Re: Why doesn't the Apple II have a gaming community like C64, Atari, DOS, etc

[Sean Fahey <a2fan@hotmail.com>]

On Monday, March 12, 2012 6:08:37 PM UTC-5, N.N. Thayer wrote:

> How much does being first weigh against having orders of magnitude
> more users as a potential install base, though?

I don't know - maybe the analogy here is that the Apple II users were the trailblazers and pioneers, and the C64 users were the settlers that came after.

There is no denying the C64 had (and still has) a huge following. It was an inexpensive machine with a pretty nice feature set for it's day. Commodore's willingness to race Texas Instruments, Atari and others to the bottom of the price barrel was great for the consumer and it contributed to the HC industry shakeup that eventually weaned out many of the weaker players - even ones with better technology.

I don't consider the C64's impact on gaming to be of any greater signifigance than the Apple II, or that of any other 8-bit of the era. When I read interviews with the legends of game development, i.e. Budge, Garriott, Mechner and Romero - it's usually the Apple II that they are crediting with getting their start on. I know there are some Commodore greats out there - I just don't hear about them as often.
 
> Isn't there a critical mass that must be reached in order for a
> polished and comprehensive site like lemon64.com to be willed into
> existence and to persist, and, since such a site subsists almost
> entirely on nostalgia and a desire for preservation, wouldn't that
> critical mass be directly connected to the number of people who used
> the machine in its heyday?

It helps, but it's not necessary - all you need is one (or a few) die-hard, devoted fan(s) of a platform, genre or whatever to make a website these days. You don't even have to know HTML anymore. Site visits are a different matter though. Content is king.