Videoludica, the videogame website created and directed by the game critic and  univeristy  professor Matteo Bittanti has just been renewed. Matteo's research focuses on the cultural, social, and theoretical aspects of videogames and the interrelations of popular culture, visual culture, and the arts. Brandon from Insert Credit, few years ago,  posted a great article about him!  
I like Japanese porno better than videogame critic but while Jav Talk is down I spend a lot of time on Videoludica. Videogame critic like bukkake?!

Matteo Bittanti, Videoludica mastermind (or maybe we should call him academic videogame guru?), pointed us to Impact of the Commodore 64: A 25th Anniversary Celebration:  a retrocomputing event that will be held in Mountain View at the Computer History Museum on 10 December and will features legends like Jack Tramiel,  Adam Chowaniec and the psychedelic computer God Steve Wozniak.
From the official statement:

Our The Commodore 64 (C64) was an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore in August, 1982, and during it's lifetime (between 1982 and 1994), sales totaled tens of millions of units, making it one the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. Approximately 10,000 commercial software titles were developed for the Commodore 64 including development tools, office applications, and games.

Early entrants of micro computers began as early as 1975, with the first models available in retail stores around 1977. In 1981, The IBM PC release legitimized and expanded the market. During this era of microcomputer innovation, the market was dominated by the IBM PC, the Commodore 64, the Atari 8-bit family, the Apple II, and Tandy Corporation's TRS-80.



The C64 made an impressive debut at the 1982 Winter Consumer Electronics Show, as recalled by Production Engineer David A. Ziembicki: "All we saw at our booth were Atari people with their mouths dropping open, saying, 'How can you do that for $595?'"


Although the history of the Commodore 64 is rich, the history of the people and the companies that developed these early personal computers is also critical to the personal productivity tools and business solutions we often take for granted in our daily lives.

* Geek note: I'm an akiba snob otaku who loves japanese retrocomputing and so in this post I used the main screen photo of the Commodore Max machine: a stripped down versione of the c64 for the Japanese market.

** LEVEL 64 image is totally unrelated to this post and is a painting by the Danish geek artist Isabella Rosendorf.

Matteo Bittanti, studioso di new media, è docente presso l'Università di Stanford, la Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazioni nonché ideatore e curatore della serie videoludica.game culture. Tra le sue ultime pubblicazioni spiccano Gli strumenti del videogiocare. Logiche, estetiche e (v)idologie (Costa & Nolan, 2005) e SimCity. Mappando le città virtuali (Edizioni Unicopli, 2004). Risiede a San Francisco ed è molto noto fra gli appassionati di videogiochi italiani per aver partecipato alla rivista Zzap!.