VIC-20 memories!

My parents bought me a Commodore VIC-20 as a Christmas present back in 1983, when I was all of 10 years old, and the little breadbox shaped micro was the first proper computer that I ever owned. Before this I'd only ever used the Sharp MZ-80K and BBC Micro computers at school, and what little programming knowledge I had had been gleaned from obsessively studying (not typing in!) listings in magazines and books. Actually owning a real computer was a real advance for me and something I'd wanted for some time!
 
I had asked Santa for a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, like all my friends had, but my parents had bought the VIC-20 instead because it had a "better keyboard" than the infamously rubber-keyed Spectrum. Being an ungrateful ten year old I did have a temporary sulk about this greivous lapse of judgement, but in time I grew to appreciate Commodore's little machine for its own merits.

I taught myself BASIC (and basic) programming using the VIC-20's built-in BASIC interpreter by spending hours typing in those game program listings that I'd only been able to read up until then. This taught me how programs were put together; I'd then spend even longer taking them apart again, rewriting and modifying the games to my own tastes! Perhaps this is even where my perennial interest in hacking and patching games came from!
 
I wrote many games, utilites and various other unclassifiable (and largely unreleasable) programs on the VIC-20, managing to fill four and a bit "C-15 datasettes" (15 minute cassette tapes) with my creations in the end. I had everything from simple guessing games to shoot'em'ups to text adventures. Some were typed in and adapted from listings printed in books I had borrowed from school or from the computer magazines of the day. I remember standing a local newsagent studying the rope swinging code in a type-in platform game in a magazine and thinking "Cool!", for example. Others I had just made up for my own amusement or education.

The VIC-20's games were great fun too! The standard machine had character based graphics and only 3.5Kb of RAM available to user programs, so games were simple and instantly playable by necessity. Classics, such as Matrix by Jeff Minter or Star Defence from Anirog, pushed the hardware to the limit, but were still built on the solid bedrock of top-quality gameplay. In fact, even getting the games could be an adventure in itself as my dad had to take me the 2 miles down to the local shop to buy them since I was still too young to travel that far by my little self!
 
Not a single high definition textured poly bumpmap vertex shader program fragment in sight, but the games still managed to be excellent fun. How did they do it?

I used my VIC-20 extensively for a couple of years but it gradually fell behind the curve technologically and was soon outclassed by the next generation of eight bit machines. I knew the end was near when the supply of �1.99 games from the local newsagent began to dry up. My VIC-20 days ended when I upgraded to an Amstrad CPC.
 
At the time I was young, foolish and not nearly as nostalgic and sentimental as I am now, so thought it was perfectly reasonable to "dismantle" my once-beloved VIC-20 with a hammer (seriously) and dump it, along with all the associated books, magazines and tapes I had collected and created! What a mistake! Oh, the tragedy! I can replace the hardware and even some of the books today, but nothing can ever replace those four-and-a-bit C-15 tapes of my early creations. If I had a time machine, I'd go back and slap my younger self on the head and tell him Oi! Girvin the Younger! NOOOOO!