Atari 8bit vs. C64

[Guest]

if you ask me. i prefer the atari 800xe. ofcourse because it has ballblazer, gato, eastern front.....ballblazer ..gato.....i want to play them again.

[svenski]

From what I remember people soon realised the limitations of the Vic20 and it died pretty quickly. Same for the Acorn Electron which no doubt UK guys will remember.

 

I agree that sales would have been the main priority for companies such as EA etc dropping the 8-bit. Lets face it, piracy is much worse today than it was back then. Anyone who thinks the Xbox is a hard platform to copy for has their eyes closed.

 

The problem though was lack of software support compounded the piracy problem on the 8-bit. In the UK at least 8-bit users were dedicated fans, you had to be - if you wanted the latest releases you bought another computer.

 

So this group of die-hard fans banded together, and generally exchanged/copied games because that was the only way they could get software. When new titles did get released the rush was on to get them first. If every Atari user had purchased legitimate copies of those games released by the few companies supporting the 8-bit then we'd have seen more titles and perhaps seen the big guys dabble in the 8-bit market from time to time.

 

Lets not forget though at the time Atari dumped the XL onto the high street, where was the advertising?, the promotion? Zero. To say at that time it was too late for an 8-bit platform is just plain wrong. The speccie was going strong, the C64 was riding high, the Amstrad CPC was taking off....

 

If Atari had wanted to they could have made it a success.

 

A point Thimo raised was publishers were obsessed with 48k titles and maximum compatability with the 400/800..funny that whilst they limited the games potential to run on a 48k 800 a lot of them never tried the game out on one.

 

Sure there were 64k games or 64k versions but they were few and far between.

 

As for being critical of Atari for showing support for the XEGS and the 8-bit line toward the end, well I guess the poster isn't an 8-bit fan. Obviously anyone who used the platform back then appreciated any support from Atari no matter how little or too late.

 

The XF551 was and remains a great drive (cheap components aside) , the XEGS brought new life into the 8-bit software library. If Atari matched the money they spent on launching the XEGS and the revamped cart range with money spent on advertising again they could have made progress.

[tyranthraxus]

Well I wouldn't go so far as to as I am not an 8-bit fan. While I didn't

have one back in the day I got one last year and have quickly come

to love it. My argument against later 8-bit support is merely a common

observation of Atari's business practices. The company hurt itself by

supporting multiple platforms, none of which were great sellers.

 

Now if I were an owner in 1987 I know I would have welcomed the

XEGS lineup of games. It certainly was a show of support for some

of Ataris oldest customers. But reviewing this decision in 2003 it just

looks like a bad business decision. With the 7800 already out why

release the XEGS which would compete against the same type

of customers the budget gamers?

 

Its overly optimistic thinking that Atari could have increased popularity

of the 8-bits with more advertising. Owners of the far more popular

Apple II and 64 were drifting away from 8-bits in 1987. Game

players wanted a NES or SMS and computer fans wanted something

with more kick like the Mac, ST or Amiga and of course IBM clones were

finally coming down in price and selling more. The sun was setting on

the 8-bit and there wasn't room to re-launch an aging computer.

 

John

[svenski]

 

During all this time wasn't Atari milking the 2600 for all it was worth?, up to 86?

[Gunstar]

The 2600 and 7800 were both supported to some extent, up to '92 or'93 when the Falcon and Jaguar were released. The 8-bit line had "support" til '90 or '91 and the ST/TT until about '93/'94 (I think). After '93, the Falcon was quitely dropped and only the Lynx and Jaguar were supported to some extent until '95 or when Atari folded into JTS. Atari really did try to support too many systems at once, overlapping. If I had run things, I would have supported the XL line as long as possible or at least till inventory was sold, and invested a bit into it software wise. I would have released only the ST line as a new line in '85, and I would have released the 7800, as planned, in '84 and continue support of the 2600 for a few years, but not as long as they did. This would have kept the old customers happy for a few years until they upgraded to the ST's and 7800's (which, theoretically, would have done much better and have a larger market share than the NES because it would have come out before the NES). I would have released an ST based console along with the Lynx in '89 (beefed up graphically) to compete with the Genesis and TG16 and future SNES, and dropped the 7800 at that point, unless sales were still strong. Concentrating on the ST and 7800 early and strong would have done both a better service than using up funds on the 8-bit and 2600. Of course this strategy would have meant I never would have gotten a 130XE, never fallen in love with it and Atari, and never been here now...probably.

