How powerful was the Creativision?

[Jakandsig]

I hear the the Creativision was released ahead of its time. With power rivaling systems to even the 7800 days. Although having owned one before it broke ost of its games are either "unique" clones or original titles instead of arcade port rights of popular games, it has an interesting library of games.

 

From the design it seems like it's a colecovision, but when you see the games in action...

[+Gemintronic]

Explain what you mean by "power" padawan.

[carlsson]

See also this thread: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/217203-creativision-1981-colecovision-1982-sg-1000-1983/

 

I don't know the 7800 enough to tell how they compare, but the Creativision is a VDP based system like Colecovision etc, powered by a 2 MHz 6502. Some claim it is more capable than a 4 MHz Z80, others say the opposite. In 1981, it probably looked impressive in the markets it was released.

 

Dunno about the unique library of games though. Almost all are clones of various other games, sometimes with different scenarios/graphics to not appear like blueprint copies:

 

Air/Sea Attack: pretty much a standard submarine game

Astro Pinball: ok pinball game for being 1982

Auto Chase: Rally-X

Chopper Rescue: quite similar to Zaxxon

Crazy Chicky: reversed Pac-Man

Deep Sea Adventure & Planet Defender: same Defender game, different graphics

Locomotive: Burger Time

Mouse Puzzle: Loco-Motion/Guttang Guttong/Happy Trails

Police Jump: Variation on the Donkey Kong theme

Soccer: rather awful soccer/football game

Sonic Invader: Space Invaders

Stone Age: Pengo, more or less

Tank Attack: tanks

Tennis: uh, apparently a tennis game

 

Of course this kind of comparison can go for just about every console and computer of its time. Truly original games were few and far between, but despite I love the Creativision as a system, I can't agree that its original game library is full of original games. I can go with unique clones of some of the games, like instead of putting together hamburgers you put together locomotives, or that Police Jump has mechanics and levels that are not straight copies from Donkey Kong, just similar enough to understand what the inspiration was.

[CatPix]

By looking at the tech specs, I see nothing really outstanding for the time. In fact, it uses the same display chip than the Colecovision, but with half the VRAM.

Maaaybe tho the 6502 added more power than a Z80 can.

 

Especially if the games make use of the VRAM.

 

Why is that? Well at the time, there was two kinds of RAM : expensive one, that could be read by the CPU at boot. And cheap one, that could NOT be read by the CPU at boot.

 

This is why the Radofin 1292 APVS doesn't display anything at boot : the avaible RAM (76 bits, or 82 acording to various sources) is just here to launch a code that say "go load all the game data in the VRAM after RESET"

 

The Creativision and Colecovision used the same idea. If you wanna make a poferful system, you need RAM. But the more RAM you add, the more it cost.

Why, then, let's add a ridiculous amount of inexpensive VRAM that programmers will used for game logic!

The thing is that as the CPU cannot access the VRAM directly, it take more time to use and is also more complex to program.

In here, the CPU can make a difference. A Z80 is fast but have "less" build-in instructions. The 6502 have more build-in instructions, which, when used well, can make complex things faster to execute.

[The Usotsuki]

Isn't the CreatiVision basically just a ColecoVision with a 1.79 MHz 6502 (like the Atari 400 and similar to the NES) instead of a 3.58 MHz Z80?

[gamecat80]

Isn't the CreatiVision basically just a ColecoVision with a 1.79 MHz 6502 (like the Atari 400 and similar to the NES) instead of a 3.58 MHz Z80?

 

Yeah, the CreatiVision seems to be more-or-less a ColecoVision with a 6502 CPU. The controllers together make a small QWERTY keyboard. So it is a sort of console-computer.

[The Usotsuki]

So I wonder - as prelude to something else I'd like to do involving a 6502 and a TMS9918 - how feasible it would be to port games over from the various TMS9918/Z80 systems to the CreatiVision.

[youki]

In here, the CPU can make a difference. A Z80 is fast but have "less" build-in instructions. The 6502 have more build-in instructions, which, when used well, can make complex things faster to execute.

