What I'm watching this week on YouTube: The 8-Bit Guy and retro computer videos

My first computer was a Commodore 64 back in the 1980s. I later had a Commodore Plus/4 and then several Amigas before moving to PCs.

After watching a documentary on Atari on TV I searched for something similar on YouTube and found an excellent series on the history of Commodore on a channel called The 8-Bit Guy.

The series has episodes on the early PET models, VIC-20, Commodore 64, Plus/4 and C16, C128, Commodores IBM-compatible PCs, and the range of disk drives they produced. The final part in the series covers the Amiga.

The 8-Bit Guy has videos on many other early platforms but the videos that I found most interesting were the ones on some games he has developed (playlist). These are games he has only recently developed that work with the old platforms, like the Commodore 64. I was quite surprised that there is actually a market still for new software and it was very interesting to follow how he developed his games.

My first programming was learning BASIC on the Commodore 64. I tried to learn machine language at the time, but never grasped it. I thought it might be interesting to try and learn it today. As a starting point, The 8-Bit Guy has a good explanation of it in one of his videos.

Also of interest was his reviews of some of the systems you can buy new today such as the Commodore 64 Maxi, that sounds like an excellent emulator and can run most C-64 software.