Atari 800 vs C64

[Sharky]

I remember the days when my Dad had an Atari 400/800 and I owned a Commodore 64 and of course we always used to argue which one was better.

 

Of course I played his Atari 8bit computer tonnes of times. And one thing in common we both had 64K.

 

I noticed in the 80s Atari and C64 seemed to compete against each other. Me and my dad both had our versions of Mule, Ghostbusters, Boulderdash. Popeye, Conan, Mercenary, Ultima, Bruce Lee etc. etc.

 

One thing I felt most of those games were actually better on the Atari than the C64 and then again some were better on the C64.

 

Of course I saw both computers had there limitations in their own ways.

Such as the Atari 800 seemed it could display more colours and the C64 seemed to have an the edge over its music. But than again the Atari 800 felt a little faster than the C64.

 

But when the 90s started, it felt like the Atari 800 was being left behind as new games kept coming for the C64 and no Atari 800 versions. Games such as Power Drift, Lemmings, Flimbos Quest, etc. It seems to compete with the Amiga instead.

 

So the question is that makes me wonder. If both 8bit computers that were roughly the same age, why did the Atari 8bit computer commerically die earlier?

 

Like ive recently checked out Atari's Numen demo, and Ive seen stunning effects than just can't be done as good on a C64. (or at all)

And I also prefer to listen to Atari 8bit music than C64 music. It seems to have a great soundchip than most ppl think.

[emkay]

You have to realize, that the concept of the ATARI itself is more than 5 years older then the C64.

In a Computer-Age it means generations. So, the ATARI has some handycaps belonging to the C64. It means the directly programmable Hi-Res Color Mode and the SID-Chip with his documented features, with that musicians easylie could make music....

But... there are features that are never used on the XL/XE, because of the marketing belonging ATARI itself. NUMEN is the graphical Demonstration. Raster Music Tracker shows the abilities of the POKEY that are ... maybe not better... but more flexible....

So, you may use musix like on AMIGA, but you may never make a Song with three SID-Channels on the XL/XE. But with a SID-Channel you may not be able to create realistic sounding Instruments like with the POKEY.

 

See the reason.... The technique of the ATARI is about 5 years older than any other known 64K/8-Bit Homecomputers, but it takes competition to ST and AMIGA...in some way...

[Sharky]

You have to realize, that the concept of the  ATARI itself is more than 5 years older then the C64.  

In a Computer-Age it means generations. So, the ATARI has some handycaps belonging to the C64. It means the directly programmable Hi-Res Color Mode and the SID-Chip with his documented features, with that musicians easylie could make music....

But... there are features that are never used on the XL/XE, because of the marketing belonging ATARI itself.  NUMEN is the graphical Demonstration. Raster Music Tracker shows the abilities of the POKEY that are ... maybe not better... but more flexible....  

So, you may use musix like on AMIGA, but you may never make a Song with three SID-Channels on the XL/XE. But with a SID-Channel you may  not be able to create realistic sounding Instruments like with the POKEY.

 

See the reason.... The technique of the  ATARI is about 5 years older  than any other known 64K/8-Bit Homecomputers, but it takes competition to ST and AMIGA...in some way...

 

I seem to get it now i've just read up on it in www.old-computers.com.

 

My dads first Atari looked exactly like this:

 

Then later he upgraded it to one of these which case look a lot nicer than a C64s :

 

Old-Computers says the start of production for these Atari series began in 1979 (1982 for C64).

 

So now I could say that the Atari 8bits commerically lasted just as long or more as the C64 did.

 

But my dad finally sold his last Atari 8bit and replaced it with an Amiga 500 and I was jealous as hell (There was no competion anymore as I still had my old C64).

 

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[Nukey Shay]

Not really...since the Apple II series was older than Atari (and still had two more generations of life left at the time of the market crash...the newly-released IIc and the IIgs)...and had a problematic graphic system to boot. I think that it was more due to market uncertianty. People didn't know what direction that Atari was taking its 8-bit line...and a good share of the community felt that they were abandoned by the company, especially after the release of the ST line. When the 130XE rolled out, the damage had already been done...and third-party software houses were starting to distrust the remainder due to piracy (which wasn't as large as the Commodore or Apple ring, but being a higher percentage since it's popularity had already slipped). As the higher-end PC-clone computers were gaining popularity due to rapidly reduced costs, 8-bit computers were left in their wake (though the 64 And AppleII hung on for quite a bit longer since they both had stronger footholds...Apple for it's Educational market, and the 64 for the large home market). At least that is how I interpreted it.