[emkay]

@svenski

 

>Anyone who thinks the Xbox is a hard platform to copy for has their eyes closed.

 

Anyone who thinks, any platform has a harder copy-protection than the X-Box has his eyes closed too.

The easiest platform for copies is the PC and the most releases today are made for PC, because there are enough games sold.

 

>If every Atari user had purchased legitimate copies of those games released by the few companies supporting the 8-bit then we'd have seen more titles and perhaps seen the big guys dabble in the 8-bit market from time to time

 

Contrary ... who is giving me one game that is using all goodies of the ATARI XL, for my about 200 original games I purchased and they are mostly bad, buggy or crap. With every game I bought, there was the hope of about such a game....

[Heaven/TQA]

I have bought original games when i become employee... before that not much money to spend on original games... and my attitude changed... nowadays i am working in games & software biz so i buy every game i play... maybe not at release but in budget.

 

so i have bought nearly every mastertronic title, i even bought crappy no-name games just to support the platform... my best games i have bought are:

 

- kenedy approach

- alternate reality: the dungeon

- international karate

.... and a lot of cassettes... i have them all...i have to dig them out from somewhere... it's like with my 2600...i had more than 40 modules and they are all gone... aaaaaaarg....

 

but even buying games did not help in atari loosing faith in their 8bit line...

 

do we have any information from europe (uk charttrak, gfk or media control) how many c64 & atari & speccy's were sold and how much a "tripple A" title has sold in that time???

 

i searched in the office one day the media control database but they are not going back in the 80s... maybe ELSPA?

 

it would be a great help for this discussion if we had any real market figures...

 

hve

[Heaven/TQA]

and today the same mechanics are working like in the 80s:

 

- which plattform does your friends use?

- are there enough games to impress them?

- are there any multiplayer games which you can play with your friends?

- are the games easy to crack & copy so you are a hero among your friends?

- does it have a kind of "illegal" and "underground" touch to keep

the teenagers interested in piracy?

- are there cool games ready like beach head II?

 

my theory is that these mechanics are the same today...you can put them on playstation1, ps2, xbox, gamecube (that's why GC is falling behind...), mobile games, PC, DVD piracy...

 

just my $0.02

 

hve

[Artlover]

Piracy maybe was a problem.There were many high-quality games before 1984/85 and after all the big companies left.

 

The piracy argument doesn't hold water with me; the C64 had loads of pirates, the ST and Amiga as well and we should remember that the demo scene is a close cousin of the cracking scene, the former evolved from the latter during the period we're talking about. Blaming piracy is a common line for software houses who want to find an excuse to be elsewhere or who feel a certain user base need a kick up the arse to support them.

 

Agreed. Piracy has no real valid negative impact on any media. Quite the contrary, if anything, it helps generate legimiate sales. I've got 3, somewhat long winded comments to make about it.

 

1) Most people who pirated something never would have bought the product to begin with. So the concept of "potential sale lost" is a total crock. Me seeing a game and not wanting to buy it, or me downloading the game both equal the same thing: 0$ made for them. Me downloading a game is not the same as shoplifting it out of some store. I am not depriving them a sale. The product is still sitting out there for whoever wants it.

 

2) When you buy a game or music or whatever, you're stuck with it. You can't take it back and get something else just because it sucks. Compound that with the high prices of the stuff, and people will shy away from wasting their money. I've bought many a game for my A2600, C-64, Atari 800, PC, NES (etc.), some were worth it, many were not. More then half the stuff I've bought I wish I hadn't, and why I almost never bought stuff unless I knew I really wanted it. I have bought games after downloading them. Why, because I liked them. I verified they wern't a waste of money, and would be something I would play for more then 5 minutes. Maniac Mansion for example. Great game. Only bought it after I downloaded it. Never would have gotten it other wise to tell you the truth. This is a factual point, that is even proven in the industry. Look at music. Complaining that the sale of CD Singles went down 33% in collage towns where filesharing was common place. True enough. But they also kept forgetting to mention that the sale of full CD Albums went up by 27%. Why? You could go buy the single, but since they can still cost as much as $4.99 sometimes, after you do, you arn't going to turn around and spend another $20 to buy the full album. But you doesn't want to buy the full album because you don't know if most of it is going to stuck or not. But if you download some of it first, you can make a better judgement as to where to spend your money. On the single or the album. But the industry is so stuck up & narrow minded that they fail to see the obvious... "Napster caused a 27% INcrease in full CD album sales".

