Atari v Commodore

[atarian63]

Word of mouth, that's what sold machines. Person A got a C64, A8 Spectrum or whatever, Person B saw and listened to it and said "ooh, want!" and the cycle perpetuated; Spectrums sold en masse for the UK market because they were cheap, cheerful and backups [ahem] of games on C90s were traded around the playground (i've always said that machines where the games could be pirated usually fared better than when they couldn't back then, very few people could afford a machine and more than one or two games at the same time so being able to get a tape full from a friend was a selling point).

 

After the first selling by good commercials and professional software developers, words of mouth may do well. But, YES , particular pirate copies were the driver of further success of any comptersystem.

Most benefactored system was the C64....

While I bought 100s of games for the A8, everywhere I saw a C64 , you would found 1000s of copied games, but no original there. From the worker's son to the child of a dentist, they owned 1000s of pirated games.

 

I'd bet that the firstly used tapes for spreading games made it easy to copy the games (Just connect two Cassete Recorders). After a good Userbase was there, the spread via Floppy was growing.

 

That's why, later in time, even cheap games didn't bring the richness to the software developers. But, depending on the huge userbase, the progress of dying was longer than with the A8.

You are correct! As a dealer for both back in the day c64 customers would actaully tell me they would not buy software,they were just coming in to get the machine and then get all the software from their buddy. Yes A8 did this too however it was sooo rampant on c64. A8 software sales stayed pretty good long after they should have been dead or at least until the stuff was just poor port jobs. C64 software sales never amounted to much due to the rampant piracy. We could sell hardware add on's just fine. It was disgusting. I talked with many software reps and they knew it too. Ended up with over a 70% stock balance rate. (that was where you sent back software that did not sell for credit) most other platforms were 20-30% monthly. That was where the software writer/companies got screwed on c64. It should have been much more lucrative considering the base of machines.

[José Pereira]

16 - WEST BANK (BANK PANIC)/ BANK BANG !

 

C64 (it's unofficial release, so maybe STE could tell us more about it )

C64

C64

 

The C64 version has better music, graphics, handling and more colours. The Atari version is poor and awkward (when you want to change a door, often you kill somebody by accident). On Atari there also aren't any gun duels after finished levels. C64 shot Atari again.

 

ATARI

ATARI

ATARI

 

 

Hello all.

 

Who said some days ago, that would like to see some game using Priority 0. The same for Bottom: The Balcon and bootom Scores can be in Hi-Resol. like C64 with PMs. addiction.

Select the correct colours for PFs0/1 and 2/3 then some good G2F artist simply can do it...

By the way, was EMKAY?

I'll try something with G2F, probably just for having more knowledge.

 

Bye,

José Pereira.

[atarian63]

Which brings us back to Ste's question... where were all the A8 artists in the 1980's...? emkay's money thing is just bunk, surely there were some people around?!

 

I think the low cost and rapidly expanding user base of the 64 really starting sucking the energy out of other platforms. There were some people doing neat things on the A8, but when the 64 took off I think it spawned a different kind of coder-gamer.

 

I dunno about that, many 8bit coders were just teens in their bedrooms. And remember the A8 was around for a few years before the C64 so that same group of kids would have been playing with A8 coding too. And the C64 didn't have an easy to use BASIC or simple commands for graphics and sounds...it was almost like machine code manipulating VIC-II & SID

 

Like I say I think the problem is the A8 hardware has too many restrictions to fully utilise even the original 128 colour palette. 160x100 resolution is fine for 2600 games but in the 80s things got a bit more sophisticated.

Another factor is the time period. 79-82 were years where having a "home computer" was not mainstream. by 85 I was seeing housewives buying pc's for the kids. That was a major change in who owned and was attracted to a pc. Therefore you have more people,greater interest and a bigger market. Just my observation.

[TMR]

After the first selling by good commercials and professional software developers, words of mouth may do well.

 

Nope for the UK, most machines just sort of turned up here without much in the way fanfare from the manufacturers and it was left to the software shops (the independents since nobody in their right mind trusted the bloke in Dixons) and to a degree the multi-format magazines to promote machines; that all comes under word of mouth more than anything. The professional software developers didn't get much of a look in either, as i said one of the first pros to get a C64 was Jeff Minter, sent the machine by HesWare and he probably would've had to wait like everyone else otherwise.

