As an Adult, Weird Paul finds a C64 Disc filled with his Programs from 1983
When I got my first Commodore computer, it was a Vic-20. I was thrilled to get it and took to writing BASIC programs on it almost immediately. Unfortunately I didn’t have a disc drive at this point on which to save them. I would remedy that with future computers, but in the meantime dozens of my creations were lost to me and sadly the ones I wrote later didn’t survive either
In this video from Weird Paul, we get to see what a masterful programmer Paul was back in 1983. Since none of the many discs I filled up as a kid survived, it is a real treat to see how his programs all turned out and that some of them still exist and can be played.
I have to say that I did a lot of the same things as Paul. I would type in line after line, but replaced names and words with something more humorous or took license with a successful movie franchise to make their own “unique” text adventure.
Paul was doing it back in 1983, and as always, he has video of it to show off. The results are often hilarious, as are Paul’s reactions. I hope to see more of these videos to go along with Paul’s original VLOG time-capsules from the eighties.
It’s amazing that this disc survived for ten years stuck in a couch. It contains a whopping 68 games, and only 6 of them don’t work anymore. Highlights include Pac-Man and GORF sprites, a balloon popping game, a fart horn game, a random poem generator and an ice cream cone maker.
One thing I could really relate to were the attempts at making text games. I did that a lot, and they were similar to what Weird Paul is dishing out with his text based Star Wars, War Games, and Dungeons & Dragons games.
Magnetic Media was miraculous at the time, but it is also fragile. So many of the programs that people wrote have been lost forever. That is why I am especially thrilled when people find things like this and share them online.
