Introduce Yourself: What's your User Name based on?

[MysticSword]

@AndyH : Many thanks for the friendly, welcoming and inspiring message.
Yes, I'm really liking being here ~ though on a side note; I'm curious about why 'Denial', in the site's / forum's name, 'Vic-20 Denial'. Are we, as Vic-20 fans, denying to let it go from our hearts and minds? We deny to let the good'ol Vic-20 to be gone or forgotten? Perhaps there's an explanation for it here on the forums I've just not seen yet.

But yes, the Vic-20 was also really magical for me way-back-when, and re-exploring it again recently, it's still quite magical to me.

By the way, for anyone interested; here's a post about a new Vic-20 game, 'Treasure Seeker', I've been working on recently:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10252
Cheers!
PS: @AndyH: I noticed the link to your Hewco site and I just visited. Wow! All looks very impressive to me. When I have a chance, I'll see about trying some of those games and also that Turbo Rascal SE program looks like it could be great to use too. Keep up the great work.

[gazinginward]

Hello, all. I joined this forum because I bought a VIC-20 for learning how to program. I decided to start my programming journey on a machine that is just about as raw as you can get. I want to really appreciate the advances we've made in the art over the years. My username is based off of my study of Buddhism. I look forward to good conversations with y'all!

[mathom]

Welcome, @gazinginward

The VIC is definitely a machine where you can get close to the metal. You will also find that there are aspects of the machine that can lead you down rabbit holes of amazing depth. There are folks on this forum that can help you getting into both the basics and the deep dive topics that might interest you.

Welcome aboard.

[Wayne / Art Ravers]

Hi I'm Wayne - Now I am really a C64 Guy... However the First sort of "PROPER" Interaction I had with a Commodore Computer was the Gorgeous Viccy 20 - A Friend of my Dad's lent me it. It was back in the 80's so we only had a Colour Telly downstairs and I would unpack the Vic and play stuff like "TORNADO", "ANOTHER VIC IN THE WALL" and "APPLE BUG" and "BLITZ". Many Happy Memories. My Mum bought us our first Family Computer - A Sinclair Spectrum 48k, This however did not work, my Mum took it back and they did not have any more Spectrum's - So they Exchanged it for a Commodore 64 - At the time I was gutted, A "Friend" at the time had a Spectrum and I had experienced the Ultimate Game, Deathchase etc, so I wanted that ! Getting a C64 with Cassette 50 was... A Major Let down to say the least, Thankfully the Great Games Explosion of 1985 soon changed that...
My Name Wayne / Art Ravers - What's all that about ? Well... I was in a Graphic Group with my Ex Wife we founded on the C64, we used to Draw Bitmap Graphic Screens and make SEUCK Games ! Thankfully I have returned to the Vic - LOTS of AWESOME STUFF going on in the Vic Scene and am proud to have a working Machine - Well... I have 2 but one of them does not work, However this I plan to remedy shortly...
Oh and I got myself the PENULTIMATE CARTRIDGE from TFW8BIT.com - It's Ace, Got me an SD2IEC too, the two of them together are INCREDIBLE !

Oh... By the way would love to get hold of APPLE BUG and CRAZY CLIMBER for the Vic if anyone can help - I have a SD2IEC so do I need Disk Images ???

[furroy]

My name is Roy, my nickname in college was fur. Since most sites won't let you use a 3 letter username I stuck them together to make furroy and it's been unique enough it's not usually taken by anyone else.

Growing up, my school had Apple IIs we played on during lunch. I would run down to RadioShack every day after school to play on the TRS-80s there. I have no idea how/why the guys who worked there tolerated me, lol. I got my own Vic20 for Christmas in 1981. My parents (who didn't have much money) were afraid to get the C64 in case this computer thing was just a passing phase. Haha, jokes on them! I couldn't afford to buy any games, so I spent all my time making my own games. Sadly I no longer have any of them. After the divorce, my dad had a TI-99/4A at his house. I had a friend with a crazy Z80 based machine they got in Chicago, I have no idea what it was now. My cousins had a C64. I had two friends with Timex Sinclairs. Another friend had an Atari 400. I was very lucky in that I got to dabble on so many platforms!

When I got to college (Purdue) I got myself a C64. My friends and I there made a company Dr Evil Labs. We made and sold games and utilities, most notably Imagery! - an Eamon clone. We also made the SID Symphony and RS232 Swiftlink cartridges. These were pretty popular back in the day! I went on to get an Amiga 1000. We got to play lots of unix supercomputers on campus! One of my roommates signed up to be a representative for NeXT and so we got to have a free cube in our apartment. Ofc I've owned dozens of Windows and a few Macs over my lifetime.