 

But, YES , particular pirate copies were the driver of further success of any comptersystem.

Most benefactored system was the C64....

 

Nope again for the UK, tape-to-tape copying wasn't particularly easy to get right on the C64 (the dual deck Amstrad hi-fi system was a popular choice) because of how the C2N works and the biggest benefactor by far was the Spectrum.

 

While I bought 100s of games for the A8, everywhere I saw a C64 , you would found 1000s of copied games, but no original there. From the worker's son to the child of a dentist, they owned 1000s of pirated games.

 

i still own literally thousands of C64 games (as well as some for the Atari 8-bit and Amstrad CPC) that were mostly purchased during the 1980's and 1990's, but i also used to swap cracked games because that was the only way to get some of the stuff out there from companies like CP Verlag, LK Avalon and so forth. And when i was selling computers (which was when the Amiga and ST were duking it out through to when the PC started taking the market over), the last 8-bit we carried was the C64 and we'd still sell software for it well into the machine's dotage.

[TMR]

Another factor is the time period. 79-82 were years where having a "home computer" was not mainstream. by 85 I was seeing housewives buying pc's for the kids. That was a major change in who owned and was attracted to a pc. Therefore you have more people,greater interest and a bigger market. Just my observation.

 

But surely that should've worked the other way if we're talking about converting game playing users into programmers? The 79-82 period people were the ones more likely to take up an assembler rather than when things went mainstream...

[desiv]

You are correct! As a dealer for both back in the day c64 customers would actaully tell me they would not buy software,they were just coming in to get the machine and then get all the software from their buddy. Yes A8 did this too however it was sooo rampant on c64.

 

So, you're telling me that C64 users are also more honest to their dealers than Atari users.. Interesting. :-)

 

Seriously, I bought lots of C64 software, and copied lots of it.

Most of my the people I knew were the same, regardless of the computer they owned. There were a few people who didn't pirate, but they were the minority. On the same side, there were people who never (well, almost) bought software, but at least around the people we knew, they were also a minority...

 

And I really didn't see that C64 users were more prone to piracy...

I'd be surprised at that, seeing as so many game companies seemed to be making money on C64 software. You'd think if they saw what you saw on a large scale, they'd decide to sell to Atari users specifically.

 

I suppose it could be socio-economic. People who can't afford the Atari's bought 64's, and since they had less disposable income, they spent less on software, and hence more piracy...

But still, it seemed there was an awful lot of money made on C64 software..

Who knows..

 

Well, probably Apple, and I'm sure their users never pirated at all... :-) :-)

 

desiv

[carmel_andrews]

Atari 8bit software support in UK after warners...Predominantly and mainly Budget stuff i.e. UK originated software (i.e 1.99 and 2.99 market)...about 80-90 p/c of the market (other 10-20 p/c being either rebrands/relaunches from US titles released by Atari/Activision/US gold or EA etc at full price, i.e 8/9.99 to 19/29.99, including cartridges)...and most of the budget stuff realeased was either average to poor in the main (apart from a handfull of titles from Zeppelin, one or 2 from mastertronic and a handfull from byteback (which were mainly relaunches of red rat and full price games from other companies)

 

That is how the UK A8'er got shafted

 

Perhaps Atari should have done what commodore did very successfully pre commodore 64 (re idependent software publishing and distribution), that is why before the c64 came out commodore with the pet/cbm compatible computers dominated the UK market (according to the text in the book home computer wars commodore had between 60-80 p/c of the UK computer market and mostly due to commodore focusing their efforts on independent software distribution and publishing and not relying on some big name type like an EA or Activision etc)

 

I know Atari had there APX thing and whilst atari were 'reasonably successful' at selling that concept to the retail/dealer market, not only was the content and user support (i.e getting user to extend the range of software with their own contributions) a fraction of what commodore where doing with their similar independent software publishing/distribution etc) but it just didn't end with more people going out and buying an A8

[STE'86]

Word of mouth, that's what sold machines. Person A got a C64, A8 Spectrum or whatever, Person B saw and listened to it and said "ooh, want!" and the cycle perpetuated; Spectrums sold en masse for the UK market because they were cheap, cheerful and backups [ahem] of games on C90s were traded around the playground (i've always said that machines where the games could be pirated usually fared better than when they couldn't back then, very few people could afford a machine and more than one or two games at the same time so being able to get a tape full from a friend was a selling point).

