Atari ST vs. Apple IIgs

[BillyHW]

The Genesis version looks like it might be closer than the Amiga one, sound is off on both, Amiga seems to be using samples from the arcade YM2151 to some extent and genesis is using a rather mediocre sound engine. (music could be almost identical to arcade as the sound chip has 6 4-op FM channels to the Arcade's 8 plus the 3 sq wave+noise channels of the PSG to sumpliment the FM -which should be fine to make up the 2 missing channels -some of the arcade's sounds are sq waves anyway)

 

(Genesis)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCrcJQ-9-xk (Amiga)

(Arcade)

 

Is that seriously all the levels that Marble Madness has?

 

Also not sure what the point of a home version is. This is a game that needs to be played on a trackball. (Was there a trackball available for the Amiga that was compatible with the game?)

[Muzz73]

Hang on... as a former IIgs guy (yes, I loved it, but liked my ST's better), I need to chime in on the old argument about pricing and bang-for-your-buck. The IIgs might have been listed as having a $999 starting price, but you have to remember that Apple only sold you a CPU. If you wanted ANYTHING to go with it (monitor, disk drives, or even a keyboard & mouse), you had to pay separately for it.

 

Everyone I knew that had the typical IIgs setup with an AppleColor RGB monitor, one 3.5" 800K FDD, one 5.25" 140K FDD, basic ADB keyboard, ADB mouse and 256K, 512K or 1.25MB (depending on when you bought it) paid $2,300 for their system and that didn't even include a crappy Imagewriter II printer, a SCSI card or even an internal fan (yes, the fan was extra/optional).

 

If someone spent $2,300 on an Amiga or Mega STE at that time, the IIgs would only have its sound hardware to fall back on and, as previously mentioned, because of the processor Apple used, the 8-bit bus and lack of software support, even the Ensoniq chip was crippled.

 

I need some help on something... I had always thought that the Ensoniq chip was 32 voices, 4 channels. I know that the IIgs' bus couldn't support that, so they paired the oscillators and made 16 voices, one of which was reserved for the system beep (what a waste), giving it 15 usable Wavetable voices for synthesis, with the IIgs' mono output. So... was the chip stereo, or quadrophonic?

 

Another thing to consider; the IIgs' expansion slots were tied to the built-in hardware's functionality, so if you wanted to use bus cards, you had to go into the Control Panel and turn hardware off. It went like this...

 

Slot #0: for RAM expansion only

Slot #1: Serial printer port

Slot #2: Serial MoDem port

Slot #3: Apple ][/][+ 80 column card (most people ran their IIgs in IIe mode w/Extended 80 column support, so people often put their accelerator here)

Slot #4: Mouse card slot (also not used in IIgs mode)

Slot #5: 3.5" FDD

Slot #6: 5.25: FDD

Slot #7: Auxiliary slot, anything goes (usually a SCSI card)

 

So if you wanted to use say, slot #2 for an internal MoDem, you have to turn off the second serial port on the back, rendering it useless. If you decided to put your MoDem in slot #1 instead, it'd cost you your built-in printer port, etc.

 

The IIgs was a great idea, but it should have been a platform unto itself. The backward compatibility was both its saving grace, as well as its downfall. Like 64 mode on a C=128. They had to build in backward compatibility to make it attractive, or no one would buy the blasted things. On the other hand,, nobody programmed IIgs or C=128 software, because they could just release an Apple ][ or C=64 version, knowing that it would run on the newer machines. Catch 22.

 

Anyhow, that's what I have to throw out there right now... I've owned a IIgs, several ST's and a few Amigas (along with countless other machines) in my time and loved them all. I just found the IIgs' quirks... interesting!

[Jet-X]

Just for true comparison sake -

 

Tengen (i.e. Atari Games developed) version of Marble Madness on the Genesis (Mega Drive). Compare sound and graphics to Amiga/Genesis (EA version).

 

[atarian63]

Just for true comparison sake -

 

Tengen (i.e. Atari Games developed) version of Marble Madness on the Genesis (Mega Drive). Compare sound and graphics to Amiga/Genesis (EA version).

 

nice version, but amiga had a mouse and that short of a trackball was what was needed, really hard to play on a pad

[Jet-X]

nice version, but amiga had a mouse and that short of a trackball was what was needed, really hard to play on a pad

 

Hmmm...a pad (with a button for speed) vs. a mouse that once you reached the end of the mouse pad you had to quickly pick the mouse back up, center it, then move/roll it fast? Wash-rinse-repeat?

 

The mouse was worse than the pad IMO.

 

The Mega Drive version supports a trackball (Sports Pad)

[atarian63]

 

Hmmm...a pad (with a button for speed) vs. a mouse that once you reached the end of the mouse pad you had to quickly pick the mouse back up, center it, then move/roll it fast? Wash-rinse-repeat?

 

The mouse was worse than the pad IMO.

 

The Mega Drive version supports a trackball (Sports Pad)

Did not know the genesis supported that, kinda cool. play the amiga version, the mouse is WAY superior to the pad. much in the way a joystick is better than a pad for pacman. The videos for the amiga version do not do it justice,all of them seems jerky and slow, the amiga version is smooth and nice and better (more polished) than the genny version (though genny is nice)

[JamesD]

FWIW, I don't consider the 65816 to be 16 bit.

The 65816 may have a 16 bit ALU and is sold as a 16 bit CPU but it has an 8 bit data buss and 8 bit instructions.

For comparison, the Z80 has a 4 bit ALU, the Z180 has an 8 bit ALU and the R800 in the MSX Turbo R has a 16 bit ALU yet all three run the same instruction set... which is 8 bit. Do we consider the Z80 to be 4 bit or 8 bit?

 

For people that think it's a good idea to have a 65816 with a 16 bit data buss...

That would only be an advantage if instructions are aligned on 16 bit boundaries or if you use cache.

When writing 8 bit data to memory the CPU would have to load 16 bits, modify the required byte and then write it back to RAM.

 

The biggest gain for the 65816 would be to cache the direct page and at least 256 bytes of code. Any time this eliminates a memory hit the CPU could prefetch the next instruction or byte of data... which could eliminate a memory hit and it could prefetch again and so on.

On a 6502 you could just place the direct page RAM in the CPU.