 

3) The only thing piracy accomplishes is exposes what ever the product is to a greater base of people which ultimatly results in new sales. Music is a good example. If it doesn't cost you anything, you're more likely to try something then if you gotta pay. IE: Would you spend $20 for an album from some unknown group in an unfirmilure genera just to try and it see what it sounds like? I've been turned on to punk/industrial music from groups like P-Childern. A group I never would have known existed, producing music I never would have listened to, if it wasn't for filesharing. So thanks to filesharing, there is now another potential customer out there that wasn't there before.

 

 

It doesn't matter if you are talking about games, or music or movies. The logic and results are generaly the same. The war against piracy isn't about profit, it's about control.

 

Sorry for ranting.

 

Just my .02.

[emkay]

Back to the thread....

 

Belonging to the HW, a game in the style of Tekken ( 3D like ) was first able to produce on the ATARI X.

There could have been games with VIDEO-TV-animations.

To manage that much DATA, it was necessary to pack them(no Problem due to the fast CPU). Does anyone know a commercial game wich is using packing/unpacking?

Does anyone know a game with full videonanimations?

Does anyone know a 3D like game that was like Tekken?

 

No? But this was all possible to make, if programmers were able to do that!

So you could have bought all games for the ATARI x platform, but you won't get any of that games because the programmers couldn't IMHO do better programs.

[Gunstar]

Piracy maybe was a problem.There were many high-quality games before 1984/85 and after all the big companies left.

 

The piracy argument doesn't hold water with me; the C64 had loads of pirates, the ST and Amiga as well and we should remember that the demo scene is a close cousin of the cracking scene, the former evolved from the latter during the period we're talking about. Blaming piracy is a common line for software houses who want to find an excuse to be elsewhere or who feel a certain user base need a kick up the arse to support them.

 

Agreed. Piracy has no real valid negative impact on any media. Quite the contrary, if anything, it helps generate legimiate sales. I've got 3, somewhat long winded comments to make about it.

 

1) Most people who pirated something never would have bought the product to begin with. So the concept of "potential sale lost" is a total crock. Me seeing a game and not wanting to buy it, or me downloading the game both equal the same thing: 0$ made for them. Me downloading a game is not the same as shoplifting it out of some store. I am not depriving them a sale. The product is still sitting out there for whoever wants it.

 

2) When you buy a game or music or whatever, you're stuck with it. You can't take it back and get something else just because it sucks. Compound that with the high prices of the stuff, and people will shy away from wasting their money. I've bought many a game for my A2600, C-64, Atari 800, PC, NES (etc.), some were worth it, many were not. More then half the stuff I've bought I wish I hadn't, and why I almost never bought stuff unless I knew I really wanted it. I have bought games after downloading them. Why, because I liked them. I verified they wern't a waste of money, and would be something I would play for more then 5 minutes. Maniac Mansion for example. Great game. Only bought it after I downloaded it. Never would have gotten it other wise to tell you the truth. This is a factual point, that is even proven in the industry. Look at music. Complaining that the sale of CD Singles went down 33% in collage towns where filesharing was common place. True enough. But they also kept forgetting to mention that the sale of full CD Albums went up by 27%. Why? You could go buy the single, but since they can still cost as much as $4.99 sometimes, after you do, you arn't going to turn around and spend another $20 to buy the full album. But you doesn't want to buy the full album because you don't know if most of it is going to stuck or not. But if you download some of it first, you can make a better judgement as to where to spend your money. On the single or the album. But the industry is so stuck up & narrow minded that they fail to see the obvious... "Napster caused a 27% INcrease in full CD album sales".

