Commodore Vic20 Commercial - William Shatner

[Laserchicken88]

Press 3 and do the Shatner all day long

[tecshaun]

Can't wait to play battlefield 3 on this legend..

[1xWertzui]

@tecshaun If you program it that would be great.

[Vidinotes]

and get the Hess modem so you can rack up a $600 phone bill like I did :/

[mytube0000000000]

But will it run crysis? XD

[pufixas]

@mytube0000000000

no.

[mytube0000000000]

@pufixas It was a joke -_-

[pufixas]

@mytube0000000000

It was a question too -_-

[TheRagsymuffin]

Shatner would have looked great as Kirk in the 1980s...

[theemrpoint123]

@TheRagsymuffin The Star Trek movies were made in the 1980s...

[monmarfori]

the star trek creator invented a machine?

[Turdbuckethat]

WHOA! A REAL computer keyboard!!! 

[PLOBEXRIME]

try pressing 6. that guy is a sound chip ! :OOO

[PLOBEXRIME]

play great games too. bip bip bip bip bip bop

[rickcain2320]

Oh man, Gorf and Omega race, I LOVED those games.

Microsoft had Reversi! Yeahhhh

[TorontoJon]

Back in the 80's, we used to call the VIC 20 the "DICK20" because it came with a tape cassette drive instead of a floppy disk drive and it had much less memory than a Commodore 64.

It was fun seeing the Shatner of 1982, probably right after the release of the all-time best STAR TREK movie, STAR TREK II THE WRATH OF KHAN.

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!­!!

[nickbouwhuis]

W00T!! I want that!

[plastique45]

Wow, shatter looked good back then!

[7megahertz]

Shatner is the fucking MAN

[Laserchicken88]

Pressing 3 over and over

[uxtalzon]

1982 - when a TV and typewriter combined to create the new breed of FOREVER ALONE.

[declaration963]

"On Commodore Vic-20 your kids can play game in one time and watching porn in another time, buy commodore Vic-20 now, it's under 300 dollars"

[mandeexmoo]

Kenny hotz for the win.

[IsThatPickle]

Kenny Hotz anyone?

[packrat79]

For some reason, advertisers in the 80's liked to market such electronics with the idea that such devices would bring families together. Heck, the box for the original Nintendo showed an entire family crammed around a 14" monitor playing Super Mario Bros.! I mean, did anyone actually do that in real life?? Today, everything is about personal entertainment instead... families don't do hardly anything together anymore, especially sharing a single computer. How times have changed.......

[shawnio]

@packrat79 to be honest  yeah., in my neighbourhood when I was a kid we had all the kids around our nintendo playing it. take this shit somewhere else

[howincrediblyshit]

@packrat79 Well, the Wii and the Kinect things are all marketed at families and use that same imagery in their marketing... even DS adverts have a bunch of families kicking back with their DS consoles together!

[gjc82071]

@packrat79 The only time I can remember anything even remotely like that Xmas of 81. My Uncle bought us "Asteroids" for the Atari 2600. Me & my 2 cousins (we were more like bros), were in the family room playing it. I remember my Uncle smiling & engrossed in watching us play, along with my grandma, mom, & father (but only us kids played it). When we got the Atari 5200 in 1982, it was just me & my cousins playing it. Same with the Vic20 & C64. No "family" anything. (continued in part 2)

[gjc82071]

@packrat79 Part 2: I almost forgot. My step-dad actually introduced ME to video games in 1976 when I was 5yo. He had a pre-Atari 2600, dedicated (no carts) Breakout/Pinball console. When the 2600 was released in 1977, he immediately grabbed 1 (I was the 1st kid in school with an Atari). I remember, it must have been 1977 or '78, he took the Atari 2600 to his parents house, hooked it up, & then me, my step father & his father proceeded to play it! I nearly forgot that. Good memories, thx!

