emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 I remembered looking at a C64 vertical shooter - and how impressive the independent sprites were - and this was not a big-name title - nor did it receive much acclaim. Wasn't Galaga missing on the C-64? But it did get Galaga 3 - which was a pretty decent conversion thereof - but it's still a very hard game, as per the coin-op... Xevious for the C-64 could have been really good/great - but was so horrible a looking conversion - that it looked unimpressive - the developer chose a closer view than other conversions. From the development site , C64 had nothing to laugh till 1985. Look how crappy Moon Patrol was. So from 1982 to 1985 there was no real point to buy a C64 System for any "enduser" .. The point being the C-64 has had it's fair share of hits and misses - as other systems. It did not have a Wayout? Nor Capture the Flag? Interestingly the VIC 20 has CTF , but it is also horribly slow. The two windows get updated "interleaved" at 4 fps , so it looks at least like some 8 fps on the screen. While the Apple II hardware wasn't all that much... didn't A.E come from the Apple II? I didn't get around to checking out what the Apple II games were like? Nor how they compared against Atari 8-bit games. Apple had it's name already. Ticking "homebrewer's" interests. There were some wonderful games that appeared out of nowhere for the Atari 400/800 etc and the talent they showed was very remarkable - For me - these were - Miner 2049'er, Necromancer, Blue Max, Encounter and others - for some - these were their first (or 2nd?) game (that they worked on?) - and other games which showed a high degree of quality in their execution. But once the C-64 appeared on the scene - or cornered the market - there were far fewer titles that stood out - on the Atari 8-bit - around the time of Dropzone and shortly afterwards? Indeed. The last "real great" games were out in 1985 , then everything broke down, without a real cause by the market. The Atari became a weird tool for programming starters. Releasing unfinished stuff, racing the C64 race without any sense, whatever. Actually, there have been still good releases , year by year, but the direction was wrong. As the strengths of the Atari got lost by the coders. About Drop Zone, well, not sure if this game could have been done better on a stock Atari. But, well RGB did beat it slightly, by changing the game type. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 International karate 1986 Spindizzy 1986 Alternate reality: The Dungeon 1987 Arkanoid 1986 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 But you are right that the usage of the a8 hardware got weaker as c64 or even 16bit were the lead platforms. Having zx spectrum as lead platform does not help either Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 Indeed, the Spectrum stifled creativity a little, they did some wonderful games considering the drawbacks but I'll never truly understand how it became so popular and retained its userbase... Never ever actually owned one but I've played about on the various emulators and gamebases and there's some solid games BUT the word 'considering' seems to follow naturally... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 International karate 1986 Missing level designs, and half of the soundtrack Spindizzy 1986 Would have done better in hires (for game presicion) Alternate reality: The Dungeon 1987 OK. Many glitches of the city have been removed. But the small "3D" Screen never made sense. Arkanoid 1986 No way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 OK. Many glitches of the city have been removed. But the small "3D" Screen never made sense. Oh yeah, duh, of course AR: The City should have been an isometric top-down shooter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 Where does international karate missing half of soundtrack and levels? My disk version has all of them plus c64 version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 Where does international karate missing half of soundtrack and levels? My disk version has all of them plus c64 version.So you never played the game , did you ? oh... Sorry, I was wrong. The Atari Track is about 4:30 and the SID is about 10 Minutes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 Oh yeah, duh, of course AR: The City should have been an isometric top-down shooter. Look... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 So you never played the game , did you ? oh... Sorry, I was wrong. The Atari Track is about 4:30 and the SID is about 10 Minutes. Wtf is wrong with you in insulting me? I played IK to death and it has all screens? I am not talking about the crippled cassette or file version where you can press select to switch backgrounds not the Epyx edition. Regarding soundtrack need to check but in 20 years i never came across that the sid differs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 (edited) The 16-bit computers failed to ignite me with their coin-op conversions (typically shooter games (of the spacey kind)) though seemed perfectly fine for the 3D simulations and strategy type games...... The 16-bit consoles delivering the quality missing from the computers in their various action/arcade games... Harvey A lot of 16-bit games felt like rote playback. More complex sprites (compared to 8-bit) simply followed a defined a path and were then played back, along with "played back" background and sound. Especially sound. It felt so disconnected from the game. Whereas 8-bit classic machines had to often synthesize and procedurally generate (kinda sorta) all the game screen elements and sounds. There wasn't enough memory to save it all. --- Additionally, you want small sprites for strategy games, it doesn't matter if they're repetitive like an an army of men or tanks, or cars in like sim-city. There's not a lot of action in most strategy games, so the playing-on-rails factor doesn't enter in the equation. And for most 3D games of that era, they kinda needed to be generated and synthesized on the fly. What I think is missing from the 16-bit era is interactivity with the program logic itself and not just the game elements. There seemed to be more mystery in how an 8-bit game behaved at its limits or in unusual situations. More easter-eggy if you will. With 16-bit there was much less exploring off-world or out of bounds action. Like driving off-course in Intellivision Auto Racing. Or Flying off-grid in A2-FS1. Strange things could happen. Not so in 16-bit worlds, they were all confined and defined. Edited September 23, 2017 by Keatah Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 Wtf is wrong with you in insulting me? Read your own posts. If you name that "insulting", what did you before? And, well I also had the "double sided" IK Disk. On one side the C64 version, on the "back side" the Atari Version. