Vic-20 ad
Image: Commodore

Back in the 1980s, William Shatner was the star of several commercials promoting the Vic-20 β€” most of which saw the Star Trek and TJ Hooker actor comparing Commodore's classic home computer to game consoles from Atari and Intellivision, as well as highlighting its broad range of family-based software, and emphasizing its affordably low cost of just under $300.

Over 40 years have passed since those commercials first aired on television sets, but it seems that the actor's loyalty to the classic computer hasn't waned a bit, as evidenced by one of his recent replies on Twitter.

This exchange happened last Friday and all came about after Shatner began interacting with the official Atari account, leading a random commenter to imply that he may have switched allegiances in the intervening years.

In response, Shatner fired back at the person:

"My dear Sporto, the Commodore VIC-20 was THE best personal computer of the 1980’s for the price. The Atari 2600 was a game console from the 1970’s."

Of course, Shatner seems to be overlooking here that Atari had its very own line of 8-bit computers alongside its collection of home consoles, but as far as we're aware, none of these were anywhere near as affordable upon release as the Commodore machine so we're willing to let this slide.

If you're interested, you can watch the adverts that Shatner did for the Vic-20 below:

[source twitter.com]