Commodore 16
The Commodore 16 also known as the Commodore plus/4 is a home computer made by Commodore. It was meant to be a budget computer with a higher color palette than the C64 but could also do business software. The problem was due to Jack Tremiel leaving, the company did not know what to do with the home computer. It failed in the US and much of Europe due to its overheating chip, various problems with the computer and competed against the Commodore 64 in the US. As a result, it got very little support from developers with the known publishers of the time such as Ocean only releasing a few games when compared to the competition. Surprisingly the home computer did very well in Mexico and Hungary with many games developed there, the latter was also used as a educational computer like the BBC Micro or the Apple II. Novotrade, developers of Ecco the Dolphin started on this machine.
There are several models of the computer:
Commodore 16 is the main version of the computer with 16kb of memory. On tSR this is listed as its name due to the games themselves were designed for this model.
Commodore plus/4 (originally 264) has 64kb of memory and a built in office suite.
Commodore 116 is the original intended version of the Commodore 16 with a rubber keyboard since the computer was inspired by the ZX Spectrum. It was only officially released in Germany but some were imported to Hungary.
Commodore 232 has 32kb of memory. Was not released with a few prototypes that got made.
Commodore V364 was designed as a premium plus/4 with a built in speech synthesis chip and a keypad. Was not released.
Ripping Tools
C64 Sprite / CharSet Ripper
Sprites from C16 games can be ripped using savestates from VICE making it easier to sprite rip. There is a downside and that is because the tool was designed for the Commodore 64 rather than the Commodore 16, it means that the boundaries go out of range and sprites get missed. This requires hacking into the ROM, removing sections and hope that the tool can read the sprites.
Recommended Emulators
VICE
VICE can emulate the Commodore 16 (listed as plus4) as a separate emulator.
