frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 I would have bought an A8 if it... Tapes didn't take 2 hours to load Try FS II on A8 cartridge, 0 seconds to load, try FS II on C64 fdd, 5 MINUTES TO LOAD THE TITLE SCREEN Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 (edited) Obviously C64 tried to compete with the VCS :D :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umFRpUqcono Looks like a pretty accurate arcade conversion to me As I said, an ATARI rip-off ;) Edited September 10, 2009 by frenchman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Yes but it is worse for 99% of all aspects of an 8bit home computer. It didn't even have a joystick port, a sound chip (16k/48k original rubber keys) or real disk drives. Also didn't have a decent TV output either. Complete fail apart from a 3.5Mhz CPU and monochrome wireframe 3D games. The WoS guys wouldn't agree with you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Here we go again....shoulda, coulda, woulda.... And to follow this direction.... I would have bought A C64 ... If it had a 2MHz CPU If it had a good colour palette If it had a better Keyboard If the floppy worked at a better speed from scratch The C64 would have been a good machine, but it was a cheap machine. .... Well, C64 turned out to be a better computer, simple as that. You know, history never lies By the way, wasn't Atari 800XL cheaper than C64 BTW, wasn't the Spectrum cheaper than the C64 Yup, maybe something to do with it outselling the commie I had both, sold the speccy. I would've liked an A8 at the time if only for the sake of it, but it seemed pointless, and that's not just a snipe. A friend had one and he always wanted a C64 instead because he had no decent games. Pete Spectum was cheaper already upon release, not because it outsold the C64 in the UK by 3 -1 (propably more). See again, that is the UKs trouble, did your UK A8 owning friend never played any titles from SSI, Microprose, Origin, EA, Synapse, Infocom, even Atari or Activision? And many more US companies. 1000s of excellent games on A8 from the USA, but no one knew about them. Same with C64, I mean ZZAP! even reviewed US games in every issue (Yes, I do own the complete run), but did UK people buy those? No, just cheap games for 1.99, or 9.99. Also Epyx Games series, IM, maybe some Activision titles i f they went cheap, that was it really. Some people in the UK even purchased Maniac Mansion, IF they had a fdd, but less people bought Zak McKracken, most never even heard of PHM Pegasus or Strike Fleet (both Lucasfilm). Taking Atarisoft games...there were always better licensed/unlicensed copies of all the early 80s arcade games that were all better or at worst equally as good as the Atari version. Common exampled...Alligata's Guardian = Defender, Anirog's Space Pilot, Ocean's Donkey Kong. In fact the only game I don't think ever had a decent version of was Galaxian, Galaga did via Aardvark's rip-off Zalaga. Also cheap games? Atari floppy games were about $30-50 each and £12-15 on disk for C64. Epyx games were pretty much all better on the C64 especially the sports games. Strategy games were not much fun until Cinemaware came along and made them look less like turds so I'm not bothered about them and nor was 99% of the world. I've got a few games like Tigers in the Snow and they are no fun Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Yes but it is worse for 99% of all aspects of an 8bit home computer. It didn't even have a joystick port, a sound chip (16k/48k original rubber keys) or real disk drives. Also didn't have a decent TV output either. Complete fail apart from a 3.5Mhz CPU and monochrome wireframe 3D games. The WoS guys wouldn't agree with you And? So a handful of nerds on a dedicated Spectrum site LOL and? The world knows how bad the Spectrum was in total....sure there are some delusional fanboys with blinkers superglued to their face yeah...which I'm sure is where you fit in They seem to miss a lot of facts out on the Sinclair sites also...like the first 3D game was not 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81 but a little known PET 3D maze game a couple of years before that game Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Taking Atarisoft games...there were always better licensed/unlicensed copies of all the early 80s arcade games that were all better or at worst equally as good as the Atari version. Common exampled...Alligata's Guardian = Defender, Anirog's Space Pilot, Ocean's Donkey Kong. In fact the only game I don't think ever had a decent version of was Galaxian, Galaga did via Aardvark's rip-off Zalaga. Now you are really moving into the land of fantasy, Atari's own software house rocked on A8, those guys were doing the coin-ups and the computer conversions...