I remember my friend in high school having a VIC-20, I would come over and we would play a game or type in programs.

He later got an C-128. That was an amazing difference in computers.

Would love to hear other's experiences. I remember seeing the Amiga announced when I was in college, but could not
afford one. I think they started at like $1500 or $1999!

Re: Any VIC-20 users
By: Amessyroom to All on Tue Jul 23 2024 10:36 am

In the far off golden days of my youth, my father's VIC-20 was the only thing we had for a video game console well up until I was a teenager. Connecting it to the TV set involved the sliding "TV-GAME" switch and the spade connectors that would befuddle anyone born after 2000. My personal favorite game was "River Race", where I had my first experience with Morse Code because when you heard SOS being tapped out on the sound it indicated you would soon need to pull your boat over to a dock to rescue a stranded person.

My father once said that he and my mother would play Omega Race together in the earliest years of their marriage and he was quite sad when she suddenly lost interest. My siblings' favorite was Fort Knox because of the crude cartoon cat-and-mouse game that resembled the Tom & Jerry cartoons we all loved.

I still remember the smell of the musty TV cabinet when we opened it to get out the cables for the VIC, and remembering to put down a blanket to sit on for our collective half-hour of gaming because the brown carpet was scratchy on our skin. The muffled monaural sounds are burned into my brain along with the feeling of yanking the stiff joystick controller in just the right way as my brother bounced on the couch encouraging me to "get 'im!"

I would trade my $1500 battlestation of a gaming rig to relive those days in a heartbeat, and so would many others of my generation.