Software per Commodore 64
Il Commodore 64 ebbe una vasta libreria di software di circa 10 mila titoli commerciali, comparabile solo al suo rivale Apple II.
BASIC
Sfortunatamente il linguaggio BASIC non offriva alcuna funzionalità grafica e sonora, che potevano essere sfruttate solamente con i comandi PEEK e POKE o da estensioni di terze parti, come il famoso Simons' BASIC, oppure scrivere programmi in linguaggio assembly. La Commodore aveva un BASIC miglire, ma scelse di far uscire il C64 con la versione 2.0 del BASIC utilizzata nel commodore VIC-20 per ridurre i costi.
Strumenti di sviluppo
Il C64 era ben fornito di strumenti di sviluppo sia dalla Commodore che da terze parti. Esistevano vari assembler: l'assembler MIKRO era uno di questi e girava su cartuccia. Diverse compagnie vendevano compilatori BASIC, C, Pascal e un sottoinsieme del linguaggio Ada .
Lo strumento per produrre giochi più comune fu il Shoot'Em-Up Construction Kit, SEUCK. SEUCK permetteva ai programmatori non esperti di creare sparattutto professionali. Gary Kitchen's Gamemaker e Arcade Game Construction Kit permettevano di creare giochi con poca fatica. The Quill e Graphic Adventure Creator servivano per creare giochi d'avventura. Il Pinball Construction Set era dedicato ai giochi da flipper.
Giochi
Il C64 non sarebbe completo senza i suoi giochi. Per la quantità e la qualità dei giochi, il Commodore 64 divenne molto conosciuto come computer da intrattinamento.
Probabilmente l'aspetto più evidente nella storia dei giochi del C64 è il suo numero di titoli scritti per questo computer. In totale (secondo il Gamebase 64) esistono più di 18 mila titoli per il Commodore 64, probabilmente il più grande catalogo di per un modello di computer esistente, che superava di gran lunga quelli per lo Spectrum ZX.
I giochi venivano venduti su floppy disk o cassetta. I giochi su cassetta erano di solito meno costosi rispetto alla versione disco; comunque a causa dei difetti della cassetta (scarsa velocità e mancanza dell'accesso casuale), molti giochi di grandi dimensioni (come i giochi di ruolo) uscirono solo nella versione per dischetto.
Applicazioni e utilità
Anche se molti non considerano il Commodore 64 come un computer da lavoro, il Commodore 64 era molto utilizzato per computer grafica, desktop publishing e videoscrittura.
Il programma di grafica più noto fu KoalaPainter per la sua interfaccia utente, il KoalaPad. Un altro programma di grafica noto era Doodle!. La versione C64 del The Print Shop permetteva di disegnare cartelli e loghi su stampante. "The Newsroom" era un desktop publishing.
Esistevano diversi programmi di videoscrittura, il migliore era SpeedScript. Il foglio elettronici della Microsoft, MultiPlan, fu portato al Commodore 64, e competeva con il Calc Result. Mini Office II era una suite da ufficio completa.
Molti usavano GEOS. I suoi vantaggi erano la velocità, la facilità d'uso e la completa gamma di applicazioni. GEOS forniva un ambiente simile ai primi Apple Macintosh. GEOS aprì la strada allo sviluppo di molti font, accessori eapplicazioni. Supportava molte periferiche e stampanti. Il KoalaPad e le penne Lightpen erano utilizzabili e questo contribuì allo sviluppo di molte clip-art. GEOS divenne molto popolare anche per il suo prezzo basso.
Esistevano molti strumenti per l'editing sonoro. La Commodore rilasciò del software, compresa una tastiera virtuale da mettere sopra la vera. Music Construction Set permetteva di comporre musica con note. Per avere musica MIDI e sintetizzatori del parlato servivano cartucce d'espansione. La cartuccia Prophet64 è stata rilasciata e fornisce applicazioni grafiche per sequenziare la musica, sequencing music, sintetizzatori del timpano e del ritmo, MIDI DIN-sync. SAM era un software per sintetizzare il parlato.
| Screenshot Commodore 64 BASIC | Screenshot Koala Painter | Screenshot Magic Desk I | Screenshot Multiplan |
| Commodore 64 BASIC | Koala Painter | Magic Desk I | Multiplan |
| Commodore (1982) | Koala/Audio Light (1983) | Commodore(1983) | Microsoft (1983) |
| Screenshot Vizawrite | Screenshot GEOS | Screenshot geoPaint | Screenshot geoWrite |
| Vizawrite | GEOS | geoPaint | geoWrite |
| Viza Software (1983) | Berkeley Softworks (1986) | Berkeley Softworks (1988) | Berkeley Softworks (1987) |
The first screen shows the C64's BASIC with a small program. The BASIC interpreter does not only allow the user to write programs, but it is also used as command prompt, so in order to load a program a BASIC command needs to be entered.
- KoalaPainter is an early paint program. It uses two screens. The first displays a menu and is being shown here. The other screen is the picture that is being worked on. The program is controlled either by a joystick or with a graphics tablet that was also sold by Koala.