 

that's the opposite in Fact 6502 have less instructions.

 

The Creativision was quite powerfull for its time. It is extremely similar to the colecovision but with a 6502. But no comparable to a 7800 .

 

Personnally i prefer 6502 than Z80 , i would love to have a 6502 on the colecovision.

 

The Creativision has an interresting software library , with good "clone" of popuplar game. I love that console.

[Rybags]

One of my mates had one - it was marketed here as the Wizard.

 

The built in Basic had weaknesses like no USR or SYS function despite allowing POKE/PEEK. From memory it was also incredibly slow and somewhat buggy. The keyboard provided by storing the joysticks atop the machine was a pain, the Atari 400 one luxurious by comparison.

 

The games didn't really impress - both cartridges and tape loaded games were kinda weak even compared to the 2600.

 

Looking at the specs though, the end result was less than the sum of it's parts. Classic example of building a reasonable piece of hardware that was totally let down by a poor software collection, little after-market support and half-baked OS/Basic.

[Jess Ragan]

I've played only a few CreatiVision games on an emulator, but was not impressed with what I saw. The games look very rough, and feel very derivative. Despite the system's title, none of the games I played struck me as very creative. It's in sharp contrast to the Odyssey2, which had woeful hardware but imaginative twists on familiar themes. A Pac-Man clone where the dots run away from you? Who comes up with this stuff?

[JamesD]

I'm not familiar with programming the VDP but when you talk about 6502 vs Z80 at the mentioned speeds... it depends.
The 6502 should be able to push individual bytes for stuff calculated on the fly to the VDP faster than the Z80 but the Z80 can transfer blocks of data with individual instructions to the VDP *IF* the interface is designed properly.

So what does that mean? Sending sprite data or character sets to the VDP should be faster on the Z80.
If you are doing a lot of byte manipulation such as emulating a 64 character per line screen in bitmap mode the 6502 should be able to do it faster.

This is also dependent on how fast the VDP can accept data. If the VDP can't accept data as fast as either CPU can deliver it then it may not matter much.
Then it comes down to which CPU is faster for other things and that was hashed out in the 6502 vs Z80 thread (or was it Z80 vs 6502?).
And again, I believe I said it depends on what you are doing.

[gamecat80]

The CreatiVision was definitely powerful/advanced for it's time. The ColecoVision was powerful and advanced for it's time, and it uses the same video and audio chips. The "simple", "rough" games on the CreatiVision were still much higher-res than any 2600 or Intv game. Sound is better, too.

 

The games may seem "simple" or "rough" on the CreatiVision, but there is a certain "charm" to them, imo. I'm guessing the system wasn't on the market very long. Only like 25-30 games for it. The CreatiVision was definitely capable of much more. Heck, the ColecoVision was capable of more back in the day. 2-3 years on the market isn't long enough to tap into the full potential of ANY system.

Edited December 15, 2013 by gamecat80

[Osgeld]

there was the apple II arcade board, which was a TMS video and a AY audio that was connected though the bus to the 6502 CPU, that would be an easy port to port, but hardly anything took advantage of it, and it was not a common thing.

[The Usotsuki]

Yeah. And I was trying to write an emulator for it, but I couldn't get the TMS9918 emulation to work. :/

[JamesD]

...

 

The Creativision and Colecovision used the same idea. If you wanna make a poferful system, you need RAM. But the more RAM you add, the more it cost.

Why, then, let's add a ridiculous amount of inexpensive VRAM that programmers will used for game logic!

The thing is that as the CPU cannot access the VRAM directly, it take more time to use and is also more complex to program.

In here, the CPU can make a difference. A Z80 is fast but have "less" build-in instructions. The 6502 have more build-in instructions, which, when used well, can make complex things faster to execute.

See the TI-99 design to see the most ridiculous implementation of more VRAM with little system RAM ever created. 256 bytes of "scratchpad" RAM.