 

3) The only thing piracy accomplishes is exposes what ever the product is to a greater base of people which ultimatly results in new sales. Music is a good example. If it doesn't cost you anything, you're more likely to try something then if you gotta pay. IE: Would you spend $20 for an album from some unknown group in an unfirmilure genera just to try and it see what it sounds like? I've been turned on to punk/industrial music from groups like P-Childern. A group I never would have known existed, producing music I never would have listened to, if it wasn't for filesharing. So thanks to filesharing, there is now another potential customer out there that wasn't there before.

 

 

It doesn't matter if you are talking about games, or music or movies. The logic and results are generaly the same. The war against piracy isn't about profit, it's about control.

 

Sorry for ranting.

 

Just my .02.

 

I agree with 99% of what you said. I too, have downloaded tons of stuff (mostly classic 8-bit/16-bit software) and that which I truly enjoy, I look to buy an original as soon as it pops up in the wild or on E-bay because I am a collector, and want the original with instructions and box etc. If I had not first downloaded the game, I never would have bought it off of E-bay or from a classics dealer, etc. So no sale was lost, it's 20 year old software anyway, so the publisher has not seen a penny from the stuff for years anyway either. I definately cause more purchases of software (and ultimately hardware upgrades to my classic computers) by me, not less. Music is the same way; while I have rarely downloaded a song anyway, if I liked one or two songs from an album/group, it also causes me to search for the real thing. Libraries of books, music and software always look a lot better and are a better experience to "enjoy" when they are complete originals. But I have no quams about downloading something and trying it first. The entire media industry would have made thousands and thousands of dollars LESS off of just me, if I had not "tried before I buyed." It IS all a load of crap from the industry, they are not losing as many sales as they are gaining, from people downloading and trying stuff out. I have a lot of stuff that I own originals of, that I never would have bought had I not downloaded it first. Shareware author's KNOW this to be true, which is why shareware does so well and people still publish software in this way; A.P.E software for the 8-bit? bought after trying it out on shareware. DiscJuggler CD burning software? Same thing, tried, bought. The list goes on and on. Doom was shareware, look where ID is today! The media industry are all a bunch of fricken' hypocrites anyway; wasn't DIVX SUPPOSED to be a format the industry was backing so people COULD "try before they buy" anyway? I remember reading that the format was originally suppose to be rented for a few bucks for a few days, then if you wanted to purchase the movie or music, you did, and the copy stayed good, if not, they erased it or something like that...not that it worked out like they wanted, but that is a perfect example of the industry wanting more CONTROL and had nothing to do with piracy, their favorite excuse.

[Nukey Shay]

DivX was originally designed as a "pay-per-view" format...that was supposed to ease the amount of dollars spilled into the VHS format and video rentals. But it received so much criticism from both the VHS and DVD audiences that the idea died off within a couple years. IIRC, the VHS crowd hated the idea of having to shell out each time they wanted to watch the movie, and DVD supporters got pretty sore as more and more titles were released on DivX concurrently with their VHS versions (pushing back the higher-quality DVD releases up to a few months). Once the format encoding scheme was cracked, I believe that the idea was already dead.

[tyranthraxus]

 

 

During all this time wasn't Atari milking the 2600 for all it was worth?, up to 86?

 

I think they dropped the 2600 around 1990! Even with all the different

platforms Atari was supporting in the late 80s I imagine they had to

be fairly profitably for them. With 2600, 7800 & 8-bit computers all

having been developed before Tramiel bought the show. All they had

to do was put it in a box and ship it out the door. They were probably

hoping for brand loyality that would lead to more ST sales.

 

John

[jon-paul]

 

But there were several much weaker computers with no sprites at all - the Spectrum for example , or even the Amstrad CPC which was released in 1984.

And some of the very popular MSX systems did not have impressive hardware ,too.

And the Apple II also had weaker graphics than both C64 and ATARI.

Thimo

 

Yes the spectrum was weaker, but still competent and at £130 it was also cheeper (cheepest serious machine on the market?) when i bought mine. we are talking 48K rubber keyed version here.

The C64 was about £230 at the time.

