The Commodore 64 turned 30 today

The legendary Commodore 64 turned 30 years old today.

You'd have thought that might be long enough for people to stop banging on about it, but no, apparently it still matters.

That's because the Commodore (name derived from Commodore International) 64 (number derived from memory) helped make personal computers prosper, and gaming with them.

The C64 cost £399 at launch, which was more than the ZX Spectrum, but cheaper than the computers made by IMB, Atari and some nobody company called Apple.

The C64 et al belong to what's remembered as a golden era of video games, when the relatively open nature of the machines meant people in bedrooms all over the UK made games. The games industry we know and love today sprung up around that.

BBC News marked the occasion by interviewing the children of today to see what they think about the C64. A topical angle, given that the government is overhauling how computing is taught in schools, while, simultaneously, the very exciting cheap and credit-card sized Raspberry Pi computer approaches a mainstream release. The aim is to recreate the conditions that led to the golden age of the C64 and ZX Spectrum, and to the boom in home programming.

But Eurogamer was far more confrontational about things, and decided to do a good old fashioned face-off between the great rivals ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 earlier this year. The ZX Spectrum had just turned 30 years old at the time.