Posted By
Frederick
on 2018-11-14
20:15:20
|  Re: Wanting to get started with the Plus/4
Thanks for all the replies! This has helped me out a lot, and I'll be back once I end up finally starting on my collection. So far my experience has really been limited to playing around in Yape, so I think it'll be nice to have a physical device to plug in and play with as well. I know that it's not the same as the C64 in most key respects, and that's one of the things that I really like about it as a platform. It feels a lot more "fun" than the C64, at least to me, and I think a lot of that comes down to trying to get so much out of a more simple and straightforward system without all the dedicated hardware that does things for you. To me, it's fun to have something that captures the essence of the Commodore computers I had as a child, but reduced down to the elements that made them feel uniquely Commodore; this way I get to sit in front of a nice new machine I've never really played around with, with the dog I never had as a boy, and just do stuff with a computer like I haven't since I was in grade school.
Beyond that, I think I have a lot of curiosity about the Plus/4 as a "what-if" sort of platform. I do wonder what would have happened had the Plus/4, rather than the C64, been the successor to the Vic-20. For one thing, I think it's easier to imagine a steady upgrade path into the 16-bit era similar to what happened with the Apple IIGS. I also remember when Commodore started fading away here in the US that other companies like CMD were trying to step in and keep the C64 alive, and I suspect that might have been more plausible with the Plus/4 given the lesser complexity (much like other companies and hobbyists were able to do with the ZX Spectrum). I also think that if there had been the kinds of titles for this machine that have been released in the past few years back in the 1980s things may have looked a lot different.
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