The Atari and the BBC were competing with each other in the £299/399 price range. And as the BBC was what was in all schools, and parents held the purse strings, I think Atari did pretty well over here all things considered and spending much of its production life tussling with the BBC for the No3/4 place

 

Once the speccy became the leader, legacy and large userbase made it profitable to support. Of the later machines only the amstrad cpc range managed to overtake the Atari/BBC rivalry for 3rd place in sales which Atari with the Dixons deal had just to get seriously ahead in.

 

As for the rivalry between commodore and atari, well i'm in the camp that thinks the commie had the edge in sound, atari had the edge in graphics. But only one had star raiders!

[Mayhem]

C64 did get "Star Raiders II" though

 

Having read through this, I'm amazed... a good debate with points made without descending into a slanging, flame war for not one minute

 

Naturally the C64 edged over the Atari 8 bits, and despite the Spectrum's initial success (released a year before at a price a third that of the C64), by the mid 80s it had been overtaken by said breadbin. Even the tide of 16 bit machines couldn't stop it by much, it was still heavily in use in the mid 90s.

 

As for the design... although the C64 didn't release until August 1982, the video and sound (VIC and SID) chips had been in development since 1979 at MOS. In fact they even admit to nicking certain ideas, features and aspects of other systems at the time to incorporate into the new chips, including the Atari 8bits. Probably why there are some similarities between the two. However some of the other "undocumented" features (now called bugs) allowed some incredible effects to be produced, many of which have already been listed in this thread.

 

The fact the C64 is the biggest selling 8bit machine ever speak for itself

[jon-paul]

The fact the C64 is the biggest selling 8bit machine ever speak for itself

 

'twas a very capable machine, at the right time, well packaged, excellently marketed, support in software and hard ware to die for. So what went wrong for commodore later during the Amiga era? We cannot blame the Uncle Jack, he was messin with Atari then!

[svenski]

My opinion - Commodore did extremely well with the A500 and A500 plus - we had them piled up to the ceiling and sold every one and all the others as fast as we could get them.

 

The A1200 was a good machine but suffered like the old Atari 1200XL had - new machine, new design....scary. Plus there were the compatability problems with older software.

 

The A600 was a disaster. Nobody liked it, many just hated the look of it and went no further.

 

Also Commodore were venturing into a range of Commodore PCs....these flopped.

 

The CD32 was another flop but a great machine.

 

I think Commodore stretched themselves too much, as consoles impacted sales and the 386 arrived, they were probably too slow to take preventative measures.

[emkay]

 

the video and sound (VIC and SID) chips had been in development since 1979 at MOS. In fact they even admit to nicking certain ideas, features and aspects of other systems at the time to incorporate into the new chips, including the Atari 8bits. Probably why there are some similarities between the two.

 

That's why most C64 effects could be done on the ATARI X series....

Looking at the Soundgenerators they are looking like POKEYs, with some optimizing. The graphics chip differs completely, but shows optimized similarities.

 

So maybe Commodore did two times, what ATARI still had to do.

- on the 8-bits the optimized chips

- on the 16 Bits the selling of the AMIGA.

 

But while AMIGA was slower by the CPU than the ST, the 8-Bits are near as double as fast then the C64. And the standard Floppy was up to 64 times faster than the C64 standard.

This made the C64 to a very good gaming platform. And the XL was better for working. A big paradoxon to see the better gaming-platforms by a business machine producer and the better working machines by a gaming-platform producer...

[Artlover]

I find it amusing that 2 decades later, the same old debate is still taking place. But at least now a days, it is much more friendly. Fights between the Atari & CBM people were quite passionate back then.

 

Personaly, I grew up on the C64/128. But I've also got an Atari 800 & an 800xl w/512k & pokey/gumby.

 

In a nut shell, both platforms had their advantages and disadvantages. I personaly prefer the C-64/128 when it comes to programming, but only because that is what I learned on, and know.

 

However, I always liked some of the features Atari's had. First was the larger color pallet. But the color cells tended to be blocky. Regardless, viewing a .GIF on an Atari 800 looked much better then on a C-64. Althou with the IFLI modes on the CBM, this isn't as valid a point anymore.