[Big Player]

Victoria, your father had an 800XL. That was my first computer as well.

 

I was always pissed that the Atari 8-bits were slighted by game devlopers who favored the C64. It was a more popular computer, but some companies like Electronic Arts didn't even want to port their C64 games to the 8-bits.

 

From what I've read in this forum, the C64 can't do the effects in Rescue on Fractlus(sp).

[TMR]

I was always pissed that the Atari 8-bits were slighted by game devlopers who favored the C64.  It was a more popular computer, but some companies like Electronic Arts didn't even want to port their C64 games to the 8-bits.

 

i can't comment on markets outside the U.K. but the Atari 8bits here were more of a niche than anything else and i think the stock dumping exercise that happened around the mid 1980s didn't help the Atari's image, Dixons shifting tape based 800XLs for £70 (that's where mine came from) probably hurt a lot.

 

Mastertronic had some coverage as did Firebird and Zeppelin and of course English chucked out a few corkers, but the "mainstream" companies like Ocean and U.S. Gold (the ones generating the most attention and indeed revenue with licenced titles) didn't seem to consider the Atari viable and their support was crucial to the 11 year lifespan of the C64. Of the two software shops where i lived during the mid 1980s, one had a shelf of Atari titles (compared to 12 for the C64 and as many for the Spectrum and Amstrad) and the other offered no support at all.

 

The C64 also had an advantage in that it's very easy to code a quick game; assign two sprites to the player, six to the nasties, bung in a scrolling background and pass it on to marketing; look how much more work Zybex is doing on the Atari compared to the C64.

[emkay]

The C64 also had an advantage in that it's very easy to code a quick game; assign two sprites to the player, six to the nasties, bung in a scrolling background and pass it on to marketing; look how much more work Zybex is doing on the Atari compared to the C64.

 

 

You are right. But it was a big failure of the Softwarehouses, not to write "Filter-Drivers for Graphics & Sound" for the XL. Once written, all further Games would have been easier to be built on the ATARI.

[TMR]

You are right. But it was a big failure of the Softwarehouses, not to write "Filter-Drivers for Graphics & Sound" for the XL. Once written,  all further Games would have been easier to be built on the ATARI.

 

It's not really the fault of the companies (at least not most of the time) because the majority of them were just publishers and the actual game code was written by freelancers or contracted coders; they're the people responsible for the development of the projects and in a lot of cases a different team would be hired for each version of a converted game. Even between the various Commodore machines there were multiple teams at work, look at Commando on the C64 and C16 for a very noticeable difference (then look at the homebrew Plus/4 version to see how it should be done!).

 

i'm not sure what you mean by "filter drivers" but i assume you're talking about something to patch C64 code to run on an Atari? If so, that's a total non-starter, the hardware of the two machines is just so different it's not viable without a large amount of human intervention and there are a lot of situations where the C64 leans heavily on it's hardware and the Atari just can't match it exactly. In these cases concessions are made, Zybex running in 160 by 96 rather than 160 by 192 or the enemies being a single colour in Ninja Commando for example.

 

On the other hand, that diversity has it's advantages; look at the Amstrad CPC games where a large proportion were just dumped over from the Spectrum to the 320x200 mode of the CPC and had their colours played with a bit. Those games were written to fit a lowest common denominator in the same way that C64 and Atari games would have to be written with conversion in mind; C64 games would have lost colour scrolling and flexibility, Atari games would have lost colours in a different way and everything would be three colour wash, sprites always 8 by 16 pixels and unless the designers were damned good, would play like a housebrick.

 

It's a balancing act that publishers had to play, either lose features to make conversions possible or write good software that used the best of each machine. Although it didn't help the Atari (and there were other reasons for the machine's decline) the companies chose the latter path and some of the software that was released was truly exceptional.

