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Don't copy that floppy

Everyone in the world needs to know about this.

When I was a youngster, we owned a state-of-the-art Commodore 64 computer and dozens of 5 1/4" floppy disks containing nothing but cracked and pirated games. My dad got the collection from a coworker and we loved going through those unlabeled disks and discovering games like Park Patrol and Attack of the Mutant Camels. I was unaware that there was any other method of acquiring software. Eventually we discovered that games could be purchased at certain stores and bought games like Arkanoid, Sky Wolf, and Bubble Bobble, but the bizarre free games always held a special place in my heart.

Still, I will never forget the sad day that my brother and I found a copy of Rampage in the Toys R Us and my mom wouldn't let us buy it, promising that we would come back later. Problem was, shortly afterward they discontinued all Commodore 64 software. Being a kid and as this was still before the Intar Web really took off, I had limited capacity for tracking down another copy, and I never found it again. We made our mom feel very guilty about that for a long time.

3 comments:

drvono said...

Man, thanks for posting. I haven't seen that in ages.

Nathan said...

Get yourself a C=64 emulator and hit c64.com for the game and you're good to go! You can finally forgive your dear, sweet mother!

CM said...

Ooh! Park Patrol!

I have nothing else to say, but I got so excited when I saw that. I forgot that game existed, but I used to play it for hours!

The other day I mentioned to a law school classmate that my first computer was a Commodore 64 and she looked at me blankly. Sigh.