[sideim]

@RaymondLovesPedos don't be such a cunt and get your panties out of a bunch

[sideim]

@RaymondLovesPedos reported for racial slur

[Rachamacha]

Can it run Metro 2033?

[mama21mama]

en esos tiempos no habían compañías grandes monopólicas,

O bien no eran tan obvias.

[groundhog0339]

I tore up Gorf!!!

[handonrip]

gosh 300 bucks...yep those were the days.....now a gallon of gas is 300 bucks, but piece of s.hit presidents are free!

[freethoughtmusic]

I had one. it was great.

[Bus7777]

The birth of WSAD.

[ORCA4312]

@BlueIsa7 I had C64. It was a great machine. It's incredible that Microprose got Gunship to look and play so well on it.

[skbhopps]

atari...nice..



[mptrax]

wOOOOOOOOW my 1st computer in 1982 !!!! WOOOOWWW ! here in Italy !!!

[somegermangeek]

Let me guess, “under 300 dolllars” means 299,99$ ^^

[bodyboarder3452]

they had weird names for computers in the 80s and 90s

[merkur32123]

@bodyboarder3452 Commodore is the companny, not the name of the Computter, and what is Weird on Vic 20? PC, sounds more weird, but we dont think it now, becaus we are used to it.

[Hopefulfilment]

I still have my cast iron Vic 20. ;) Should start it up again...

[RossJams]

i will never part with mine willingly

A lot sentimental value there ... and it plays games too!

Funny they show someone playing Gorf getting killed

[Hot80s]

nice tits willy.

[maschinegunfunk85]

hey this is old school

[Celeon999A]

"....and you can play games too"

Actually that was the main reason why people bought the Commodores :-D

"Learn computing" was just the excuse to get the ok from the wife of parents to buy one :-D

[LIVERLADD]

Ah...Them was the days

[SolidIncMedia]

We used to have a VIC-20 with a tape drive. I still remember playing Gorf, plus we had the light pen, even though we could never get it to work. Those were the days!

[FireSumo]

UNDER THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS

[sulmann26]

wow, nice graphics!

[eadomino2]

eso de que marca era amd o pentium?' yo tengo amd pq es mas rapido q pentium

[tikvision]

@eadomino2 si seras pendejo....

[jammingcats]

I actually had one! It was fun! My parents paid a Fortune for it! Now... with 300 dollars maybe less you can by a Laptop...

[useless1997]

It's excatly like today: You get fired with marketing, then you buy it, and on the very next day they throw out a new product.

[moonboots69]

this dude reminds me of the guy that played Capt Kirk... spooky..

[xxashyy]

Holy Shit! It's T.J. Hooker!!!

[hjones1]

Wow. What memories.... bad ones.

[axelericsson]

The beginning of PC gaming??????

[Guitarsthatkill]

@axelericsson Well we didn't call 'em PCs back then.

The home Commordore was more looked at as its own thing, seperate from an IBM or Apple...the early Apples probably take that title.

In fact later on, in the late eighties the 16 bit computer platform was a three way shoot off between The Amiga, The Atari ST, and The PC....showing that they were definitely regarded as seperate things.

[gjc82071]

Last night I saw something kinda cool. William Shatner guest starred on an episode of Culombo. That in itself might not be such a big deal.  What made it interesting was that Walter Koenig was also in the episode. He had a brief part as a detective. For anybody interested it's Columbo ep38: Fade In To Murder (1976). I watched it @ Veehd.com

[dumbbo1]

@gjc82071 Was that the one where he invited a friend over to watch a game, then doped his drink so he fell asleep and could swear he was with Shatner during the murder? Shat used his VCR (in 1976 it must have been a fortune) to tape the game, then ran it back and woke him up so his friend thought he had only just nodded off. But then his friend saw the next day that his watch was now set to the correct time. Turns out he kept it a little ahead, meaning Shatner changed the time.