 

What the heck is a "build-in instruction"? All instructions are built in with both CPUs and the Z80 actually has more registers to hold data internally.

 

[The Usotsuki]

See the TI-99 design to see the most ridiculous implementation of more VRAM with little system RAM ever created. 256 bytes of "scratchpad" RAM.

And I think that more or less, the CreatiVision did the same thing, although not quite so hamstrung?

[JamesD]

And I think that more or less, the CreatiVision did the same thing, although not quite so hamstrung?

I think it at least had 1K. You aren't going to fit a large RPG dataset keeping track of objects in a maze in there but typical arcade games from the 70's and early 80's would probably work.

Keeping VDP memory mirrored in CPU RAM for higher speed manipulation would certainly be out of the question so my text example might not be appropriate.

It probably should have had at least 4K.

 

The computer version of the machine (Laser 2001?) came with 32K if I remember right. That would have been pretty decent.

[carlsson]

AFAIK, both Creativision and Colecovision have 1K RAM + 16K VRAM. The Colecovision has a bigger BIOS ROM though, 8K compared to only 2K of BIOS in the Creativision. Regarding the Laser 2001, also sold as Salora Manager in Finland as well as by Sanyo in some markets, it has 32K RAM but then again you'd better compare it to e.g. a MSX computer for which 32K was quite the norm. Also the computer version was released in about 1984, by which the VDP + PSG setup rather was mainstream.

 

By the way, 25-30 games would include a lot of type-in BASIC games for the Creativision. Due to the fact BASIC programs are stored in VRAM, they may run a bit slow and only support text based graphics (redefinable characters) but no sprites. It pretty much limits what you could do. Also I think quite a big portion of that 1K RAM is used by BASIC internals so not a lot of room for own machine code routines if there was a way to call those.

 

No matter how advanced or not it was, I think the main feat was to make an affordable console with these specs in 1981 (*). As suggested on the CreatiVEmu site, VTech managed to sell the Creativision for less than what a 2600 or Intellivision cost at the time. Of course utilizing low wage labour helps keeping the costs down, and perhaps it shows in the games.

 

Also, when it comes to sound the Intellivision has an AY-3-891X while the Creativision (and Colecovision) has a SN76489. I would consider those two quite equal, perhaps the AY even is more advanced so in pure musical terms at least the Intellivision should easily hold up to those two newer consoles, the Atari 2600 not quite as musical.

 

(*) Or perhaps it didn't hit the market until early 1982, so rather about 6 months advantage over the Colecovision.

Edited December 16, 2013 by carlsson

[JamesD]

AFAIK, both Creativision and Colecovision have 1K RAM + 16K VRAM. The Colecovision has a bigger BIOS ROM though, 8K compared to only 2K of BIOS in the Creativision. Regarding the Laser 2001, also sold as Salora Manager in Finland as well as by Sanyo in some markets, it has 32K RAM but then again you'd better compare it to e.g. a MSX computer for which 32K was quite the norm. Also the computer version was released in about 1984, by which the VDP + PSG setup rather was mainstream.

 

By the way, 25-30 games would include a lot of type-in BASIC games for the Creativision. Due to the fact BASIC programs are stored in VRAM, they may run a bit slow and only support text based graphics (redefinable characters) but no sprites. It pretty much limits what you could do. Also I think quite a big portion of that 1K RAM is used by BASIC internals so not a lot of room for own machine code routines if there was a way to call those.

 

No matter how advanced or not it was, I think the main feat was to make an affordable console with these specs in 1981 (*). As suggested on the CreatiVEmu site, VTech managed to sell the Creativision for less than what a 2600 or Intellivision cost at the time. Of course utilizing low wage labour helps keeping the costs down, and perhaps it shows in the games.

 

Also, when it comes to sound the Intellivision has an AY-3-891X while the Creativision (and Colecovision) has a SN76489. I would consider those two quite equal, perhaps the AY even is more advanced so in pure musical terms at least the Intellivision should easily hold up to those two newer consoles, the Atari 2600 not quite as musical.

