oky2000
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Posts posted by oky2000
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9 hours ago, carlsson said:None of them really stood out IMHO. I did find that the BASIC game Tiradians was quite OK but horribly slow. If it had been rewritten in machine code and perhaps spiced up a little, it could have been a rather good Galaxian alternative.
I am not sure if Tiradians is compiled BASIC V2 or BASIC V2 with bespoke machine code, remember looking at it with others over a decade ago on Lemon64 forums possibly. The guy who wrote it also did another really good type in game but I forget the name of it now but easy enough to find on GB64. The graphics on Tiradians are better than Xerons but Xerons plays more like Galaxian I think.
I found the lack of screen height was really the issue on most. The screen height will always be a problem for a decent Galaxian clone on the C64 unless you use top and bottom borders for Score etc and player in bottom border all the time and Galaxians transitioning into the bottom border when they fly down. I think it is possible to have a Scramble 2014 quality port of Galaxian with the right talent on the project. Quality Galaxian authentic ports are tough to find on home computers (inc Amiga) in general I find, one of my all time fav' arcade games due to nostalgia though.
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On 4/22/2021 at 3:39 PM, wongojack said:This guy did a whole series A-Z where he found 10 hidden gems for EACH LETTER. It must have been a lot of work, but his videos are excellent in that I hadn't heard of at least 75% of the games he mentions. This was the first YouTube series that I've ever watched beginning to end. I even became a Patreon (also a first).
His Channel
Direct Link to A
A-Z Of Commodore 64 Hidden Gems - Letter A - YouTubeJudging by his piss poor quality control for Amiga games he highly rates I won't be bothering with that channel lol
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On 4/22/2021 at 1:45 PM, carlsson said:Actually I played several of the Galaxian type games three weeks ago. I found Xerons to be ok, but not superior. What I did notice though was that the Atarisoft versions of Galaxian for the VIC-20 and C64 are quite different on many points, not only graphics capacity. I also found that the Atari 8-bit version of Galaxian seems much more arcade like than either of the Commodore versions. With a few tweaks, some of the clones could have been better. I suppose there are a few more games in this category to evaluate, not to mention Galencia from 2017 but I focused on 80's games.
Xerons is the only one I know which has coding quality worthy of note but until Gamebase has more detailed game types to include "clone of galaxian" I'm a bit stuck unless I spend days trawling through the website. The Atarisoft version of Galaxian is pitiful on C64, looks like a Commodore 16 game (not plus/4) but Star Battle on the VIC-20 was really cool. Eagle Empire on the C64 was however an excellent clone of my fav' shmup after Galaxian came to town and left. Not really a fan of Galaga or Gaplus but I always look for a good Galaxian clone to check out on any machine I own.
Which C64 Galaxian clones did you like then?
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On 3/20/2018 at 3:33 PM, carlsson said:I wonder if there exists any person who has played through even 1/4 of the C64 games library. Lemon64 has a little over 4000 commercial games, Gamebase64 has over 25700 games of which lots are duplicates and hacks but I'm willing to think at least half of those are unique titles. Even if one only considers the smaller library, that would be 1000 games to have tried. I must admit most of the titles you have mentioned in this thread only, I have never tried and I've been a C64 gamer for 30+ years.
I have been playing probably 50 C64 games a week on average over the last two years now so I probably have videos of closer to 2000 than 1000 C64 games played on my C64 and CRT on my youtube channel lol
Mountie Mick's Death Ride is pretty fun.
Xerons (a fantastic Galaxian clone)
Scramble by Rabbit Software was the best of those clones
First Strike is a fantastic Afterburner style game (with a bit of strategy)
Most of the other gems I've found, like the remarkably playable 3D game Grand Prix Circuit (Accolade) are probably in the top 100.
A guide I like is the ZZAP!64 Top 64 games (as of April 1985 in issue 1 of ZZAP!64 where it was printed) which is a playlist I am working on specifically now. In fact most of the time I just browse through the first 2-3 years of ZZAP magazines and check out the reviews. I owned most of the best C64 games as originals and 1987/88 was a good time to leave that scene behind after the pirates had made software houses shat out any old 4 colour rubbish (done better in the past).