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 Look... Looked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 A lot of 16-bit games felt like rote playback. More complex sprites (compared to 8-bit) simply followed a defined a path and were then played back, along with "played back" background and sound. Especially sound. It felt so disconnected from the game. Whereas 8-bit classic machines had to often synthesize and procedurally generate (kinda sorta) all the game screen elements and sounds. There wasn't enough memory to save it all. That was an argument back in the 70s. But in the MID 80s ROM got rather cheap, RAM aswell. In a special way, it had been an "Anti pirating" way , to have Cartridges with extra ROM and or RAM... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 Looked.And what did you get out of it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 And what did you get out of it? That you're very bad at communicating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 That was an argument back in the 70s. But in the MID 80s ROM got rather cheap, RAM aswell. In a special way, it had been an "Anti pirating" way , to have Cartridges with extra ROM and or RAM... Did we have low-cost 16bit consumer consoles and computers back in the 70's? Aside from the TI-99/4 I don't recall any. So there would not have been any discussion. When 16-bit is discussed it typically means ST, Amiga, Mac. Or things like the consoles that came out in the mid-80 and late 80's. Not the 1970's. In the mid-80's ROM and RAM prices dropped, sure, and THAT is what helped contributed to the style of games that I didn't particularly like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 (edited) Read your own posts. If you name that "insulting", what did you before? And, well I also had the "double sided" IK Disk. On one side the C64 version, on the "back side" the Atari Version. Yes and which level is missing? https://www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/International_Karate Edited September 23, 2017 by Heaven/TQA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 That you're very bad at communicating. And you seem rather bad at concentrating. The Atari has 128 colors. But the "3d city" looks flat , flatter , flattest. No colour had been used to bring some additional shadowing or depth illusion to it, while the DLIs have been used to put the sky and the ground looking "distant" ? The remake shows it exactly the other way , the way which would anyone do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 That was an argument back in the 70s. But in the MID 80s ROM got rather cheap, RAM aswell. In a special way, it had been an "Anti pirating" way , to have Cartridges with extra ROM and or RAM... Haha. No. This had little or nothing to do with anti-piracy. The main purpose of additional RAM and ROM (and even co-processors) was to genuinely enhance the game beyond what the console was capable of when reading a simple program from ROM only. Additional chips were sometimes present to facilitate interfacing with larger memory, bankswitching, that sort of thing. This is plain as day in carts for the SNES. And new DPC+ homebrews for the VCS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 Haha. No. This had little or nothing to do with anti-piracy. The main purpose of additional RAM and ROM (and even co-processors) was to genuinely enhance the game beyond what the console was capable of when reading a simple program from ROM only. Additional chips were sometimes present to facilitate interfacing with larger memory, bankswitching, that sort of thing. ??? Games for the Atari had been much better, without the limit of 48K for 800 compatibility. And, Cartridges with additional RAM/ROM weren't easily cracked and put to Disk, because the needed hardware had been missing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+DrVenkman Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 Why is everyone still feeding this troll? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Good_Times Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 Why is everyone still feeding this troll? AtariAge cyclical pattern of behavior for many. I just popped fresh corn! (Just keep telling yourself: Grown adults....grown adults....grown adults....) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emkay Posted September 23, 2017 Author Share Posted September 23, 2017 (edited) Yes and which level is missing? Remember this? http://atariage.com/forums/topic/233064-enhanced-ik/?hl=+karate+enhanced Edited September 23, 2017 by emkay Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZylonBane Posted September 23, 2017 Share Posted September 23, 2017 (edited) The Atari has 128 colors. But the "3d city" looks flat , flatter , flattest. No colour had been used to bring some additional shadowing or depth illusion to it, while the DLIs have been used to put the sky and the ground looking "distant" ? The remake shows it exactly the other way , the way which would anyone do. As illustrated here, you're an idiot. Using different colors to do depth cuing on textured walls is not practical in a 4-bit color mode. You can't use DLIs, because different walls on the same row can be different distances away from the player. Also, Alternate Reality X is running on far more advanced graphics hardware, so of course it's more colorful. The makers of the original AR did the best they could with the technology of the time. You'd understand that if you weren't so very, very stupid. Edited September 23, 2017 by ZylonBane Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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