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A history lesson
For those who are not aware of this magical computer that was released by Commodore in 1984, here a little history lesson that I hope you will enjoy. In 1984 the Commodore 16 was released, it looked like the C64 in many respects apart from its colour. A dark grey case, but still had the famous breadbox look, which in many respects attracted a new age of computer users from its familiar looks. Parents were looking for a cheap but functional educational computer, but with a brand they could trust. I remember pestering my parents for a computer, hinting it would be used for school work, but was hoping for a C64. When I received the C16 and started to play with the system it was clear to me that it was a good decision. It came dressed up as a starter pack for new computer users and included programs on BASIC programming. Also included were a few games, the best out of the pack was Punchy, which was a platform run and jump game. The C16 wasn’t long on its own though, the Commodore Plus 4 soon was released and was vastly superior. It came packed with 64k of memory and a very new sleek design, not to mention a set of office packages built into the system. Quite a few of my friends owned Plus 4’s, so I played at their houses a lot. The Plus 4 had its own unique range of games that were designed to use the 64k of ram rather than the 16k of the C16. As you can imagine the games for the Plus 4 were rather good compared to the C16, but the C16 still had a good catalogue of games and the Plus 4 could run C16 games too.
People often dismissed the Commodore 16/Plus 4 for being a computer lacking software support, but they were wrong. The back catalogue of this system was simply huge, check out the web links at the end of this feature for further information. The C16/Plus 4 benefited from having a very much improved BASIC language, version 3.5, which was far superior to that of the C64 or Vic 20. This made it easier to program graphics and sounds. How ever the C16/Plus 4 didn’t come with any hardware sprite functions which made game development more of a challenge. Even with this restriction, programmers were producing some excellent quality software. Some of the games were complete drivel as you tend to get with all computers but there were a vast amount of excellent titles available. In an article like this, it’s not possible to discuss and review all the software but hopefully it will give you a taster of what is available. So I do urge you to download an emulator and try a few of them out, maybe even the ones from the top ten.
Whilst this range of Commodore computers wasn’t software compatible with the C64 or the VIC 20, the hardware was. You could use devices designed for the C64, like the 1541 disk drive, printer and other items with the C16/Plus 4 range. I myself have a plus 4 using a 1541 disk drive; they make a very happy couple together. It’s a shame that most of the games released for the C16/Plus 4 were on a tape format, more disk games would have been faster for loading. The cost of the disk drives back in the eighties was nearly as much as the computers themselves, so this option wasn’t open to most. But these days the C16/Plus 4 is easily affordable from sites such as EBay, its possible to pick up a complete Plus 4 package, with games and cassette deck for around £50.00 depending on the condition.
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