The C64 emulator is back in the app store. 3 inside joke ironies here. The iPhone’s ARM processor is in the direct lineage of the Commodore MOS 6502 processor, and therefore the Commodore 64 itself (more so than Intel x86 or Motorola 68000 CPUs). I’m saying the iPhone is the new C64 in more than just marketing—it’s the technological grandchild of the C64!

Second irony is that one of the classic games included, Jack Attack, is actually a tribute to the unsung Juggernaut hero of the computer industry, Commodore’s founder Jack Tramiel. Jack could have been Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and IBM all rolled into one, if not for the critically hot-headed temper that the game pokes fun at.

The third irony is the peek-a-boo relationship this app has with the App Store, over the C64’s built-in BASIC interpreter that violates Apple’s policy of no interpreter platforms. Commodore acquired it’s first version of Basic when Jack got Bill Gates to sign over unlimited rights to MS-BASIC for $20K. Ha ha ha! Jack’s one of the few people who really stuck it to Bill. And now Manomio is trying to deliver a whitewashed version of that Basic on the iPhone. Ha ha ha!