 

After the first selling by good commercials and professional software developers, words of mouth may do well. But, YES , particular pirate copies were the driver of further success of any comptersystem.

Most benefactored system was the C64....

While I bought 100s of games for the A8, everywhere I saw a C64 , you would found 1000s of copied games, but no original there. From the worker's son to the child of a dentist, they owned 1000s of pirated games.

 

I'd bet that the firstly used tapes for spreading games made it easy to copy the games (Just connect two Cassete Recorders). After a good Userbase was there, the spread via Floppy was growing.

 

That's why, later in time, even cheap games didn't bring the richness to the software developers. But, depending on the huge userbase, the progress of dying was longer than with the A8.

You are correct! As a dealer for both back in the day c64 customers would actaully tell me they would not buy software,they were just coming in to get the machine and then get all the software from their buddy. Yes A8 did this too however it was sooo rampant on c64. A8 software sales stayed pretty good long after they should have been dead or at least until the stuff was just poor port jobs. C64 software sales never amounted to much due to the rampant piracy. We could sell hardware add on's just fine. It was disgusting. I talked with many software reps and they knew it too. Ended up with over a 70% stock balance rate. (that was where you sent back software that did not sell for credit) most other platforms were 20-30% monthly. That was where the software writer/companies got screwed on c64. It should have been much more lucrative considering the base of machines.

 

yes the copying was rampant from what i remember, but still huge numbers of us bought software every week. and on the 64 there really was at least ONE thing worth buying each week. but i question your outlook that it caused such a stock imbalance. because mate, if this was true, how the hell did the 64 stay a primary developing machine up til 1990? if your scenario was true then it should have, and damned well would have prevented any viable sales therefore nobody would have written for it.

 

and when i was on the flipside:

there were an awful lot of software writers who made a fair whack of money from 64 games. tbh it was never joe public who u felt ripped off by, when it happened it was always some poxy sw house boss or a distributor. ( the oh so smug middle men)

 

Steve

[atariksi]

There's a difference between DOING THE OPPOSITE OF THE ORIGINAL POSTER and doing things that are technical features of both machines. If someone tells you to get some milk and you go talk about cows and how they generate milk that's not as bad as force feeding him water.

 

If he's thirsty, giving him water is far better than discussing cows.

 

IF. It's better to read what he wants then speculate.

 

And discussing how cows generate milk was simultaneously going on with supplying milk.

[atariksi]

There's a difference between DOING THE OPPOSITE OF THE ORIGINAL POSTER and doing things that are technical features of both machines. If someone tells you to get some milk and you go talk about cows and how they generate milk that's not as bad as force feeding him water.

 

If he's thirsty, giving him water is far better than discussing cows.

 

 

 

 

 

That's got to be a world first, a cow that plays (and programs) an atari

 

Perhaps if Atari under warners were as good at marketing the A8 series to software companies as well as the general market in the UK as they were in the US market the A8 would have had better support software wise

 

I think even you have to accept that Atari didn't get that right in the UK at least till tramiel took the reins, unfortunately the battle had already been lost with the 8Bit UK software market already been divvied up between commodore and sinclair because they did sometime atari didn't and courted the software houses, so Atari did the commodore/sinclair trick Hence why the ST got the software support where the 8bit didn't

 

It's amazing that despite all the problems and targetting 16K/CTIA, Atari did have great games better, faster, smoother than C64 games targetted for 64K.

[PeteD]

 

 

It's amazing that despite all the problems and targetting 16K/CTIA, Atari did have great games better, faster, smoother than C64 games targetted for 64K.

 

And if you're talking about the days when the A8 was still "good" and the C64 was still new then it's hardly surprising as people keep telling us, the A8 had been out a long time by then so coders had learned how to do things. It always takes a couple of years for games on any machine to start to get good.

 

Pete

Edited September 16, 2009 by PeteD

[atariksi]

I doubt there are many people who have every game ever made or tried every game ever made on A8, but there aren't any games I have seen that employ GPRIOR mode 0 or GTIA modes or mixture of both. I have seen these features employed in non-game scenarios.