 

Another thing I always liked about the Atari was how easy it was to do digitized sound captures. Basicly just plug a radio or something into the joystick port, and read the paddle lines. Atari was fast enough to make this effective, in basic no-less. This was simply not possible on the C64. I tried. Digitizing on the CBM required assembly language and external hardware. Not that that was a bad thing. It's fun building hardware. I built a few. Including a stereo one and wrote my own software to work with my stereo sid. It was pretty sweet. Not to mention that hardware sampled sound sounded better then atari paddle port samples. But again, on the other hand, Atari tended to have much longer samples then the C64/128 could effectively deal with, at least as far as memory resident samples go. Thou I did write another bit of code to work with my 2meg REU, and could record/play directly to it. Was able to get over 4 minutes of, acceptable for the time, quality. Saving & loading those were a pain in the butt thou. I was always tempted to re-write the code to play/record directly to a 1581 drive, since it was capable of 8k/second sustained transfer rates, which would have been enough. But I went PC around that time and never got around to it.

 

Maybe one day I'll get around to it.

[Fletch]

I am a tad bias since I owned Atari's from the 400 through the Falcon, but I always prefered Atari's quality (Warner Days) over CBM. The 800 is literally built like a tank. The only reason the 800XL was produced IMHO was to try to fight CBM's cheap hardware.

 

CBM's version of many games tended to be smoother in appearance, but slower in game play as far as I could tell at the time. My neighbor two doors down had a 64 and we would often play the same game's on each machine.

 

One example was Summer Games. The Commodore version was surely prettier, but the Atari version had much more responsive game play. Plus the Lucasarts games seemed better on the Atari.

 

Truth be told they were both very nice machines. I "upgraded" to my 400 from the 2600 so Atari already had me hooked.

 

I miss those days.

 

Pete

[Heaven/TQA]

as a marketing guy it is really interested for which RRP the hardware/software was sold. maybe you can search into your memories:

 

atari/c64/spectrum/armstrad (germany, france, uk, us)?

 

- 1983

- 1984

- 1985

- 1986

- 1987

 

f.e. amstrad cpc 464, 400, 800, 800xl, c64 standard mode, spectrum 48k

 

so that we cover the "main stream" consumer lines... it would be interesting... i find it quite a huge span if spectrum was more than 100 pounds cheaper...that's like ps2 is 100 cheaper than xbox...

 

was the speccy sold in states as well??? i can not believe that the americans would loved that small rubber thingy...

 

hve

[Heaven/TQA]

as a marketing guy it is really interested for which RRP the hardware/software was sold. maybe you can search into your memories:

 

atari/c64/spectrum/armstrad (germany, france, uk, us)?

 

- 1983

- 1984

- 1985

- 1986

- 1987

 

f.e. amstrad cpc 464, 400, 800, 800xl, c64 standard mode, spectrum 48k

 

so that we cover the "main stream" consumer lines... it would be interesting... i find it quite a huge span if spectrum was more than 100 pounds cheaper...that's like ps2 is 100 cheaper than xbox...

 

was the speccy sold in states as well??? i can not believe that the americans would loved that small rubber thingy...

 

hve

[Nukey Shay]

Dunno...they really didn't market it much. Not compared to heavy-hitters like Apple, Atari, Commodore, heck...even the Timex Sinclair.

[TMR]

From what i've been told, the Timex Sinclair machines were a little more powerful than the stock rubberkeys and there's even a screen mode with 8x1 pixel attribute cells, i believe.

[Vigo]

Some things about Commodore to be corrected:

 

The A1200 was a good machine but suffered like the old Atari 1200XL had - new machine, new design....scary. Plus there were the compatability problems with older software.

 

In fact, the A1200 was one of the best Amigas Commodore put out. It sold very well, had vastly enhanced graphics, a superb OS and was very well expandable. Hardly comparable to a 1200XL, which relied on the same chipset as the old Ataris. Software developers were quickly developing games for the new chipset, and a whole bunch of great hardware was released for the system (Turboboards, PCI boards, Soundcards, etc). Ever played Quake 2 on a A1200/040/603e/166Mhz/128MB ram/Voodoo3/SB128PCI ?

 

The CD32 was another flop but a great machine.

 

WRONG! The CD32 was actually a big seller in 1993 (especially in the UK), and could have saved Commodore if they had been able to produce more machines. But Commodore just didn´t live enough to really push out the CD32. Games like Microcosm showed that developers really believed in the system, but it was already too late...