[gjc82071]

@dumbbo1 Yea yea! That is the episode :-)

Hey, do you remember in the show, Colombo asked how much a machine like that costs? (the VCR) & Shatner replied "Around $3,000". So, yea, a small fortune in 1976! An inflation calculator stated "What cost $3000 in 1976 would cost $11181.06 in 2009." Today, there are not many "consumer electronics" with that kind of price tag.

BTW, Do you remember that Walter Koenig aka "Chekov" was in the episode too? He was a cop @ the crime scene/murder site.

[gjc82071]

@dumbbo1 Hey, the name of the episode is Columbo 38 - Fade In To Murder (1976) TV, & I watched it on Veehd.com. 1 more thing about the VCR. When Shatner is pressing "record" you can see a piece of tape with the letters "Video Tape Recorder" placed over what is obviously the VCR manufacturers logo. I bet they "defined" it's purpose since most 1976 TV audiences wouldn't know off hand what a VCR was or did.

[97channel]

She canna take it captain. She only has 5k o' ram. She were ne'er built for it. She's gonna blow!

[OBSysteme]

@97channel haha, yes, but you can expande the hell out of a vic-20

[dinnerandashow]

Back then William Shatner was still spinning off the image he was some hot shot.

We now now what a selfish, ego maniac he was.

[budinboat]

under $300. my old man was pissed I could tell when we got to the register at toys r us. They sold the system and all the games here in the early 80s. I think he paid 250.00 for just the c64. later i got a dataset which i still have at kmart. Funny how all the stores had c64 stuff even our safeways and giant , superfresh groceries stores had the games for sale. Reminds me that in 1975 our family of five went to safeway to pick out our first electronic calculator. cost about 15.00

70s outing

[bopkick5]

i relate to you brother

[gjc82071]

@budinboat Your comment reminds me of a little episode that for some reason, is permanently etched in my memory. I was around 10-12yrs old. It was At K-Mart, early 80's, like 25+ years ago. I remember a man & his son. They were in the electronics department. I remember the man asking for a Commodore 64, 2 floppy drives & more stuff I can't remember. I don't know why I remember that. Maybe because I had a Vic-20 & C-64, loved them back then, & still do today thanks to the VICE emulator?

[bopkick5]

i neva had a vic 20 in mi day. nope. but i always have respekt 4 dem. i woz a texas instruments ti994a man miself. i had a fite wif mi mate dave once cos he said it couldn run pacman. but it could dave. yep. those wer de days people. i lost touch wif mi mate dave. an i dunno wot he's doin now. yep those were de days people.

an mi computer could run pacman dave. theres no doubt wotever

[donjabroni]

Come on William, say it like Captain Kirk would say it: THE COMMODORE - VIC - 20.

[ohnodevo]

Ah the VIC-20. I loved making copies of cassette software: just put it into the home double audio tape deck. Play on original; record on the duplicate.....was beautiful. And the VIC-Modem (Model 1600 I believe) 300 baud....talk about waiting for the data to appear...man that was rough. Can't believe that is almost 30 years ago.

[fawdown]

There were some good games. But it had such a crappy cartridge slot. You either had to yank it out, risking knocking the whole thing on the floor, or shimmy it out back and forth. I had one and it was fun. Omega race and Gorf were great. The only thing that really annoyed me was that the sound chip would run out of memory and be all static if ye played for more than like 15 minutes at a time.

[cobrachoppergirl]

plays great games too! space invaders...! which sucked until things heated up. gorf was kick ass, and so was omega race, and radar rat race. and scott adam's adventure land, if you figured out to cut down three, look at the ground, go down under the stump, and then down one level further to an entire subterranean underground. most of the pictures on the back of the box of the VIC-20 were propaganda vaporware junk however, laughable pics of stock exchange data coming over a 300baudmodem

[amulpatel07]

GORF.... man I loved that game

so so so so so

mucccccchchhhhhhhh

[guitargods2009]

WOW!! I remember when I was a kid my old man bought the VIC20 back in the day & he also bought the Commodore cassette drive. Some programs took as much as 20 minutes to load up on tape. Then he got a C-64 the following year or two with a floppy drive. What a huge difference.

