Sunday, October 5, 2014

The computer that shaped a generation – Computer Sweden

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Little acclaimed, yet crucial for a whole generation. Now the Commodore 64 had their own hyllningsbok. Photo: Generation 64

– Adults saw of the pixels on the screen but could not tell what they meant. They could stare straight into a violent game without seeing anything; computer became as closet in Narnia – not even when they looked straight at something they took.

Words are crime writer Thomas Engström in the recently published book The 64th Generation is about one of the greatest but least celebrated gaming machines in history – the Commodore 64 home computer that changed the lives of a lot of 70 Baby Boomers, but curiously not yet received their rightful place in either Swedish gaming, music and computer history. Because that was where it all started according to the author, Jimmy Wilhelmsson.

Jimmy
The author Jimmy Wilhelmsson’s biggest challenge was to get the trust of those who are with the still living demo scene around C64 Photo: Patrik Rosenfeld

– In ten years as the Commodore 64 ruled that gaming computer set over 100 000 young Swedes glued to a joystick and screen. Several of them have since built their careers on the experiences they had, he says.

– Do you watch , for example: the Swedish game developer who is 35 and over you will discover that many began his career right here, with a C64.

Commodore 64 was manufactured between 1982 and 1994, when the company behind it went bankrupt. Still it is the best selling home computer, and then in the early 1980s had the astounding 40 percent of the entire world market. C64 consisted of a computer unit and keyboard in one. It was then linked together with a television. For the C64 was released over the years a variety of games, but because it also went to program on the there were many who had her first contact with the right coding that way.

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Generation 64 is a trip down memory lane, complete with game images and advertisements from the 1980s.

Generation 64 builds on interviews with people who at least partly shaped by their childhood and adolescence with the home computer. There is opera singer Rickard Söderberg, who sees similarities between including Drottningholm Palace Theatre and the game Ghosts’n Goblins.

– For Me is the Drottningholm Theatre really is one big computer game box, he says.

He used to rent his C64 in the candy shop Namnam in Halmstad. He rented on a Friday, he got to have it on Sunday. Mostly he played alone, but sometimes also with childhood friend Linda.

– The gameplay was for me above all a welcome escape from reality. If I’m with someone, it was usually with my friend Linda. We were about as bullied at school; she was the redhead, I was gay.

The choirmaster and music educator Therese Stridsberg tells how music software Music Mate came to shape her life and cartoonist Simon Gärdenfors claims that in all his series trying to draw characters from the C64 game Wonderboy and Giana Sisters.


Games for C 64 were simple by today’s standards. Here Giana Sisters, which among other things inspired cartoonist Simon Gärdenfors.

There are also beautiful snapshots from the 1980s. Like when Thomas Engstrom and his buddies would buy games on the ad at home in Nybro:

“In a corner , we were ten year olds and negotiated with a guy in his pick up fourth if the cost of the tape. On the bed on the other end of the room lay a naked woman did not say anything – and where we stood and counted our hundred pieces. We were pretty scared by the whole situation but it ended well and we were equally surprised every time the game actually worked. “

It is easy to forget what the situation was in the early 1980s, but concluded that the C64 came was in principle directed to the arcades to experience both real games and great graphics.

– For many was the Commodore 64′s arrival like they got home they where arcade games in the living room. It was as if a whole new world opened up. Even if one had no C64 self they felt someone had, it was one of those 80′s thing that everyone knew about, much like MovieBox says Jimmy Wilhelmsson.

Film Critic ORVAR Säfström says that his meeting with the home computer was just such, to dream the games he played at Grona Lund now arrived home to him. For him, it was also about identity. Here he tells of a meeting at a game right at Grona Lund:

– How are suddenly a motorcycle guy at the game, in full leather set regalia with integral helmet on the floor and a semicircle of little kids around themselves. He was kind to level 99 and it squirted space monsters on the screen. He was so sick good at the game and just where he represented my first ever picture of a true gamer, a rock star in the arcade; him I wanted to be.

But Generation 64 also puts his finger on the Commodore 64 can be seen as the beginning of the Swedish game wonder. For example, was the first Swedish commercial success Space Action game, programmed by Arne Fernlund. There were 4 kb. His youthful history from the 1970s is familiar from so many other talented game developers; He hated school, was over-stimulated and learned instead mostly himself, not least through the computer interest.

On one of the book’s funniest – if not best – Images are a young Arne Fernlund posturing with some of hundred dollars he earned on his game (as of unfathomable reason, among other things, was a bestseller in Italy).

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Arne Fernlund did the first commercial gaming success, Space Action. Here with some of his salary to the early 80s. Photo: Generation 64

But it might most fascinating about the whole story is that it does not run out. Even today, there is a live demo culture around C64 Getting into it was one of the biggest challenges for the writer.

– From the beginning was met I of suspicion, they wondered who I was and what I had for motive. I’ve never myself been among the groups, more stood outside and looked up. But it was someone in the group who vouched for me and the book project, which opened the doors, and after that it was almost never a problem, says Jimmy Wilhelmsson.

Symptomatic is enough one of the Generation 64′s last interviews, the Kim Nordström. Today he is the studio manager at Kings game company office in Malmö. His long gaming career began at the C64 demo scene – a scene he now returned to.

– C64 is today pure therapy. Nowadays I sit far away from the actual game production in my profession, but also I need to vent and themselves to do things, he says.

Or, as the book’s subtitle reads: “Commodore 64 made me who I am.”

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