 

(*) Or perhaps it didn't hit the market until early 1982, so rather about 6 months advantage over the Colecovision.

That sounds like a pretty accurate assessment.

For Microsoft BASIC on the 6502 you have 256 bytes reserved for the stack and a large portion of the direct page used for BASIC's internal variables.

That leaves you with 512 bytes of RAM for basic code or variables without using VDP RAM. In 1975 that might have been cool but not in the 80s.

BASIC needs at least 4K of RAM to do much of anything and going through the VDP would make this BASIC somewhere just ahead of Atari and TI for speed if I were to guess.

But given the price I'd say it wasn't bad for the time.

I'm curious what the BASIC was like. I guess I could scan the ROM image for keywords.

 

VTech was all over the place with computers in the 80's and they probably would have been better off to throw more support behind a single machine than to create a dozen.

The Laser 2001 was supposedly at CES in 1984. If that machine had hit in 81 or 82 it might have made an impact. VTEC had zero marketing in the US (worldwide?) though and that pretty much continued until the Laser 128 which had a lot of magazine ads and that Unlimited computer sold via infomercials.

[carlsson]

I don't know how familiar people are with the CreatiVEmu site, but it contains quite a lot of information including a handful programming books which would give you an insight in the syntax. See also Barry Klein's Wizzdom newsletters (Fanzines).

 

http://www.madrigaldesign.it/creativemu/books.php

[JamesD]

I don't know how familiar people are with the CreatiVEmu site, but it contains quite a lot of information including a handful programming books which would give you an insight in the syntax. See also Barry Klein's Wizzdom newsletters (Fanzines).

 

http://www.madrigaldesign.it/creativemu/books.php

Actually, one of the brochures on that site listed some of the important commands. It looks like an Extended BASIC and partial ripoff of Applesoft... which was actually Microsoft BASIC but this has more commands. I'd guess the new commands take advantage of space the monitor used on the Apple II. This may be the last 6502 BASIC Microsoft produced.

 

COLOR, PLOT, HLIN, VLIN, CIRCLE, LINE, PEEK, POKE, CALL, VPEEK, VPOKE, CLOAD, CSAVE, STORE, RECALL, ABS, SGN, SQR, LOG, EXP, INT, RND, SIN, COS, TAN, ATN, LEN, STR$, VAL, LEFT$, RIGHT$, ASC, CHR$, INKEY$, HEX$, SOUND, MUSIC, SGEN, etc...

 

I don't see ELSE listed. It would have been the only 6502 Microsoft BASIC to have it if it's in there. It saves a lot of code so it would have been a smart choice.

I also see no mention of PRINT USING which was very powerful for formatting numbers and was common on TRS-80s. It saves a lot of BASIC code to do the same thing.

HLIN, VLIN, CALL and PLOT are from Applesoft I believe.

COLOR and SOUND are probably like their equivalent in Color BASIC for the CoCo.

MUSIC must be similar to the PLAY command in Extended Color BASIC for the CoCo.

SGEN must set sound registers with parameters.

STORE and RECALL... disk drive commands?

 

I see the multi-cart has a hacked version of BASIC that is supposed to be faster and a brochure lists a 16K RAM expansion for the game console.

 

*edit*

At 2MHz and with that Extended BASIC the machine would have been fairly powerful among 6502 machines.

 

Edited December 16, 2013 by JamesD

[carlsson]

I am afraid that you are mixing apples and pears now. Perhaps it is not obvious, but Creativision BASIC and Laser 2001 BASIC are two different beasts. The list of commands you mention belong to the Laser 2001 BASIC from 1983/84. That computer indeed can be fitted with a floppy disk interface, but it is not known to me how to access it, if the interface adds disk based commands.

