Is the C64 too different to A8 to ever have meaningful comparison?

[JamesD]

...

One mystery of the C64 - for whatever reason they went with the ~ 1 MHz CPU. For not much extra effort they could have done 2 MHz, albeit slowed down somewhat as there wouldn't be interleaved memory access, but more DMA steals.

Probably cost I suppose - JT was notoriously tight and many of his machines, from Atari as well, had features deleted or sub-par simply to save a buck here and there.

2MHz would have been a no brainer but it would have prevented Commodore from being as effective in the price war... at least that's probably what management thought. Clearly by the time the Plus/4 released that wasn't much of an issue.

 

The other thing that made me wonder is why they didn't have a high speed disk mode like with the C128 and the 1571.

This would have eliminated one of the biggest gripes about the C64 from the start and they could have still supported the VIC20 drives using the default speed unless a 1571 was detected.

The 1571 isn't much slower than Jiffydos upgrades when you use burst mode.

 

[kiwilove]

Xevious doesn't really work on a single button joystick, so most of the clones (or games doing a similar dual-level firing system) like Mission Genocide, Combat Zone, Ryshka or the official port of Xevious tend to be average as opposed to decent.

 

I have not played those games that you have mentioned - but neither have I played most of the shooter kinda games on the C64 - though I have played the most excellent shooters like Delta, Sanxion, Io, Katakis, Armalyte and a few others... (I guess I should try/see those titles you have mentioned...) It does seem a shame that no one? has come close to a Xevious style game, and doing a decent effort with it.

Andrew Bradfield and I, at that time - did play Flak and Xevious (these Atari 400/800 games) while - or before? we started work on Hawkquest...

(In Hawkquest - we resorted to using down+fire for bombing ground targets. We did have hidden targets - but you really had to find these yourself - I think only their horizontal position was noted for you - which is only 1/2 a clue as to where they are.)

 

I just did not like or weren't impressed by the Zeppelin games - and also others in the Uridium kinda mode... that were made for the Atari 8-bit computers... The graphics or their graphics style - did not impress me - but disappointed me, I guess... Same for their gameplay as such.

 

Harvey

[TMR]

2MHz would have been a no brainer but it would have prevented Commodore from being as effective in the price war... at least that's probably what management thought. Clearly by the time the Plus/4 released that wasn't much of an issue.

The Plus/4 suffers from the same issues with the video hardware not working at 2MHz that the C64 has, the CPU is only running at full tilt during the borders and slows down to 1MHz for the main display area; that's essentially what some programs do on the C128 but implemented in hardware.

[TMR]

I have not played those games that you have mentioned - but neither have I played most of the shooter kinda games on the C64 - though I have played the most excellent shooters like Delta, Sanxion, Io, Katakis, Armalyte and a few others... (I guess I should try/see those titles you have mentioned...) It does seem a shame that no one? has come close to a Xevious style game, and doing a decent effort with it.

It wasn't a popular sub-genre to be honest, single button joysticks worked better for simpler "shoot stuff and sod the height" style games like SWIV and Hades Nebula or the ridiculous numbers of vertically scrolling shooters made with the Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit. or Cyberwing. [Ahem =-]

 

I just did not like or weren't impressed by the Zeppelin games - and also others in the Uridium kinda mode... that were made for the Atari 8-bit computers... The graphics or their graphics style - did not impress me - but disappointed me, I guess... Same for their gameplay as such.

Uridium is one of those games that looks easy on the surface to people wanting to copy it, but proves bloody hard to get right and almost all of the clones for the C64 like Eon, WAR or Psycastria can't hold a candle to the original; about the only reasonable one i can think of is Thunderbolt and that's a much simpler, less solidly presented game but fun to actually play.

[kiwilove]

I guess programmers did not want to develop decent shooters, Xevious types, etc etc.

 

There should be ways to get over a one button joystick limitation. I guess I am open to designing graphics for shooter games. It is a shame to see something like X: 8 - that a lot of effort has gone into this - but the graphics standard, could have been better...

But then I felt a lot of the shooters that did come out - weren't the best that could have been done?

 

GTIABlast! tries to address this - though design wise - it was never intended to be like Xevious - nor have shootable things, etc etc on the landscape. It was never to be a proper game as such - nor a completely finished one.

 

I was always a fan of shooters, etc - and always wanted to see these fully explored and developed further...

 

Harvey

[TMR]

I guess programmers did not want to develop decent shooters, Xevious types, etc etc.