(ok maybe not on C64, maybe those conversions did suck), Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Here we go again....shoulda, coulda, woulda.... And to follow this direction.... I would have bought A C64 ... If it had a 2MHz CPU If it had a good colour palette If it had a better Keyboard If the floppy worked at a better speed from scratch The C64 would have been a good machine, but it was a cheap machine. .... To keep things cheap, they spread out the wishes-- put a 2Mhz processor in C128, put better palette in C16, better keyboard in SuperPet, better floppy drive in Plus 4, and better sprites in C64. I don't remember the date when they put in the boot option on their 8-bit machines. Now all you have to do is network them all together and do distributive programming and you can almost get all the benefits of buying an A8. The PET keyboard (which is better than the 400/800/800XL and definitely better than the spongefest 130XE/65XE keyboard) was fitted to the mk1 VIC-20s My personal opinion is the 800 keyboard is fantastic, I already went on record to say that. The 800XL keyboard is OK too..the 400 doesn't have a proper one and the 130XE and 65XE have the worst keyboard of all 8bit machines ever produced....I know this because I own at least one of each from Aqaurius to ZX machines For the record I would say the best keyboard of all the 8bit machines is on the Memotech MTX series, a real professional keyboard on that just like the old IBM XT machines Model M. Then it's a tie with the Atari 800 and the VIC-20 square cut PET keyboard. After that it is just nit picking Bonus points to the Atari 400 for the TRON looking keyboard, I love the looks just wouldn't want to type on it except to press the START or SELECT buttons on a game (feel free to disagree but unless you own all of the machines compared you are in no position to challenge me haha) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 And? So a handful of nerds on a dedicated Spectrum site LOL and? The world knows how bad the Spectrum was in total....sure there are some delusional fanboys with blinkers superglued to their face yeah...which I'm sure is where you fit in uuuuh I love the jealous talk. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Spectum was cheaper already upon release, not because it outsold the C64 in the UK by 3 -1 (propably more). That's all well and good, it's just a shame the 64 is the worlds best selling computer, ever Another sign of cruelty Shame on you andym00 The Spectrum is the UKs best selling computer, A BIG SIGN OF CRUELTY, I KNOW True, BUT, best selling is by no means 'better product'. Pete A person who speaks sense. Sales don't really mean anything and I'd never take sales as a pointer to if I should buy something or not. Speccy outselling C64 in UK means nothing, Atari outselling C64 in US (did it? not sure I just read that here somewhere but have no facts but I'll presume that's right) means nothing. Instead I'd look at which machine would do the things I wanted, which had the better games and that would (for me) always be C64. Pete Exactly, C64er are in the same league as Spectrum users, who openly say (on WoS for example), the Speccy had the better games AND you could do more with the machine. No, Atari never outsold C64 in the USA, when the C64 was released, A8 sales were already drying up. Do more? Like what? Forget serious work as there was no monitor output, decent keyboard or real floppy disk drives. Games? They overcame their lack of sound chip with buzzer noises you mean? Or writing monochrome garish games with softscrolling routines and softsprites? Art? be serious! What exactly could you do more with than one specific type of monochrome game like 3D wireframe graphics? Even then Mercenary is hardly a slouch on the C64 so clearly a small advantage. Try and find a single game of Donkey Kong on the ZX that doesn't look like a poor VIC-20 conversion by some 2bit operation Even the mighty Ocean with all their financial resources couldn't make the slanted levels on an angle for the girders of Donkey Kong ha! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 (edited) (feel free to disagree but unless you own all of the machines compared you are in no position to challenge me haha) Apple ][ has the best keyboard imo, designed by Steve Wozniak. And who owned a Memotech anyway? I've seen one at SAMS (Stafford Alternative Micro Show) way back, it was sitting there all lonely without any computer love. Edited September 10, 2009 by frenchman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Sorry Pete, you are wrong, C64 outsold Atari in US too. An interesting quote from wikipedia: "During the Commodore 64's lifetime, sales totalled 17 million units, making it the best-selling single personal computer model of all time. For a substantial period of time (1983-1986), the Commodore 64 dominated the market with between 30% and 40% share and 2 million units sold per year, outselling the IBM PC clones, Apple computers, and Atari computers. Sam Tramiel, a former Atari president said in a 1989 interview "When I was at Commodore we were building 400,000 C64s a month for a couple of years." It shows how big impact C64 had on the market. Summing it up, C64 outsold Atari everywhere Sorry for double-posting, my fault Quite happy to be wrong It's just what I'd read somewhere, probably here but I can't be sure. Pete Those are figures for worldwide sales, which the C64 