[katanacop41]

We had the C-64 with the tape drive. You're right, it would take forever to load stuff on tape. And to think of what those file sizes must have been... Mere kilobytes. Imagine what it would take to store one of today's games like Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on a tape.

[JakkHack]

I don't think you would be able to store GTA on a cassette tape.

[ArizonaDelRio]

according to my calculations, it would take 120 cassettes and three days to load.

[rickrussell]

Coming soon... GORT!

[NiGhtMarEs0nWax]

can it run crysis? wowowowoweeep weep beeuuuuu beeuuuuu bambambambam bleepbleep.

i bet it didnt blue screen though.

[fjccommish]

"Don't play games!"

Then the whole second part of the commercial, and closing spot, are about games.

[brettv8]

Will we look back on today's consoles and pcs and have a right old chuckle?

[killerdugong]

if James T Kirk says the Vic-20 is a good computer then you can take it to da bank!

[jem2017]

A friend of mine had a VIC-20. We got a lot of milage out of some Scott Adams text adventures that he had -- The Count and Voodoo Castle. The games were very simple but super fun at the time.

[gufodotto]

Wow, I used to love Omega Race when I was a kid!!!

[ActontheActor]

Cool, I had a VIC 20

[stevephil07]

Aaarrgh!! Reminds me of me asking my Pop for Intellivision for Christmas and him bringing home this crap! I was 11 at the time, so I didn't trip out that much...

[weegerri1sm]

Hahaa, under $300 in 1982, that was a fortune! :P

Oh how times have changed. I kinda miss those innocent ol' days of 8-bit computing.

[SkuldChan42]

Actually it wasn't - compare that with the price of an Apple computer of the same vintage (around 1500$).

What was really incredible is they came out with the C64 a year or two later for 600$.

[DuderinoDeux]

Gorf Rocked

[CRYP77]

LOL my vic-20 still works too. and i have a awesome 3kb memory expansion card :)))

[hsv]

The man is a god. I'm just sayin....

[vox2007]

My =commodore*64= with =1541=disk drive and =c64monitor= and =c64printer= still work. Now you can emulator old consoles like Sega Master System and Computers like Commodore*64 using emulators. Vice emulates the c64,c128,PET,Vic-II computers. Oh and Mame32 emulates arcade cabinet games. My Atari 2600 still works to, so does my SMSystem. I'm on a dell 8200 nowadays, its getting old, but it does the job with some gaming etc :)

[tjuk007]

Ahh remember the MPS 801 Dot Matrix printer too?? Dear god what a noise that came from that printer lol.....Happy Happy days!!!

[odsall]

Oh this was my fist computer, not the greatest purchase my dads made, the spectrum and c64 were far superior. Still jetpak was ace!!!!

[djtrixen]

It's amazing how far we've come, isn't it? If you want to baffle your mind, just imagine where we'll be in another quarter century.

[pingeek777]

That version of Space Invaders looks even better than the Texas Instrument PC version. I never knew Shatner advertised for Commodore. Cool. Thanks for sharing!

[sarahthediva]

I was a champ at Gorf when I was a kid

[Modeltrainguy]

I remember this commercial! ^_^ Sweet! Thanks for posting.

[Pieman23]

I just found one of these at a yard sale!

[chookter1]

How did the enterprise ever get to warp speed using this?

[i1865]

The Vic20 aww bless! I remember it well.Tremble at the awesome power of it's mighty 3.5k memory.

[visor109]

It's like watching an ad for a Model T!

[robotpickle]

Gorf looks alot like Tempest

[flyhalf2006]

The kids of today don't know what they missed out on.

[katanaburner]

No kidding. When I fly back east I'm going to re-aquire my old Atari system so I can play Pong and Donkey Kong! Sigh...those were the days and how do we miss them.

[0neofthem]

@flyhalf2006 like we would really want this over what we have now.