[Nukey Shay]

As far as conversions are concerned, I think that Br0derBund said it best...that they would start with the AppleII version of a game and work from that (since both the C64 and Atari's graphics and sound were cake). Just a sidenote, but I did peek under the hood of the game Space Shuttle on three different platforms (the 2600, 800, and C64). Aside from a very basic skeleton of just some of the routines, the programs are almost complete rewrites from one another (enough of a difference that the coding similarities could have been just coincidence). I was just lucky enough that the particular routines that I hacked into just happened to be almost identical between them

[TMR]

As far as conversions are concerned, I think that Br0derBund said it best...that they would start with the AppleII version of a game and work from that (since both the C64 and Atari's graphics and sound were cake).

 

That's a shame really, because any game built like that doesn't take advantage of the host machines special features...

[Sharky]

As I see as reading from TMR and Nukey Shay conversations that it was a lot more difficult to code on the Atari 8bit than the C64.

 

That probably explains why some classics of the 80s on the C64 -

Commando, Ghost'n'Goblins, Impossible Mission, etc never made it to the Atari 800.

 

Which i thought was a shame...

[Shannon]

I think that emkay was saying that if the developers would have created in-house graphic/sound tools, or subroutines (drivers) then development on the 8-bit would have been alot better and more uniform.

 

But as was pointed out from someone else. Most games where designed by completely seperate groups. I doubt the concept of game houses/project development management existed back then like it does today. Where a programmer could fall back on "in-house" software/routines.

 

I'd be willing alot of it had to do with uncertainty about atari's future, as well as the ease of programming the C64. It was pretty easy for someone to pick up a C64 and a couple books and start cranking away. The atari required a little more intimate knowledge of the hardware to get something equivalent without the same amount of research.

[TMR]

But as was pointed out from someone else.  Most games where designed by completely seperate groups.  I doubt the concept of game houses/project development management existed back then like it does today.  Where a programmer could fall back on "in-house" software/routines.

 

Most of the development teams were organised around the same structure but things were far more loose; i had the good fortune to watch the game Thrust being converted to the C16, apart from the base maths and the graphics, very little of the original game made the transition. 8bit programmers had their peers to fall back on, techniques were discussed more openly than they are today and Andrew Braybrook's diary in Zzap! 64 for Morpheus mentions his conversations with Gary Liddon (amongst others) regarding sprite multiplex routines.

 

It was pretty easy for someone to pick up a C64 and a couple books and start cranking away.  The atari required a little more intimate knowledge of the hardware to get something equivalent without the same amount of research.

 

i wouldn't say the C64 was that easy and both platforms need a reasonable knowledge of what the machine is up to; the video system has to be learnt, the C64 has raster interrupts to get the gist of whilst the Atari has the DLI, sprites and players work in different ways and as for the SID chip... To get the most out of either machine needs a lot of specialist knowledge and some techniques that aren't easily transferrable.

[Sheddy]

how ever much of an Atari fan you are, you've got to admire the C64 for its sprites (sooo much better than player/missiles), SID for music and the color ram on the "character" modes.

[Nukey Shay]

Being a cheater, I like it for the system-freezing cartridges (like Final Cart 3) that were made. Not aware of any cartridges for the Atari that give you the ability to "break out of" any commercial program.

And for games that were never released for Atari, of course.

[Dantaipan]

Too me, the C=64 was superior not for technical reasons but because of its massive install base. When I was a kid almost everyone I knew had a C=64 with a big box of pirated floppies sitting beside it. Sure it may have been "wrong" but with so many people to trade with, the C=64 user was able to play nearly every game created for it.

[Goochman]

Being a cheater, I like it for the system-freezing cartridges (like Final Cart 3) that were made.  Not aware of any cartridges for the Atari that give you the ability to "break out of" any commercial program.

And for games that were never released for Atari, of course.

 

The Atari series had something called OmniView which allowed halting o fthe CPU to see whats going and and tinker with protection schemes.

[Nukey Shay]

Interesting...I thought that only added 80-columns (the characters being 4 pixels across Vs. the normal 8 ).

