Which is better, Atari 400/800 vs. Commodore-64 (GRAPHICS ONLY!)

[Bill Loguidice]

1 minute ago, Atari130XE said:

Hello, thanks for this. 

Could you elaborate a little bit? Why was it not practical back in the day? 

Modern developers have access to tools and hardware that weren't necessarily available or practical back in the day (not to mention more time than commercial developers and relatively easy worldwide collaboration). Prince of Persia for Atari 8-bit was not necessarily impractical, although software requiring 128K of RAM, like PoP does in this case, was not exactly common. 

In any case, some of the best Atari 8-bit homebrews require 320K of RAM (which few owners would have been able to afford back in the day), while some of the best C-64 homebrews, which run just fine on the stock 64K, can only be run from modern cartridges (which would have been cost prohibitive back in the day). It's just a matter of practicality. The point is, just about every classic system has benefited in similar ways from modern homebrews that pushed them in ways that simply weren't commercially viable back in the day. (And of course there are plenty of instances where modern developers on these systems produce amazing stuff that DOES fit within "back in the day" limitations, but they still benefit from the passage of time and knowledge.)

That's just a long-winded way of saying that, in my opinion, it's best to evaluate back-in-the-day software and modern homebrew software separately. They each tell different, and interesting, stories.

[zzip]

47 minutes ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Prince of Persia for Atari 8-bit was not necessarily impractical, although software requiring 128K of RAM, like PoP does in this case, was not exactly common. 

Were there any A8 commercial games BITD that required 128K?   I can't think of any.   Most were written to work in 48K with the occasional special benefits if you have 64K or 128K

[Bill Loguidice]

1 hour ago, zzip said:

Were there any A8 commercial games BITD that required 128K?   I can't think of any.   Most were written to work in 48K with the occasional special benefits if you have 64K or 128K

A few made use of it, I guess, but certainly not required: 

 

 

I suppose in that regard, it's one of the very few platforms with greater than 64K machines in circulation that didn't have really any exclusive 128K games. It goes back to the whole thing about third party developers mostly wanting to support 48K models max, and not even the 64K the Apple II and C-64 enjoyed, limiting what got released after a certain point.