[tronlaser]

@flyhalf2006 I know what i missed out on! I 12 years old! And i have a C64 in my room!

[lauri647]

@flyhalf2006 I'm kid of '98 and I know what I have missed out on.

For sure.

[sideim]

@flyhalf2006 yes we do, we missed out on a fucking shitty 6 bit piece of crap. Your just jealous because us kids have high speed internet porn where you guys had to actually "pay" for your shit lol

[wamschmenkins]

Now with .... Gorf?

[mcv42]

LOL!

[cyclist14]

"Plays great games too...WooWooWooWooWoo!!!" LOL

[pedroac]

And "Invaders" appears after that! LOL

And look how the kid handle the joystick.

[wormholetravel75]

Computers were still expensive back then.. and it looks like Shatner was beinning is Tv Commercial Fame.

[GunzBlazin87]

"Unlike games, it has a real computer keyboard." Fuck! I'm sold! :D

[Spc01]

haha.

I remember c64.

[gitano71]

damn was it that much back then?

i still have mine, but in a box.

lasts longer than the damn 360

[KLUNKET]

@gitano71 -Amen- I had an Atari, an intellivision, and a first generation Nintendo NES that still function flawlessly today 30 years later. I bought a brand new Wii in 2008, and it is already broken in 2010. The optical drive quit. They sure don't make em' like they used to!

[Dovenpeis]

@KLUNKET

They sure do not price them like they used to either.

[ScarletKnights]

Wonder computer of the 1980's? I'm using one right now!

[WadeSimMiser]

My very first computer!

[Guncriminal]

Drinking Game: Down a shot of liquer every time he says "wonder".

[RideMyBMW]

Gork!!! Omega Race!!!

"Those were the daaaaaayz"

[timothy620]

The VIC-20 was my first computer (a whole 5KB of RAM). I wanted an Atari 2600 so bad, but my parents bought me the VIC-20 instead. I would have never launched my career in IT without it. Brings back fond memories.

[evilflynn]

...perhaps a little more than that...

[isadashhqdotcom]

Thanks! Check out the International Space Agency (ISA) site here by clicking on this user account! Also check out the International Space Plane (ISP) Program website! You can google "International Space Plane (ISP) Program", or you can go to this user account which has links to the International Space Agency (ISA) Organization.

[EnterpriseKnight]

More powerfull of a PS3!!!LOL

[moondy11]

jesus 300 bucks back then would have cost the average joe and arm and a leg.

[ZEROEVILDARKCOOL]

YEAH. THATS LIKE 400 IN TODAYS DOLLARS

[sharlene123charlie]

ha ha ha ha ha!

[Algolei]

I'm using a Vic 20 right now.

GORF!

[jci10]

NO, no, you

mean I'm

using a

Vic-20

right now.

[RideMyBMW]

WE used to beat up all those flippin VIC 20 geeks at school!!! Now we mow their lawns and wash their cars. Dang!!!!

[giovmari]

he he ... those shy guys with thick lenses

[timothy620]

I need my lawn mowed. :-)

[DigitalSurgeon]

Now that is some POWER! Where can I get one??

[TheDigitalTruth]

LOL!

[wisteela]

Love it! I've got to get one again.

[davyforce]

VIC 20 was totally rockin! Learned computers with that thing- now I can make a living because of it! Yeah VIC-20 (of course you need a casette drive and super expander cartridge - got you up to 16K of mem!! Thats 1/100th of a floppy disk!

[DangerousBastard]

I've got a Vic 20 somewhere. I think the ol' man must have bought it when it was still pretty slick.

[jpowell180]

Ahhh, the early 80's - where one could watch Square Pegs, starring they guy who played Capt Kirk's illegitimate son, whom the "Klingon Bastards" would later kill a couple of years later.....

....And if you turned the "dial" to ABC, you could see TJ Hooker, chasing down bad guys in L.A. in between filming Star Trek movies....