+----------------------------------+ | *** COMMODORE BASIC 4.0 *** | | | | 31743 BYTES FREE | | | | COPYRIGHT (C) 1980 | | COMMODORE BUSINESS MACHINES | +----------------------------------+
READY.
Commodore Business Machines — 1977–1982
Games from the Phosphor Green Era
Before colour, before sprites, before sound chips — there was the glow of a 9-inch phosphor monitor and the click of a chiclet keyboard. The PET was one of the world’s first complete personal computers, and its developers turned hardware constraints into creative triumphs. This is their story.
Featured
The 8-Bit Guy traces the complete story of the Commodore PET — from Chuck Peddle’s overnight prototype to the 1977 Trinity that launched the personal computer era.
The 8-Bit Guy: Commodore History Part 1 — The PET. Documentary covering the full PET hardware and software history.
Flagship Titles
In an era without sprites or colour, developers found extraordinary solutions. These titles pushed PETSCII to its limit.
1981 — Derek J. Hipkin
A fixed shooter built on PETSCII block graphics. The player’s tank fires at a grid of Cosmiads that occasionally dive — but every shot costs fuel, forcing accuracy. A final “Zylon” boss appears after all waves are cleared, killable only by a shot into its open mouth.
1982 — Derek J. Hipkin
Aliens try to rescue prisoners by dismantling a central jail wall, brick by brick. Published by Commodore under the internal title “Cosmic Fighter” — and the centre of a famous royalty dispute that Hipkin eventually won when his brother produced US advertising proving the game was a best-seller.
1978 — Peter R. Jennings
The first commercially successful microcomputer game. Originally 924 bytes of machine code for the KIM-1 (1976), Microchess reached the PET in 1978 via Peter Jennings’s Micro-Ware. It was the first program to sell more than 10,000 copies, eventually earning over $1 million — and Chuck Peddle tried to buy the rights for $1,000.
1979 — Automated Simulations
Jim Connelley bought a PET to organise his D&D notes. Finding it unsuitable, he wrote a dungeon-crawl game instead. The result sold 20,000 copies by 1981 and 400,000 by 1986, won the Origin Award for Best Computer Game of 1980, and launched the studio that would become Epyx.
The Machine
Three computers defined 1977. Only the PET came fully assembled with its own monitor, keyboard, cassette drive, and BASIC ROM, designed to boot directly into a programming environment.
Without a bitmap mode, developers used PETSCII’s 192-character extended set — block graphics, line-drawing characters, and card suits — to build everything from space invaders to chess boards. Constraint became aesthetic.
Learn more →The PET, Apple II, and TRS-80 all debuted at the West Coast Computer Faire on April 15, 1977. Byte magazine would later call them the “1977 Trinity” — the machines that made personal computing real.
Read the story →The PET 4032 was the dominant school computer in Europe and North America through 1981. Its all-metal chassis survived the classroom; its BASIC 4.0 ROM taught a generation to program.
Read more →The PET’s active community never stopped. The VICE emulator runs every model cycle-accurately. Demo groups continue releasing productions — Back to the PET (CAFe 2022) demonstrated what the hardware can still do today.
Explore modern PET →Explore
From Chuck Peddle’s overnight prototype to the 219,000-unit legacy: the full PET story, 1977–1982.
All notable PET titles with year, genre, and descriptions. Filter by shooter, strategy, RPG, card games, and more.
Hardware photographs, gameplay screenshots, and box art from across the PET’s catalogue.
Derek Hipkin, Peter Jennings, Satoshi Matsuoka — the developers who built the PET’s gaming legacy.
Detailed examinations of Cosmic Cosmiads, Cosmic Jailbreak, and Microchess 2.0 — the PET’s landmark titles.
15 verified longplays, hardware showcases, retrospectives, and demo scene recordings.
The VICE emulator runs all PET models cycle-accurately. Archive.org hosts hundreds of games. Here’s how to start.
PET Space Invaders 2 (2022), Back to the PET (CAFe 2022), Petopia (2024) — the scene is still active.
Emulators, archives, databases, and preservation communities for the serious PET enthusiast.