"Decent" is hugely subjective though, personally i can happily play budget shooters on the C64 or A8 for hours so by my definition there are reasonable numbers. That said, i'm not a fan of the Xevious model so it isn't something i'd either seek out clones of or program myself.

 

There should be ways to get over a one button joystick limitation.

Oh there's been loads of systems tried over the years and with varying degrees of success too, it's just that very few would feel even vaguely right in a Xevious-style game; possibly the best option would be a variation on what Zybex does, automating the lasers and using the button to drop bombs but then you can't do the fire button pounding for the lasers...

 

It is a shame to see something like X: 8 - that a lot of effort has gone into this - but the graphics standard, could have been better...

[shrugs] Since i drew the player ship in X:8 i can't really comment. =-)

 

But then I felt a lot of the shooters that did come out - weren't the best that could have been done?

Maybe (just talking technically rather than about gameplay, mileage varies considerably on that front) but i suspect they were the best that could be done with the finite time and resources available when they were written; we really can't compare what's possible now with huge RAM/ROM expansions, open ended deadlines and cross development tools running on desktops which would have been science fiction in the mid 1980s to what was done then.

[Nebulon]

pixelmischief

Posted Thu Aug 22, 2013 5:51 PM

She needs to decide what kind of computer to buy for her home and she has to choose between products made by Atari, Commodore, and IBM. She just got her kids "an Atari". They don't make serious computers, they make video games. She looks into the Amiga. All of the literature talks about image manipulation, video editing, 3D. She's not doing any of that at work. It looks really cool, but I need WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3. Then her IT person at work seals the deal. "If you want to be able to work on your files from the office at home, you have to get an IBM-compatible." That meant Intel, DOS, and eventually Windows.

From trusted typewriter to trusted computer. IBM was the standard. Businesses put it on the desk. People put it in their homes. The relative strength of the platforms never even played a role. Those who would argue that the success of the Intel platform is evidence of its superiority are conveniently forgetting its history.

 

____________________

 

Nebulon:

 

Wow. After 14 years of computer tech and retail for the PC platform (1989 - 2003), I couldn't have said it better.

Edited February 18, 2014 by Nebulon

[Nebulon]

 

They're both nifty machines, but I don't see how the time period (inception date) can be so easily discounted. Technology marches at an astonishing rate, both then and now. To compare the A8 with the C64 is to compare a 1979 machine with a 1982 machine. Date will always be relevant.

 

 

Yep!

 

I totally agree that the release date of the machines really does need to be taken into context for any kind of comparison of computer technology.

Edited February 18, 2014 by Nebulon

[Nebulon]

The other thing that made me wonder is why they didn't have a high speed disk mode like with the C128 and the 1571.

 

 

The C64 originally did. According to an interview in "Commodore: A company on the edge" it was stated that someone deleted the high-speed data transfer lines from the C64 motherboard to make room for the mobo in the case. The guy handling this part of the design found out about it and was just about to put the lines back in. He says that Jack (again) vetoed the fix in favor of expediting the release of the machine.

[Bill Loguidice]

I totally agree that the release date of the machines really does need to be taken into context for any kind of comparison of computer technology.

It's easy enough to argue that in this case, it is directly applicable, despite the close to 3 year gap between initial releases. Atari had a habit of releasing new versions of the same system, with more default memory and/or other features targeted to cost or convenience. In other words, Atari kept trying to move the base spec, first with a graphics chip upgrade, then with going past the 48K barrier. The C-64 on the other hand was the same spec from beginning to the end. While Commodore did try to move the needle with the C-128 and the unreleased C65, the reality is Atari's 8-bit line really was direct competition to the C-64 in every category that matters, except original release date. Clearly it was close enough in specs to be able to do so indefinitely, but again, even if it was arguably overengineered for its time, Atari still kept incrementally improving the line to stay competitive. Obviously, just like with Apple and its II series, that means that not all software will support every spec (a significant advantage for the single spec C64), but the end result was more or less the same.

[kiwilove]

There are a few games which are pretty close to the original? such examples as - Dropzone, Spelunker, Encounter? and probably a few more - which can perhaps show the hardware difference? in their versions. No doubt this list can be pretty long if you find decent conversions available for both computers.

in other cases - you're really comparing the competency of the programmers involved - such as Zaxxon, Blue Max - and other such titles, in which one is clearly better than the other.

 

I guess it's up to the viewer to decide which is the better version - if there is one?

 

Harvey