did obviously outsell everyone world wide. What you need to find (if they exist) are the first two years worth of total sales for the C64 in the USA alone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frenchman Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 (edited) Do more? Like what? Don't ask me, ask the WoS guys, if you are so wound up about the Spectrum. All I am saying is the fact that the Spectrum was the best selling 8 bit computer in UK, and WoS keeps saying their games and machine are best. Now, you obviously will say that it's gullable to believe those guys....but then I have to assume that whatever you say is bull as well. Edited September 10, 2009 by frenchman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Thanks for the suggestions... they both look like capable players, although I'm leaning towards SIDPlay2 so far for features. I'll be checking them out, as well as SID's music, over the coming days. Sidplay 2.5 does eat a fair amount of CPU power. Actually, compared to the other 8-bit players I'm using (ASAP <Atari>, NSF Play <NES>) SIDPlay2 is also a fairly CPU hungry app. Is SID that tough to emulate compared to these other chips?? Simple answer 'yes' reason is you are attempting to replicate every nuance of an analogue synthesizer. It's the same level of complication as Virtual Analogue Synthesis to replicate the sounds of old 70s and 80s synthesizers. Sampling a few waveforms and doing AM or FM processing on the samples will never work right for any true analogue synth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oky2000 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 mmmm custard chalk Must be time for breakfast... And yes, everyone I knew owned a 1541. Ironically, i was one of the people who didn't have a 1541, at least for the first year and a half of owning a C64; most of my first real C64 game was written on a tape-based machine with Zeus 64 assembler and using an Expert cartridge to dump the RAM out to tape between sessions. My Atari 800XL and (obviously considering the drive wasn't around when i got the C64) VIC 20 were both tape-based as well. The biggest market for the C64 in the UK was the young school kid (same for ALL home computers in the early 80s before we get any dumb comments from fanboys) and to play great games you didn't need a disk drive, certainly not one that cost as much as the C64 And thanks to Turbo loaders some games loaded in 4 minutes, which is hardly an inconvenience when you can spend the cost of a 1541 on about 25-40 games in 1983. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Have you seen anything on C64 that was ripped off from Atari ? Btw, haven't you ported Bomb Jack lately and doesn't it need a booming amount of memory to work ? :D Two ripoffs come clearly to my mind... Rasterbars Overscan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gury Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 I would have bought an A8 if it... Wasn't 200% overpriced for an 800 (400 keyboard is beyond useless). Had less Atari VCS/2600 sounding music/effect Had some decent sprite graphics Had games using more than 4/128 @ 160x200 or 2/128 @ 20x200 unique colours* Tapes didn't take 2 hours to load Had more well known games anyway Don't talk nonsense crap, please. Tapes loaded, in average, for about 15 minutes or little more for bigger games. Baud rate was slow, but anyway. Then common Turbo mods came out. I don't care about that so much, because stock disk drives, like 1050 pr XF551, were and still are very common. It's completely different story opposed to C64's very slooow disk drives, which were little faster than tapes unless turbo programs were used. Bljah! Atari 1050 disk drive is fast and reliable, with many games released on it. And bootable software is very handy, with various DOSes, for any taste. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 (edited) C64 guys state that the A version of RoF is "quite" better.... Just start both in different windows and see the difference. Hm.... No statements from C64 users here? Well, some posts before one of you C64 guys wrote that RoF is 1/3 faster than the C64 version. Well, look at the video a bit closer: It runs circa 3 times as fast on the Atari. Even by the fact that the game is VBL synched. I hope you guys can do calculations, at least 1+1/3=133% (period) 1*3=300% Edited September 10, 2009 by emkay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 They are the same, because g2f Atari versions are exact rip-offs of C64 screens. There are many other pictures ripped off from C64 on this site. There are even screens from c64's green beret lol. Conversions mate not rip-offs "Conversions" are fine with me, as long as we do not forget that they are not drawn on Atari, but taken from C64. Explains why conversions often look crappy. Glad to have them but they would be better than the c64 version had they been written on a8 in the 1st place. Here we go again....shoulda, coulda, woulda.... Yep, stupid software companies. Who know why it caught on, in 83 Atari had a huge installed base,c64 no much and no software. Who can explain stupidity... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Here we go again....shoulda, coulda, woulda.... And to follow this direction.... I would have bought A C64 ... If it had a 2MHz CPU If it had a good colour palette If it had a better Keyboard If the floppy worked at a better speed from scratch The C64 would have been a good machine, but it was a cheap machine. .... Well, C64 turned out to be a better computer, simple as that. You know, history never lies By the way, wasn't Atari 800XL cheaper than C64 no it was just a cheap poor quality machine, just like a kia car will get you to work but it's no vette. People are cheap so thats what they bought,that is how it got off the ground. Why else would people buy a new to market machine with no software when Atari and Apple had huge libraries.People at the time just didn't understand computers. It would not happen today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frogstar_robot Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 (edited) Interlace only really looks ok with massive amounts of colours on screen and lots of anti-alaising like in HAM6/8 on Amigas We have an unfortunate overloading of a word here. When Rybags speaks of "interlace", he's talking about a 480i mode that he's wrung out of the A8 chipset. It actually is interlace as the term is spoken of in a generic video context. This is not the same as "interlace" as commonly used by Atarians and Amigans which are software modes derived from the hardware modes. Rybags mode IS a derived software mode but he is doing true interlace at the video field level. Edited September 10, 2009 by frogstar_robot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Here we go again....shoulda, coulda, woulda.... And to follow this direction.... I would have bought A C64 ... If it had a 2MHz CPU If it had a good colour palette If it had a better Keyboard If the floppy worked at a better speed from scratch The C64 would have been a good machine, but it was a cheap machine. .... Well, C64 turned out to be a better computer, simple as that. You know, history never lies By the way, wasn't Atari 800XL cheaper than C64 BTW, wasn't the Spectrum cheaper than the C64 Yup, maybe something to do with it outselling the commie I had both, sold the speccy. I would've liked an A8 at the time if only for the sake of it, but it seemed pointless, and that's not just a snipe. A friend had one and he always wanted a C64 instead because he had no decent games. Pete Spectum was cheaper already upon release, not because it outsold the C64 in the UK by 3 -1 (propably more). Eh? Yes, spectrum was cheaper, as I say, cheaper to buy meant it sold more than the c64. Pete same initial reason c64 sold here.cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Spectum was cheaper already upon release, not because it outsold the C64 in the UK by 3 -1 (propably more). That's all well and good, it's just a shame the 64 is the worlds best selling computer, ever Really? more than pc's? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frogstar_robot Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 [ Bonus points to the Atari 400 for the TRON looking keyboard, I love the looks just wouldn't want to type on it except to press the START or SELECT buttons on a game I wouldn't want to type on it either but it is good enough to play a game like Star Raiders. The 400 was a lot like the Odyssey2 in that regard. That is something about the 5200 that never made much sense to me. A 400 redone with a lower cost single board with the cartridge games emphasized would have made much more sense as a console. It could even have been detachable ala the XEGS but still with the membrane design which is fine for single keypresses in a simulation type title. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atarian63 Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 What's interesting is that C64 sceners don't have to rip anything off. Well,a Pawn who only know his Cow and Pig, don't see a reason why to change something Sorry emkay, C64 sceners just create, only atarians have to rip pictures off, convert different games etc. in order to prove that their beloved computer can do it as well as C64 alredy did many years ago. Have you seen anything on C64 that was ripped off from Atari ? Btw, haven't you ported Bomb Jack lately and doesn't it need a booming amount of memory to work ? :D Yep, like most good arcade games,pacman,centipede and other Atarisoft titles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PeteD Posted September 10, 2009 Share Posted September 10, 2009 Spectum was cheaper already upon release, not because it outsold the C64 in the UK by 3 -1 (propably more). That's all well and good, it's just a shame the 64 is the worlds best selling computer, ever Really? more than pc's? PC's aren't really a "thing" though are they, just a collection of bits and pieces. The Guinness record for the biggest selling "single model" computer is C64. Pete Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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