 

I just thought there might be some games that are universally considered in Atari land as being outstanding technical achievements, that aren't 3D

 

I mean in C64 land, stuff like Armalyte and Co. is (I guess) heralded by the gamers as being the best their is, then Mayhem in Monsterland and others.. On 7800 you've got TowerTopper/Nebulus/Castellian which looks simply adorable on a real TV (but that's probably just me thinking its one of the best (if not the best) examples of how to use artficating well).. 2600, things like Solaris, Thrust and Pitfall II spring to mind..

 

I've got to look more into these GTIA modes.. There'd be some very colourful stuff to be had with that and PRIOR=0 as well, but I get the impression they're all a bit too chunky to be useful most of the time.. But maybe that's just me.. Are there any good examples of its use in games ?

 

You can mix the sprites with GTIA modes for players and/or for GPRIOR mode 0 stuff. I guess someone else who has big library of games can give better answer as to which ones use GTIA. As far as being chunky-- it depends on image and you also have option to interleave two GR.9/10 screens to get 160 pixels across.

[TMR]

There's a difference between DOING THE OPPOSITE OF THE ORIGINAL POSTER and doing things that are technical features of both machines. If someone tells you to get some milk and you go talk about cows and how they generate milk that's not as bad as force feeding him water.

 

If he's thirsty, giving him water is far better than discussing cows.

 

IF. It's better to read what he wants then speculate.

 

So how often does someone ask you to get them some milk without actually meaning they want to consume it in some form? If you ask for one liquid and get another, that's closer to the mark than asking for a liquid and getting a conversation.

 

It's the same with this thread, the poster asked for comparisons, Rockford gave him comparisons; okay, so the requested bias wasn't present (which, lets face it, was a red rag just sitting around and waiting for a bull and not necessarily from the Commodore side of the fence) but since said poster hasn't added to the thread since a couple of days after his initial post i'm not sure he's actually going to notice anyway...

Edited September 16, 2009 by TMR

[TMR]

 

 

It's amazing that despite all the problems and targetting 16K/CTIA, Atari did have great games better, faster, smoother than C64 games targetted for 64K.

 

And if you're talking about the days when the A8 was still "good" and the C64 was still new then it's hardly surprising as people keep telling us, the A8 had been out a long time by then so coders had learned how to do things. It always takes a couple of years for games on any machine to start to get good.

 

Saying "better" is subjective anyway because it comes down to personal taste in games, but the C64 was released late 1982 and during 1983 Commodore released Star Ranger, there were multiple Scramble and Defender clones from Microdigital, Mogul and Program One amongst others (as well as the official port of the former from Atarisoft, Tony Crowther's Killerwatt was released by Alligata, Spy Hunter from Bally and Sega, Cosmic Convoy was available from Taskset and that's just the genre i follow personally but these titles all ran at a flat out refresh every frame so it's impossible to go any smoother and if by faster we're talking about movement speeds as opposed to frame refreshes, Killerwatt isn't exactly slow.

 

In fact, according to Gamebase64 there were over 1,500 games released in 1983 alone and whilst a good number of them were bound to be rubbish (lets face it, 80% of games for any machine are rubbish so when you have more games...) and others are relatively quick and dirty ports, there's stll quite a few examples of people having found their feet remarkably quickly all things considered.

[carmel_andrews]

So how often does someone ask you to get them some milk without actually meaning they want to consume it in some form? If you ask for one liquid and get another, that's closer to the mark than asking for a liquid and getting a conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

You must have a lot of cows in Leeds TMR...are they ex Atari or c=64 people by any chance

[PeteD]

 

 

Saying "better" is subjective anyway because it comes down to personal taste in games, but the C64 was released late 1982 and during 1983 Commodore released Star Ranger, there were multiple Scramble and Defender clones from Microdigital, Mogul and Program One amongst others (as well as the official port of the former from Atarisoft, Tony Crowther's Killerwatt was released by Alligata, Spy Hunter from Bally and Sega, Cosmic Convoy was available from Taskset and that's just the genre i follow personally but these titles all ran at a flat out refresh every frame so it's impossible to go any smoother and if by faster we're talking about movement speeds as opposed to frame refreshes, Killerwatt isn't exactly slow.