 

Creativision BASIC contains these keywords: SQR, INT, RND, ABS, SGN, COS, SIN, EXP, TAN, LOG, LEN, STR$, VAL, ASC, CHR$, LEFT$, MID$, RIGHT$, (logical) AND, OR, NOT, CLS, PLOT, COLOR, SOUND, CHAR, JOY, DIM, STOP, END, GOTO, GOSUB, RETURN, FOR .. TO .. STEP, NEXT, REM, IF .. THEN, INPUT, PRINT, PRINT TAB, LET, DATA, READ, RESTORE, LIST, RUN, NEW, CONT, CLOAD, CSAVE, CRUN, PEEK, POKE, LPRINT, LLIST and that you halt the program with CTRL+C.

 

It raises the question why VTech had a completely different BASIC made/adapted though. It should be said that while the Laser 2001 is cartridge compatible with the Creativision, it does not read the keyboard in the same way. It means only those Creativision games/programs that use joysticks (the Laser joysticks are quite Atari compatible, although I think it only handles 8 directions as opposed to the Creativision controllers that can have up to 16 directions) can be run on a Laser 2001. It also means that the BASIC cartridge for the Creativision is useless on the Laser, it will start but you can not input any meaningful commands including those to load a Creativision BASIC program from tape. Actually I'm not even sure it would be able to understand the tape format, but perhaps it would.

 

(Yes, I've got both machines as well as Sonic Invader on Laser 2001 tape so I've been able to compare and test)

 

Also, the speed-hacked version of Creativision BASIC contains some shortcomings like a malfunctioning random number generator.

Edited December 16, 2013 by carlsson

[JamesD]

SOUND is similar to the CoCo version but lets you set 3 sound channels with a single command
CHAR lets you define a custom font character. It's a nice, simple way to do it, I just wonder if you could read the data from a file.

There definitely isn't an ELSE for the IF THEN statement. Too bad, that would have easily made it the best Microsoft BASIC for the 6502 prior to the Plus/4 or C128.
INKEY$ also appears to be absent so no catching up with TRS-80 versions there either.
No TIMER like Extended Color BASIC for the CoCo.

The keyword table appears to be in a different format than Z80 versions. Words like THEN that must follow another keyword on the same line aren't in the token table and I couldn't find the ASCII text anywhere in the ROM. Inline code? Keywords like NEXT that can be on a different line are still there.

*edit*
You last post didn't show up until after I posted this so I missed your comments on BASIC
I was looking through the Creativision ROM here so that would explain the differences VS Microsoft BASIC

Edited December 16, 2013 by JamesD

[gamecat80]

 

Also, when it comes to sound the Intellivision has an AY-3-891X while the Creativision (and Colecovision) has a SN76489. I would consider those two quite equal, perhaps the AY even is more advanced so in pure musical terms at least the Intellivision should easily hold up to those two newer consoles, the Atari 2600 not quite as musical.

 

 

It also depends on how the console/system makes use of it's sound chip and how well-programmed it is.

I like the Intellivision and many of it's games have good sound, but I think the ColecoVision makes better use of it's sound chip.

Compare games like Pitfall!, Carnival, Frogger or most any game on both systems -- they sound (and look) better on the ColecoVision. And some games on the ColecoVision like Rock N Rope and Frenzy have really good music/sfx I own both the Intellivision (models 1 & 2) and a ColecoVision, but not a CreatiVision.

I'd imagine the CreatiVision to behave similarly since it uses the same sound and graphics chips as the ColecoVision. The videos I've seen of the CreatiVision have good (albeit "simple") sound at least as capable as the Intellivision.

[carlsson]

Ok, I haven't really played a lot of Intellivision games, but I'd suppose the programming abilities improved over the years, as I reckon it was on the market for longer than both CV systems. For that matter, I ported the basics (*) of my music player from VIC-20 to CreatiVision in a matter of a few days, just changing the frequency tables and implementing the LFSR bass (which it turned out is not as important since the SN76489 appears to be driven by the 2 MHz and thus generates lower frequencies for the square waves than what the ColecoVision does?).

 

(*) Excluding vibrato, as I didn't yet wrap my head around how to interpolate between two 12 bit values stored as 8+4 bits in the frequency table. It has been done to death on other systems, so it isn't rocket science math. Arpeggios are easier.