A vote in for the Commodore 64. I guess the thing with all these sorts of debates (and we have all had looooads of fun on RG forum with this one recently, LOL) is that having grown up with one machine it means that you can't very easily put yourself in the shoes of someone who grew up with a machine and therefore has a different perspective on things. I grew up with the likes of Wizball, Armalyte and Turrican, which were C64 showpieces - but obviously my gaming tastes were influenced by the things the C64 did well.

That said, most of us of course had friends who had other machines. I knew a guy with a Speccy 48K and I loooooved playing Gauntlet 2 on it - totally brilliant version. On the other hand, one guy had an Amstrad and he was always round my place playing on the C64 with me. Thing is, he only had a green screen version. I've since discovered some pretty decent Amstrad games (like Satan and Savage) but I don't know that they would've looked all that good on his little green monitor!

I grew up with the Spectrum myself, I still vividly remember getting a +2a for Christmas that I shared with my sister and younger brother and had to play on a black and white TV. On a Sunday we were allowed to take the Speccy into the living room to play and would make a point of choosing all the ones that had colourful graphics. Pretty much everyone I knew also owned a Speccy so my games collection grew very quickly thanks to my double deck tape player and all the blank tapes I had thanks to my mum running a dancing school and buying loads of them in bulk 

Yeah we had a +2, i remember playing with the rubber keyed 48K at school at not liking the keys, I was glad we got the +2 model with decent keyboard!
Our first computer was a Commodore 16, but that was truly pretty dire to say the least! I tend to forget that era from my memory!
Just great memories of the Speccy, my dad typing out a hangman game in 3 hours! Going into Whsmiths and John Menzies with my pocket money and buying yet another footy management game for £1.99! It really was the app store of the 80's!
Who cared if it had colour clash and took 45 mins to load that flight sim...kids had patients back then! Ok i drooled at the C64/Amiga screenshots in the adverts, then looking back at the yellow roads and cars of the spectrum version! but it was still the same game!
As they say you never forget your first love!

I had a Speccy 48k.. loads of Mastertronic games like Chuckman, Kickstart 2 and BMX Racers. Must have spent hours walking back and forth down the Newsagent looking at what i wanted next and working out where my next £2 was coming from (i liked my sweets so i had to budget lol).

Great gaming days.

i had a zx spectrum but i was really young at the time.But it was my commadore plus 4 which is the computer i played all the time until i got a C64

I seem so far the only one to have grown up with the Atari 8bit computers, I first got my at the age 9, it was the Atari 800 back in 1981, and knew nothing about what a Spectrum was or a c64 did, my father bought this as an educational computer for us young'ins, and to this day, still remember the Europe Atlas program from Atari, wghere you learned the countries and the captial cities, but ti wasn't long before the games started to appear and was hooked on the likes of "River Raid", H.E.R.O., Bruce Lee, The Goonies, M.U.L.E. etc, and just never seen any other computer do this stuff the way the Atari did, I hold this computer very dear to heart and also this was where I began my Graphical Skills and own the Atari 8bit range allot for now I'm a digital Media designer and consultant thanks to it

Mostly Atari for me. I started with an 800 and 410 tape drive, and my brother got an 800XL when those were released. I bought a C128 later too, but always used the Atari more.

Also, I'm in the USA, so most of these choices were rare or unknown here. A friend of mine loved his ZX81 though... until he saw my 800. Were Apple IIs popular in the UK?

I can't speak for everyone over here in Blighty of course, but I don't think the Apple II range of computers was very popular here, no. The only US 8-bit computers that really did well over here were the Commodores, particularly the 64 but there were a few Vics knocking about too, and a smattering of C16s and Plus/4s once they became cheap. The TI99/4a barely made a dent and even the Atari 8-bit machines were well behind the Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad CPC.

The 16/32-bit computer scene was totally dominated by the US machines, the Atari ST and Amiga. We Brits had the Archimedes machines which were rather nice but too expensive to penetrate the home market.

Mostly Atari for me. I started with an 800 and 410 tape drive, and my brother got an 800XL when those were released. I bought a C128 later too, but always used the Atari more.

Also, I'm in the USA, so most of these choices were rare or unknown here. A friend of mine loved his ZX81 though... until he saw my 800. Were Apple IIs popular in the UK?

It's quite nice how diverse the 2 markets were, we both shared the ZX81, C64 and the Atari 8-bits but then we had lot of different machines.

We had the Spectrum, BBC Micro, Dragon 32, Acorn Electron, Amstrad CPC and Oric whilt the US has stuff like the Apple, TRS80, Adam, Aquarius, TI-99/4A and PC Jr.

Bump for new people!!!

Vic-20. Later the C128 in C64 mode most of the time. Later still an Atari 400.

Sometime before Christmas 1984, my mum went and spoke to my computer teacher at my high school about what micro to buy me. He recommended the BBC Micro, c64 and Spectrum in that order.  The owner of our local independent computer shop was a Commodore fan. And so, my first computer was the c64 and i still have fond memories and use a C64 to this day. But, how different it could have been.

My brother, older than me and working, bought a beeb which meant I had access to a lot of the great software it offered. It had some great games but couldn't keep up with the c64 because of the momentum of Commodore's machine, the software and the likes of Zzap!

I also had a few friends with Speccys. I would sometimes be envious of a game on Sir Clive's machine the c64 always had something to appease me thanks to its massive library of games. Only one friend of mine, that I recall, 'upgraded' to a c64 from the Speccy. He was certainly the exception and not he rule, but I think that that was the first time I'd ever talked about upgrading equipment. Another friend had an Toshiba MSX HX-10. He was certainly the one with the short straw! That said, there was fun to be had and I remember being envious of his cartridge games!

Fond memories....

I owned a Speccy + 48K because the Speccy was ace and the rest were gash!

Rather than the usual childish squables you find on forums about which is the best 8-bitter I thought I would ask which one you grew up with and what makes that machine so special to you?

Indeed! 

The CPC 464 with a green screen monitor.

(Stop laughing at the back!)