My parents aren't what you would call early adopters of technology, so I never had the chance to play around with a Commodore 64 or any of its siblings. Nevertheless, I enjoyed a short stroll through the Commodore's history with this photo series on the BBC News website. It starts with the 1977 PET, which by today's standards looks like nothing more than a low-end cash register, and runs through to the present, with some screenshots of old-skool Pitstop II or an emulated Impossible Mission.

All this is just to prove how far the Commodore has come, with its newest models featuring 4 GB of RAM and customised artwork on the outer casing (as shown above). Snazzier-looking? For sure. But I think a jazzed-up PET would make for an even more enticing gaming console --- and home decoration piece as well!