Commodore 64

[Arbitern1]

I am looking to buy a commodore 64 to play games on. I just have no knowledge about the system or how to hook it up,ect. Will i need the floppy add on, and where is the best place to buy one?

[silverback]

you'll pnly need a floppy drive if you can find any floppy discs for it! Most will be on cassettes.

Hookign up is easy.

As for where, ebay, yard and car boot sales.

[Niode]

I think you would be best suited to finding an emulator and some games. Make sure you like the system first before buying one.

Tape loading can be finicky. It's hard to find systems in good condition, even harder to find ones boxed. Magnetic medium means that games will eventually deteriorate if they haven't already.

[Pingfa]

I've been hoping to get one for a while too, but they're pretty expensive.

Emulators aren't sufficient because so many games don't work with them - I've never been able to get any of the Turrican games to work with them; only one emulator gets me past the title screen with the original Turrican, but then it freezes.
Some of the most awesome tracks I've ever heard have been for the C64.

[butanebob]

Which emulator are you using? WinVice has played every game i've ever thrown at it, including both Turrican games.

Arbitern1 - Although finding a working system shouldn't be too hard, some of the actual games probably wouldn't work by now. Particularly the tape games, they barely worked for me back in the 80s when it wasn't really that old, yet alone today in 2009...

[Hatta]

Tape games should be pretty easy. Download them, record them onto a new tape, and play from there. Unfortunately the digital to audio converter is in the tape drive, not the C64, so you can't just hook up a CD player to the thing.

Floppy games and cartridge games are a little tricker. If you can get originals, you're probably best off doing that. Otherwise there are some expensive and complex flash solutions. Check out this thread on lemon64 for an overview.