 

In fact, according to Gamebase64 there were over 1,500 games released in 1983 alone and whilst a good number of them were bound to be rubbish (lets face it, 80% of games for any machine are rubbish so when you have more games...) and others are relatively quick and dirty ports, there's stll quite a few examples of people having found their feet remarkably quickly all things considered.

 

I wonder how many A8 coders jumped ship to work on C64? Might explain a seemingly quick startup and a decline in A8 quality.

 

 

Pete

[atariksi]

There's a difference between DOING THE OPPOSITE OF THE ORIGINAL POSTER and doing things that are technical features of both machines. If someone tells you to get some milk and you go talk about cows and how they generate milk that's not as bad as force feeding him water.

 

If he's thirsty, giving him water is far better than discussing cows.

 

IF. It's better to read what he wants then speculate.

 

So how often does someone ask you to get them some milk without actually meaning they want to consume it in some form? If you ask for one liquid and get another, that's closer to the mark than asking for a liquid and getting a conversation.

...

You can't consume water instaed of milk if you need calcium or many other reasons. YOU ARE SPECULATING that it has to be for thirst. And you are making things more complicated than they are and leaving out another important sentence in my reply: there were comparisons given that he asked for along with the discussion of why they are superior. And even if they weren't, to state things that are the opposite is still worse than giving a discussion. Now please understand the point before replying.

 

 

It's the same with this thread, the poster asked for comparisons, Rockford gave him comparisons; okay, so the requested bias wasn't present (which, lets face it, was a red rag just sitting around and waiting for a bull and not necessarily from the Commodore side of the fence) but since said poster hasn't added to the thread since a couple of days after his initial post i'm not sure he's actually going to notice anyway...

 

No he did not ask for ANY comparisons. Rockford is trying to do the opposite. You can't understand that-- you need to learn some logic. You think you can write anything you want on any topic because you think you KNOW BETTER than the poster what's happening in his brain-- including speculating that he meant the opposite. You are DEAD wrong.

[atariksi]

 

 

It's amazing that despite all the problems and targetting 16K/CTIA, Atari did have great games better, faster, smoother than C64 games targetted for 64K.

 

And if you're talking about the days when the A8 was still "good" and the C64 was still new then it's hardly surprising as people keep telling us, the A8 had been out a long time by then so coders had learned how to do things. It always takes a couple of years for games on any machine to start to get good.

 

Saying "better" is subjective anyway because it comes down to personal taste in games,...

 

 

WRONG again. You are speculating. Better can be used subjectively and objectively. Rest of rubbish deleted since your original point is invalid.

[atariksi]

Which brings us back to Ste's question... where were all the A8 artists in the 1980's...? emkay's money thing is just bunk, surely there were some people around?!

 

I think the low cost and rapidly expanding user base of the 64 really starting sucking the energy out of other platforms. There were some people doing neat things on the A8, but when the 64 took off I think it spawned a different kind of coder-gamer.

 

I dunno about that, many 8bit coders were just teens in their bedrooms. And remember the A8 was around for a few years before the C64 so that same group of kids would have been playing with A8 coding too. And the C64 didn't have an easy to use BASIC or simple commands for graphics and sounds...it was almost like machine code manipulating VIC-II & SID

 

Like I say I think the problem is the A8 hardware has too many restrictions to fully utilise even the original 128 colour palette. 160x100 resolution is fine for 2600 games but in the 80s things got a bit more sophisticated.

Another factor is the time period. 79-82 were years where having a "home computer" was not mainstream. by 85 I was seeing housewives buying pc's for the kids. That was a major change in who owned and was attracted to a pc. Therefore you have more people,greater interest and a bigger market. Just my observation.

 

He's wrong. Atari can utilize restricted as does C64. C64 fans got used to and conditioned to their restricted 40*25 color RAM and started claiming they have 160*200*16 (bullcrap) whereas hardly anybody employed the 128/256 colors in GTIA in GPRIOR mode 0-- just used for mainly backgrounds and demos. I thought Atari 2600 was also 160*200.

[atariksi]

 

 

It's amazing that despite all the problems and targetting 16K/CTIA, Atari did have great games better, faster, smoother than C64 games targetted for 64K.