- Magic Desk is an application by Commodore that tries to resemble a real type writer. It contains basic editing functions though.
- Multiplan is a text-based spreadsheet application, written by Microsoft.
- Vizawrite is another text-based word processor for the C64, but looks more like the professional word processors of the early 80s.
- GEOS was a graphical user interface, first released in 1987. It was a small revolution at its time, because until then GUIs were only available for the much more powerful 16-bit machines.
- geoPaint is a paint program for GEOS. Beside the small resolution it had all capabilities of other GUI-based drawing programs of its time.
- geoWrite is a word processor for GEOS. It did not only have a GUI, but also supported many different styles and fonts with the WYSIWYG principle, unlike the other word processors on the C64.
- UIFLI (Underlay Interlace Flexible Line Interpreter) is a Graphicsmode on the Commodore 64 invented by DeeKay and Crossbow of Crest in 1997.
Type-ins, bulletin boards, and disk magazines
Besides prepackaged commercial software, the C64, like the VIC before it, had a large library of type-in programs. Numerous computer magazines offered type-in programs, usually written in BASIC or assembly language or a combination of the two. Because of its immense popularity, many general-purpose magazines that supported other computers offered C64 type-ins (Compute! was one of these), and at its peak, there were many magazines in North America (Ahoy!, Commodore Magazine, Compute!'s Gazette, Power/Play, RUN and Transactor [1]) dedicated to Commodore computers exclusively. These magazines sometimes had disk companion subscriptions available at extra cost with the programs stored on disk to avoid the need to type them in. The disk magazine Loadstar offered fairly elaborate ready-to-run programs, music, and graphics. Books of type-ins were also common, especially in the machine's early days. A large library of public ___domain and freeware programs, distributed by online services such as Q-Link and CompuServe, BBSs, and user groups also emerged. Despite limited RAM and disk capacity, the Commodore 64 was a popular platform for BBS hosting. One of the most popular was the Color64 BBS System, allowed the use of Color graphics using the PET-ASCII system.
Software Piracy
The C64 software market had widespread problems with software piracy. This was perhaps due to a number of significant factors. The efforts of warez groups to remove software copy protections was probably the main contributing factors to rampant software piracy.
Many BBSs offered cracked commercial software, sometimes requiring special access and usually requiring users to maintain an upload/download ratio. A large number of warez groups existed, including Fairlight, which continued to exist more than a decade after the C64's demise. Some members of these groups turned to telephone phreaking and credit card or calling card fraud to make long-distance calls, either to download new titles not yet available locally, or to upload newly cracked titles released by the group.
Not all Commodore 64 users had modems however. For these people, many warez group "swappers" maintained contacts throughout the world. These contacts would usually mass mail pirated floppy disks through the postal service. Also, and perhaps naturally enough, sneakernets existed at schools and businesses all over the world, as friends and colleagues would trade (and usually later copy) their software collections. At a time before the Internet was widespread, this was the only way for many users to amass huge pirated software libraries. Also, and particularly in Europe, groups of people would hold copy-parties explicitly to copy software, irrespective of software licence.
Several popular utilities were sold that contained custom routines to defeat most copy-protection schemes in commercial software. (Appropriately, Fast Hack'em—probably the most popular example—was itself widely pirated.). Tapes could be copied with special software, but often it was simply done by dubbing the cassette in a dual deck tape recorder, or by relying on an Action Replay cartridge to freeze the program in memory and save to cassette. Cracked games could often be copied manually without any special tools.
Retrocomputing efforts
The magnetic tapes and disks upon which home computer software were stored are decaying at an alarming rate. In order to preserve game software and information, efforts are underway to copy from these degrading media onto fresh media which will help ensure a long life for the software and make it available for emulation and archiving. In addition, there are other efforts to archive Commodore 64 documentation, software manuals, magazine articles, and other nostalgia (such as software packaging artwork, game screenshots, and Commodore 64 TV commercials).
The GameBase 64 (GB64) organization has an online database of information, which at version 4 holds information for 18,800 unique game titles. The database is still growing as new information comes to light. The GoodGB64 variant of Cowering's Good Tools allows users to audit their C64 game collections using the GameBase64 database (the 3.0 version of GoodGB64 lists 17,067 disk image files).
There are tools available to transfer original 1541 floppy discs to or from the PC. The Star Commander is a DOS-based tool, cbm4linux is a Linux tool, and cbm4win is a Windows tool to transfer data from an original floppy drive to the PC, or vice versa, using a simple X-cable. There are also tools available, 64HDD, to allow your C64 to directly load D64 software stored on your PC using the same cables.
In addition, there is now a growing number of emulators available, which allow the use of an emulated C64 on modern computing hardware. The most popular and compatible are VICE, which is free and runs on most modern as well as some older platforms; CCS64, which is a shareware program available for Windows; and Power64, which has versions for Mac OS X and OS 9.
Also the Quantum Link service has been reconstructed as Quantum Link Reloaded. It can be accessed with a real Commodore 64, or through the VICE emulator.