronic
calculators had been invented, let alone "personal computers."
Computing machines took up whole rooms in Commodore's early
days, if not most of a large building. Only governments and
huge businesses could afford to own one, let alone had any
real use for one. Eventually, with the advent of transistors
and microprocessors, personal computers became both practical
and entered the financial reach of individuals. In the late
1970s and early 1980s came the advent of pre-packaged,
dιcor-friendly, ready-to-run computer systems, like the Apple
II and Commodore PET series.
By 1980, home videogame consoles were becoming commonplace.
Pong
systems had been in many homes since the mid-1970s, but it was
still a rare household that had its own personal computer.
Many people wondered what to do with one if they had one. Many
households justified the cost of their eventual computer
purchases on the idea of educating their young children, as
well as entertaining them. Most computer companies of this era
emphasized this dual-nature in their ads, knowing full well
that parents held the purse strings. Commodore proved to be no
exception when it launched its "friendly computer," the
VIC-20, in 1980.
 Home computers in general tried
to position themselves as being superior to dedicated home
game consoles like the Atari
2600 or the Odyssey².
The industry had two tiers or market positions, and although
the VIC-20 was not a powerful machine for long, it was more
powerful than the game consoles were. Commodore's spokesman
William Shatner was quoted on a Commodore brochure as having
said: "Why buy just a video game?" He was pointing towards
what the brochure called, "The wonder computer of the 1980s."
The VIC-20's nickname was "The friendly computer." This was
true in part because of the efforts of the technical people
that created its documentation. For its time, the manual that
came packed with every VIC-20 was fabulous. It not only showed
you how to hook the system up, but how to program it in BASIC,
its built-in programming language. Many a young system owner
started programming on this system, or later on its big
brother, the Commodore 64.
And the VIC-20 had plenty of computing power, at a low
enough mass-market price, to become the first home computer
model to sell one million units! This was in part due to the
low price, which in turn was due to Commodore's having learned
the hard way that chip production and pricing was far too
volatile an issue to leave in the hands of some other company.
They made their own chips through their MOS affiliate company.
Commodore made the most of this strong market advantage. Many
other companies were unable to compete in the home computer
market and left it or folded. Commodore not only survived, but
went on to bigger things.
 In summary, when the VIC-20
came out, the entire game industry was just forming. Home
games, arcade games and all the rest were still new at the
time. Computers allowed games to be "translated" into home
versions with enough clever programming. And while the VIC-20
system may have been sold originally as a dual-purpose
machine, games made it popular. And that proven reputation for
gaming prowess sold many C64 systems when the VIC's time in
the spotlight was over, sometime during 1984.
Games
The great thing about the games that came out for the
VIC-20 is that the programmers focused heavily on the game
play experience itself.
Sidewinder | The
graphics chip in the system, while powerful by the standards
of 1980 when it was born, fast became obsolete due to
technological progress. By the summer of 1982, CBM had already
announced their next system: the Commodore 64. (Which, as most
retro-gamers know, had much better graphics and sound power
than most machines of its time, not to mention far more
built-in RAM). Not being able to easily "wow" the gaming
public with flash, VIC-20 programmers gave us substance.
The games that came out for this system were often
blazingly fast, with hand-eye coordination being a key element
of the programmers' plans. This was natural and to be
expected, given that the priorities of the video arcades were
to demand near perfection from game players. "High scores"
were all the motivation that existed, back then, and having
your name on the top of an arcade game's score boards was a
definite status symbol in some circles.
Pharaoh's
Curse | Which is not to say
that "exploration" games were not becoming popular. They were
in their infancy then, and would not explode for a few more
years in the home market. A few impressive examples of the
genre do exist on the VIC-20: Pharaoh's Curse for
example. And of course, there were also quite a few "dungeon"
style games; another popular trend of the time, which is well
represented on many systems.
All in all, there are nearly 200 known video game
cartridges for the VIC-20, with more than 500 games released
on cassette tapes. These tapes were much cheaper to make, and
were therefore often of lower quality than the cartridge-based
games. Still, some gems were released on tapes,  especially outside the United
States. Diskettes were not very popular in the VIC-20 days,
due to the increased cost of the disk drive units. Tape drives
were plentiful, since the loading times of the tiny programs
for the VIC-20 were generally reasonable.
All of the cartridge games have been reviewed in a large
text the author calls Cartzilla!.
It is 300 kilobytes of pure ASCII text, listing pretty much
every known detail about every known cartridge. Where
possible, programmer names are listed, since this list was
made in part to help document the system's library. A list of
tape games also exists, although it was never finished in the
amount of detail the cart games enjoyed.
Emulation
The cartridge-based VIC-20 games have all been "archived."
That is, they were all individually located, tested, cleaned
up as needed, and digitally copied. This had largely taken
place back in 1995 and 1996. The few folks that took on this
large archiving project, led by Ward Shrake and Paul LeBrasse,
started from scratch, documenting as they went.
In a strange and rather unexpected turn of events, once a
large body of tested, good archival cartridge ROM images were
available on the Internet, people began creating software
emulators. (Our efforts predated emulators being available for
all of the classic gaming systems; few knew it would ever be
possible, let alone practical.) The few people that had done
the archiving did it mostly just to preserve  the game collection for future
generations, assuming a few hardcore techies would play them
on real hardware. But now gamers can enjoy VIC-20 games on
their PCs with emulators such as the excellent Pfau Zeh.
Games are available from Funet's
VIC-20 archive.
Although the folks that archived the cartridges have since
found other things to occupy their time, other folks are
currently working on archiving the huge body of games that
exist in cassette tape format. And there are efforts afoot to
help preserve the artwork that was used on carts, boxes, tape
liners, and magazine ads, so that future generations can see
what this system's market was once like. These are on-going
projects that will likely take a long time to complete, but it
is good that it's being done.
A few of the programmers that created games for the VIC-20
when it was new, have since given their permission for their
games to be legally copied and downloaded. So far, no one has
complained that we had not asked permission up front. Most
authors are glad that someone took the time to preserve their
works. Interviews, lists, FAQs, and pretty much anything you
could ever want to know about the VIC-20 is available at Ward
Shrake's Digital
Archaeology site.
Links
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