In 2018-2019 I got back into retrocomputing from Twitch, primarily after finding Shallan50ks stream and that community. In 2020, I released Hired Sword2 (and HS1) via Double Sided Games. HS2 was the kind of game I wish I had owned when I was a kid, it's like a mashup between Ultima and Leisure Suit Larry. I was pleased the entire physical run sold out on launch day. You can ofc still get digital editions.

Earlier this year I went to VCFSW and got my childhood Vic20 repaired and told myself I should release a game for it, so that's been my current project I started in August. Probably Hired Sword related? But can't say for sure 100% yet.

[darkseid1981]

My user name is a combination of the name of Superman's most powerful nemesis and the year I was born, darkseid + 1981 = darkseid1981. Simple yet effective.

[LOFI_CODER]

I like music from the 70s. When music was recorded with tape machines and didn't sound as overproduced as a lot of what we hear today. Unfortunately, analog technology is gradually dying because there are fewer and fewer spare parts or people who can repair it.

Luckily there are emulators to immerse yourself in the time of 8 bit computers.

So LOFI in my username comes directly from low fidelity.

[Soloman]

My name is based on my feeling that I'm in my best when I'm alone. I like to be alone.
My avatar: On programming school we had a programmers hobby club. Everyone used a nickname, a fictional companyname, wherein a part of your real name was taken part in. The avatar was/is the logo of my fantasy company. I still use that name in writing programs, but it's all fantasy. It doesn't exists and I don't earn money with it. All my software is public, free for everyone.

[Kabuto]

Hello friends and thank you for accepting me in the group,

I am Kabuto and I develop games for Android and during the pandemic I made 3 minigames in Game Maker for C64.

The VIC 20 was a system that I always wanted but I couldn't have, in 82 I bought a ZX81 and the VIC was very expensive for my family, I went through ZX Spectrum and then in 84 I went to C64 so the VIC was only in my memory.

I am Venezuelan living in Colombia for 10 years and in 2018 I bought a C64 again and today I play with it almost daily.

[joshuadenmark]

Hi Kabuto

Glad to have you here, welcome

[Soloman]

Welcome Kabuto!
Very recognizable the struggle for a computer with a limited amount of money in those years!! And then you had the computer and you had to save money again for buying a diskdrive...

[Merytsetesh]

Hullo all! It's nice to find a corner of the internet for we lovers of the old VIC-20.

My username is Merytsetesh, which means 'beloved of Set' in Ancient Egyptian. Without getting into the details of Egyptian mythology and theology (because gods changed so much over time), I have an interest in mythology and culture and I have always been drawn to certain aspects of Set beyond his usual depiction as 'god of extreme evil'. (I'm looking at you, Doctor Who -- even though Pyramids of Mars is a rocking story.) Among his later aspects was the God of Strangers, Foreigners or Outsiders, which is one of the reasons I gravitate towards him as I've always been an outsider.

The VIC-20 was my first machine. My older cousins had one, and they got me hooked at a very tender age; naturally, my parents bought me one when they could. (Though they denied it, I once heard them saying they wished they could have afforded a C64. The good old Beeb, ubiquitous at the time in the UK, would have been far outside of their range.) I did my best to learn programming with it, far from any formal help: I had the PRG, type-in books and magazines, the VICTAPEs, and a series called INPUT which ran for 2 years and my father subscribed to. Of course, with the passage of time all of it faded away and even INPUT stopped providing much for the poor old VIC. I'm a little sad to say I rather fell out of love with the VIC in my later childhood: it was limited, it was slow, it wasn't a C64, and nobody I knew had one. I wasn't allowed to use it during school time, either, so it was packed away for most of the year. Not a bad thing as it would have occupied all my time otherwise, of course.

I had an A3000 in the early 90s. That was a fine machine, no doubt, but way too expensive. (As a side note, I saw an interview with Sophie Wilson which had been posted to YT in which she described the motivation for the ARM chip as 'MIPS for the masses.' I couldn't help but recall Jack Tramiel's credo of making 'computers for the masses, not the classes.' I think that while ultimately they succeeded in their goal, since ARM is so ubiquitous, I must say that I think at the time they failed as Acorn machines were just so costly.) And, of course, years on Windows and Linux, coding in C++ and Python... and Scheme and LISP and Prolog, because AI.

Of course, things come around. A couple of years ago I finally sat down and fulfilled a promise to myself to write a CBM BASIC 2 interpreter. I did that, then I reworked it to add procedures and multiline functions, such as the Beeb had, and graphics commands. Of course, I needed a machine to put it in, thus I started on the MegaVIC: my own, I suppose, 'dream machine'. This was around the time the X16, Mega65 and Feonix were becoming 'a thing', and so I quietly mothballed it. I am still proud of it and I might pull it back out. There's a demo around which works pretty well. I could post a link or two if anyone was interested.

And here I am. An outsider, strangely, finding some of their own people at last.

~M

(mod: please direct all replies regarding the MegaVIC to the thread MegaVIC in the Emulation and Cross Development section.)