It holds the Guinness World record for best-selling single computer model of all time, so who had a Commodore 64?

My family had one when I was growing up, and I enjoyed playing hours of games on it.  I remember how novel it was that we could create a sign, card, or banner on the computer and then print it out –  complete with pixel-riddled graphics and what-do-you-call those side strips on the paper with the holes in them that you tear off and either discard or twist them together and make art out of them.  My uncle had a subscription to Loadstar, which was a Commodore club of sorts – he would get magazines and new games monthly in the mail.  I used to love some of those Loadstar games, unfortunately, I can’t find them to play on emulators now.  I really enjoyed an Activision game called Toy Bizzarre, and my all time favorie game for the Commodore 64 was Maniac Mansion – I was addicted to it until I won it, and then I had to go back and win it with  all the different character combinations.  They did make a version of Maniac Mansion for the original Nintendo, but I was biased toward my Commodore version.  I always thought that game would make a great movie (think Clue), and when I was younger, I tried to write the game into a novel but never finished it.

So what’s got me thinking back to the 80’s days of the Commodore today?  I came across an article on cnn.com about how advance orders are being taken for the resurrection of the Commodore here in 2011.  It’s being made to look just like the Commodores of the 80’s, but it will have today’s computer capacities since the ’64’ in Commodore 64 referred to the unit having 64 Kilobytes of memory – about the equivalent of one long email, according to the article.  If you’d like to read the article, click here.

My first Christmas present of 2009 – Clue The Office Collector’s Edition!

Ok, I have to be honest – could you tell I started the draft of this post weeks ago?  But I had to finish it, cuz this is a super-cool game given by a very thoughtful friend.  In addition, I received some other awesome gifts: Walmart gift cards and a gift certificate to the local pet store so I can get my parakeet – more on that later.  My gifts also included something incredibly touching and sentimental from my husband and kids, but that’s all I need to say about that to keep from traveling the dark road of sadness.

Back to Clue – The Office version – it was so fun!  In true keeping with Office traditions, the victim in the game is Toby Flenderson!  Obvious, especially when the game’s instructions were penned by Michael.  Each player chooses an available character, and they get a little Office ID card for their person (Office fans at our church exchanged this game for Christmas, and they replaced the little Office ID’s with pictures of church staff – hilarious!).  Players then move about the Office, entering rooms like Michael’s Office or Accounting, and play continues just like the other versions of the game Clue – you make accusations about who killed Toby with which weapon in which room.  My favorite part of this game (aside from the fact that I won the first round we played!) are the weapons –  pewter figures representing various hilarious Office plot lines; for example, a bike chain, a Dundie award, and my personal favorite: a George Foreman grill!!

It’s a must-have for any fan of The Office, to be especially appreciated by game collectors like myself!

Are you board of movies?  Yes, that spelling mistake was intentional.  You see, this post is related to movies that are about board games.  There was an article in the local newspaper a few days ago about this topic (link below).  I’m sure we all remember the 1985 movie based on the game Clue, the 1993 chess movie Searching for Bobby Fischer, and of course the Robin Williams movie based on the fictional game Jumanji (along with its Williams-less sequel Zathura).  Now Hasbro and Universal apparently now want to bring us Monopoly, Candy Land and Ouija.  Needless to say, due to my faith I will not be seeing the last in any form.  Depending how the reviews go, I may or may not see the first two either.  Candy Land??  I can only guess this will be a feature for children meaning that I know of a certain Ohio couple who will be seeing it as they have four young ones, at least three of which will likely be interested when it is released.  Anyway, I tire of writing this entry so soon after the last so just click the link below for the news story:  😉

Hasbro rolls the dice on board game movies