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| 10.28.2007Fanboyish attempt at article writing
My hope is that the fan boy perspective found in "A History of Gaming Platforms: The Commodore 64" is a conscious decision that will be carried over into subsequent articles.
Arrogant, self-important delusional statements such as "...especially since the C64's low price and subsequent popularity may well have played a small role in The Great Videogame Crash of 1984." really set a poor president for a proposed article series for this site.
While in the writer's circle, the C-64 may have been a game machine, for many it was a desktop computer in the same way that Apple II series was.
During the 80's, video games were something played on consoles and in arcades. C-64's and Apples were personal computers with different demographics, different consumer bases and very little impact on the console market which is where the "video game crash" occured. Hell they even had radically different price points. Geeks had C-64's and Apples. Normal kids had Atari 2600 systems.
Also as for longevity, the C-64 had a quick death in the U.S. at the mid 80's being replace by newer and more powerful systems such as the ST, Amiga and //gs. The only place where the C-64 had an on-going market presence into the late 80's and early 90's would have been Europe. Additionally the failure to design credit on subsequent C-64/128 form factors to Amiga's influence is an unforgivable oversight.
Also, this articles light touch on Jack Tramiel truly minimizes the history of his destructive force as a poor manager and opportunist both with Commodore and and later with Atari as he ran both companies into the ground.
All in all I am left with the feeling that your writers either were not old enough to know about the full history of their chosen subject matter, or they are so self absorbed with their fandom that they have blinded themselves.
I'm hoping for better in future articles in this series, but I already have great concern if the idea is for them to be written by these to gentlemen. -Bryan Carter
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Letters to the Editor