 

I wannit

[Lord-Chaos]

Being a cheater, I like it for the system-freezing cartridges (like Final Cart 3) that were made.  Not aware of any cartridges for the Atari that give you the ability to "break out of" any commercial program.

And for games that were never released for Atari, of course.

 

There was the Turbo Freezer , but it was made in Germany and I don´t know if it was distributed outside of Europe.

 

But with this hardware , it was easy to cheat or to make copies of games etc.

 

It´s quite rare now and expensive on ebay (ebay.de).

 

There were far more freezer carts on the C64 (several Action Replay versions, several Final Cartridge versions , Nordic Power , Magic Formel etc. etc.)

 

Thimo

[t.skid]

 

There were far more freezer carts on the C64 (several Action Replay versions, several Final Cartridge versions , Nordic Power , Magic Formel etc. etc.)  

 

Thimo

 

I remember the "Isepic cartridge", with a switch to 'freeze' the memory and save it to disk. IIRC, also SpeedDos have a function like that (but I could be wrong, lot of time passed).

[t.skid]

i can't comment on markets outside the U.K. but the Atari 8bits here were more of a niche than anything else and i think the stock dumping exercise that happened around the mid 1980s didn't help the Atari's image, Dixons shifting tape based 800XLs for £70 (that's where mine came from) probably hurt a lot.

 

It's the same situation of Italy: few sell of Atari 8-bit, and poor support.

[TMR]

 

There were far more freezer carts on the C64 (several Action Replay versions, several Final Cartridge versions , Nordic Power , Magic Formel etc. etc.)  

 

Thimo

 

I remember the "Isepic cartridge", with a switch to 'freeze' the memory and save it to disk. IIRC, also SpeedDos have a function like that (but I could be wrong, lot of time passed).

 

The Action Replay (V6 Pro was the final official version), Final Cartridge (made it to V3) and Expert Cartridge (V4) are all capable of freezing into a game, editing the memory with a full memory monitor, crunching and saving a single file to disk and sundry other features. The Action Replay considerably enhances Commodore BASIC, has sprite and bitmap rippers, cheat finder, hardware collision disable and an excellent monitor from BASIC or the freezer.

 

Even the emulator i use runs with a virtual Action Replay 6. =-)

[AtariDude]

Is it me or has the argument over which is better : Atari or the C64 been going on forever?

 

The Commodore was a nice machine and since Commodore bought their own CMOS company, it was able to make it cheaper which helped.

 

I never owned a Commodore but I had a few friends who did. It had some good games but since I had an Atari 800XL (later 130XE) I did not dwell on playing with the Commodore as much as I did playing with my Atari 800XL.

[Lord-Chaos]

how ever much of an Atari fan you are, you've got to admire the C64 for its sprites (sooo much better than player/missiles), SID for music and the color ram on the "character" modes.

 

I don´t understand why ATARI did not improve the P/M graphics in the XL models - more multicolor players - something like the AMIGA´s sprites (they are quite similar to ATARI´s players).

 

But P/M graphics isn´t really bad , it´s only a problem to convert games from other systems (C64,NES,Sega Master...) - better than no sprites at all (as Spectrum or Amstrad).

 

Thimo

[Shannon]

Most of the development teams were organised around the same structure but things were far more loose; i had the good fortune to watch the game Thrust being converted to the C16, apart from the base maths and the graphics, very little of the original game made the transition.  8bit programmers had their peers to fall back on, techniques were discussed more openly than they are today and Andrew Braybrook's diary in Zzap! 64 for Morpheus mentions his conversations with Gary Liddon (amongst others) regarding sprite multiplex routines.

 

Yeah they even talked about different techniques in the magazines available in those days. That's how I learned alot of what I knew.

 

i wouldn't say the C64 was that easy and both platforms need a reasonable knowledge of what the machine is up to; the video system has to be learnt, the C64 has raster interrupts to get the gist of whilst the Atari has the DLI, sprites and players work in different ways and as for the SID chip...  To get the most out of either machine needs a lot of specialist knowledge and some techniques that aren't easily transferrable.

 

Yeah but those are more "advanced techniquest", but if I remember the C64 basic had more COMMANDS to create/control sprites and music then Atari Basic did. So manipulating sprites and sound on the atari was harder for a newcomer.