My Commodore Epiphany

As a teen in the 80's and young adult in the early 90's I had a Commodore 64. It dominated my time and I spent many years collecting and playing games as well as contacting local BBS's using my modem. When I purchased my first IBM PC clone, slowly my time with the 64 diminished and eventually I handed it down to my younger sister.

Later in life, I began using emulators to bring back some of the glory days on the 64. I bought a Stella adapter to utilize authentic joysticks and had a lot of fun playing games.

Last April on a warm, sunny day I went for a run near my house. I decided to explore a bike trail I had never traveled down before. While listening to The Church's "Starfish" album on my iPod, I had an epiphany! I wanted a real Commodore 64 back in my life. I wanted to augment it with the latest gadgets to allow me to collect every game I could find. I wanted it to once again take a prominent place in my life.

It's funny how the mind works. I think being on that bike trail reminded me of high school days where I would take a similar path to get to school, and more importantly, to get to my friend Ray's house to play his 64 and leech games off of him.

Anyhow, this epiphany led me to many eBay auctions and finally I have a Commodore 64, a 1571 disk drive, and IDE64 for file storage, a MSSIAH synth cartridge, and a Competition Pro joystick. I've enjoyed the "real deal" very much, but have really enjoyed sharing it with my son and neighbors who have shown a keen interest in retro gaming.