I have to imagine that the movie War Games starring Matthew Broderick helped spur sales. After seeing that movie, I had to have a commodore computer ;) That movie, alone, changed me. I was an eletronics geek and after seeing that movie, I knew the future (for me) was computers.
War Games didn't feature a Commodore machine, it featured an IMSAI. It might have helped boost mainstream interest in computers, but by then Commodore was already a big, well established company and - I believe - hadn't yet thoroughly burned their reseller network.
ah, you're right. The movie theater I saw the movie at had a contest at the same time. Fill out a form, drop in a big decorated box, and if your name was drawn you won a C64.
The contest was, if I recall correctly, tied to the movie. Like, win a computer "like" the one Matthew used in the movie War Games.... or something along those lines.
My friend and I took home a stack of those forms and filled out at least 100 (probably more) but we didn't win.
Fun & memorable times. Thanks for the info on the IMSAI.
I never saw the movie as a kid but I was generally aware of the Hollywood concept of "hacking" a computer over a network. We had a Commodore but I was not allowed to use the modem (dad kept it boxed up and hidden somewhere).
Still, one of the first programs I wrote for that Commodore was a way to trick my younger brothers into thinking I'd somehow "hacked" into some generic military computer system. It was just a bunch of text menus where you input the number of the option you wanted and "navigated" this alleged remote computer. I even used some time delay routine in the output so the text wasn't displayed all at once, but rather "typed" out one letter at a time so it looked like info being received over a network connection.
Pretty sure it ended with accidentally triggering nukes or something ridiculous and I doubt I was fooling even my little brothers but it was a fun idea. My concept of the underlying tech and military networks was rudimentary in the 5th grade to say the least.
