




The video clip above features an advert for the VIC-20 with William Shatner. As you will see, it's aimed at grabbing a slice of the Atari and Intellivision gaming hardware market, and is basically shoving two fingers up to them!
The VIC-20 is probably most-remembered for being the very first computer (of any type) to sell 1 million units. It was released in 1981 as a replacement for the PET, and used the same MOS 6502 CPU.Public domain image of the Vic-20
Original outer packaging
The VIC-20 in all its glory
The Vic-20 boot-up screen. For those with no knowledge of the BASIC programming language, seeing the word "Ready" was perplexing. I can just hear thousands of new computer enthusiasts in their bedrooms shouting "What the hell am I supposed to do now?"
This is a third party clone of Commodore's1530 tape drive and it was compatible with C64, C128, PET and VIC-20.
The cover of Compute! magazine (Issue 24) from May 1982. You can see every cover of the magazine at AtariMagazines.com
Wacky Waiters Game
Here is a video clip of a game called Wacky Waiters. The gameplay and commentary is by a programmer
called Eugene Evans, and it's being playing on an unexpanded Vic 20. By the way, this guy admits that whenever he's commenting on a game he plays badly, as you will see! It looks like a very frustrating game, and you get the idea of how basic games were back in the day - we still loved 'em, though!
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