When I was growing up I wanted a Commodore 64 computer so badly I could barely stand it.
Yes, the Commodore 64 and its slew of video games are certainly retro by today’s standards, but back in the day, all of the coolest titles seemed to be available only on the stalwart C64.
So if you’ve always had a hankering for a Commodore 64 growing up, yet aren’t interested in buying the new, retro style Commodore 64 computer, you’ll probably be pleased to hear that an emulator is headed to Ouya’s long-awaited Android console.
The emulator was prepped courtesy of developer Paul Lamb, who says he is working to port the open source Frodo C64 emulator to run on the Ouya.
You may remember the name Paul Lamb, as he is the developer we discussed yesterday who is working on porting emulators for other old-school game consoles over to the Ouya. His work includes ports for the Mupen64 emulator and Nintendo 64 emulator for the Ouya console. Lamb hopes to make the Commodore 64 emulator work with the Ouya game controller and keyboard.
Porting this particular emulator can be challenging because it was originally designed to run on (Android) devices featuring touchscreens. Since the Ouya lacks a touchscreen, work needs to be done to allow users to control the emulator. Personally, I think this is a really cool project because there are a lot of parallels between the Commodore 64 and modern game consoles like the Ouya.
Back in the day, the Commodore 64 was about $600, which was a lot of money back then but it was about half the price of other home computers of the day. Fast forward to today and at under $100, the Ouya is about half the price of most modern game consoles.