 

And if you're talking about the days when the A8 was still "good" and the C64 was still new then it's hardly surprising as people keep telling us, the A8 had been out a long time by then so coders had learned how to do things. It always takes a couple of years for games on any machine to start to get good.

 

Saying "better" is subjective anyway because it comes down to personal taste in games,...

 

 

WRONG again. You are speculating. Better can be used subjectively and objectively. Rest of rubbish deleted since your original point is invalid.

 

I left out the "\quote".

[TMR]

In fact, according to Gamebase64 there were over 1,500 games released in 1983 alone and whilst a good number of them were bound to be rubbish (lets face it, 80% of games for any machine are rubbish so when you have more games...) and others are relatively quick and dirty ports, there's stll quite a few examples of people having found their feet remarkably quickly all things considered.

 

I wonder how many A8 coders jumped ship to work on C64? Might explain a seemingly quick startup and a decline in A8 quality.

 

It's close to impossible to quantify really, it's pretty likely for the guys doing it for a living and, along with Archer McLean who had transitioned by IK+, that was what happened with Martin Walker, he did A8 code before moving to the C64 for stuff like Chameleon, Hunter's Moon and Citadel. But i don't know if many of the more backroom coding end of the market shifted stances as well, i can think of a few examples like Dave Thomas who wrote Warlok on the A8 and then did his own C64 port before deciding he liked it there and going on to do Buggy Boy and First Strike for Elite and the Sir Arthur Pendragon titles for Ultimate and Ian Copeland, who did code on Draconus, seems to be a late example since apparently his commercial A8 work dates back to 1987 and the C64 code he wrote starts around two years later.

[TMR]

I thought Atari 2600 was also 160*200.

 

To probably paraphrase John Harris, the 2600 is 160 by however good a coder you are; it can do 160x200 (on sprites only, of course, playfields are a max of 40x200) but actually getting that out of the machine in a decent game isn't so much an uphill struggle as full-on mountaineering!

[andym00]

He's wrong. Atari can utilize restricted as does C64. C64 fans got used to and conditioned to their restricted 40*25 color RAM and started claiming they have 160*200*16 (bullcrap) whereas hardly anybody employed the 128/256 colors in GTIA in GPRIOR mode 0-- just used for mainly backgrounds and demos. I thought Atari 2600 was also 160*200.

 

Obviously we need a new scientific measure of absolute graphics performance for these wee beasties then..

 

Okay, how about this...

The 64 is 320x200x2x8x8 and also 160x200x4x8x8

And VCS is 160x200x128x1x160

 

Without including any players or sprites

 

Oh, not looking good for the 2600.. Oh dearie me..

 

C64 in hires scores 8,192,000 graphics fanboy points..

In lores it scores (not surprisingly) 8,192,000 graphics fanboy points as well..

 

And the 2600 ? Wow!!

655,360,000 graphics fanboy points..

 

So clearly the 2600 is 80times better graphically then the 64!! Wow!

 

You heard it here first

 

edit: I know 2600 screen can be taller, just I wanted to give the 64 a fighting chance...

Edited September 16, 2009 by andym00

[atarian63]

Another factor is the time period. 79-82 were years where having a "home computer" was not mainstream. by 85 I was seeing housewives buying pc's for the kids. That was a major change in who owned and was attracted to a pc. Therefore you have more people,greater interest and a bigger market. Just my observation.

 

But surely that should've worked the other way if we're talking about converting game playing users into programmers? The 79-82 period people were the ones more likely to take up an assembler rather than when things went mainstream...

Maybe so, however out of a much,much smaller pool so really mainstream home computer was getting to be after the Atari golden age.

[andym00]

You can mix the sprites with GTIA modes for players and/or for GPRIOR mode 0 stuff. I guess someone else who has big library of games can give better answer as to which ones use GTIA. As far as being chunky-- it depends on image and you also have option to interleave two GR.9/10 screens to get 160 pixels across.

 

I'm interested to see GTIA stuff, especially with PRIOR0

But the GR9/10 thing.. That's the one the flickers and looks like a comb at the edge right ? Not so keen on that, but then again I hated all the flickering 'interlace' rubbish on the 64 anyway..