Generally I stick to the early to mid eighties games, saves a lot of time and wear and tear for nothing of your C64 (all my videos for the last 2 years are done on real hardware and 90% of the time on a CRT TV). I can't stand those shitty character based non Color RAM multicolor later games just so they can waste memory blocks of VIC-20 for hi-res sprite overlays and other rubbish and then use crappy Acorn Electron + 3 greyscale palette crap.
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I tried to find a video of it running on a Mega STE in 16mhz out of curiosity, no luck, but I guess it would make no difference if it is now all pushed through the blitter? I used to play it in 16mhz mode on STEem so was curious how this would run on MSTE.
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I remember there was a mono emulator on a coverdisk that used an interlace method, wouldn't mind trying that again on a real CRT TV over SCART RGB or an SC1224 I have. The Amiga hi-res has to use interlace of course like every machine with 15khz output but the ST 70hz non interlaced SM124 was pretty easy on the eyes :)
The GEM desktop was designed for mono resolution, the icons are too stretched in medium and too large in lo-res but on a hi-res screen it looks better than Windows and just as good as the original Mac OS/Lisa OS. Add a software blitter to your boot disk and anything running in mono on the ST was a really nice snappy and reliable professional environment to work in for stuff like medium level DTP and Wordprocessing.
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Really depends on the exact time of release for the pack and each game in the bundle pack relative to the date the ST bundle was launched and how well it sold. So my comments are not going to be specific to this pack.
In principle it's a great idea, it's down to the software houses not to give away their releases that still sell well long after release to new ST owners that pop up (like Dungeon Master or Defender of the Crown etc that don't age for new consumers). Activision pulled the promised Pitfall from the C64/ZX Softaid compilation and replaced it with crusty Beamrider at the last minute because they knew that was a mistake for Activision.
Problem is the knock-on effect like you say, if one software houses gives away two really great games then that initially hurts sales of well respected good selling games from all the other publishers not just that one publisher so through no fault of their own other publishers lose out on sales from new ST owners. This has a second effect on the false impression that the ST market is slowing down because the new machines are sold but there is a delay until people get bored of the bundled Power/Summer pack games buying new games at retail.
My memories are getting faint about the 80s but I am going to guess the biggest problem for the ST (and all other home computers) was the rampant piracy. My friend who got an STFM about 9 months after I got my 520STM had stacks of pirated games within weeks. After wasting money on rubbish like Deep Space and Barbarian by Psygnosis I too gave up on buying full price games due to the lack of quality getting worse due to the rampant piracy....no win scenario. The problem moved onto the Amiga and that machine rarely had an acceptably coded game (unless you had some Amstrad or Sinclair or Acorn computer before the Amiga....if you had a VCS or C64 or A8 the Amiga games were highly erratic in frame update to you most of the time!)
End of the day nobody put a gun to the publishers heads, if they had games that weren't selling and had peaked in the charts ages ago/made most of the revenue they probably ever would they can offer them in bundles. Don't forget that the bundles were there to help when Atari first had to put the price up of the 520STFM back up to 399 after it came down to 299 to make life hard for Commodore's 499+Sales tax A500 hideous machine in Summer 1987. Atari knew there were aspects of ST games that could never rival Atari 8bit/C64 games (sound and smooth scrolling) and yet they needed to tempt existing 8bit users into the 16bit marketplace (something Commodore failed at for half a decade).
Also Atari were not writing any 'killer apps' to bundle with the ST themselves, odd because Jack should have known a hell of a lot of 1983-84 C64 games sold on the back of the very cheap and very excellent [for the year] International Soccer cartridge. Kids in the EU were suckers for a computer with an excellent footy game. And the Amiga suddenly was not A1000 priced vs 520STFM prices after middle of 1987 any more and the STE was a long way off so you had to add value....and hide the first of two price hikes back up to £399 from £299 in the mid-late eighties (which for some reason Commodore didn't have to do...perhaps they had large stocks of DRAM or made them in MOS for the A500 who knows).
Summer Pack was the best I think, the one with the original International Karate not IK+ on ST.. Never had any packs, got the 520STM as soon as it came out because it was cheaper than a Commodore 128D + Mouse + GEOS and well Neochrome was brilliant and I was interested in computer graphics.....did all the sprites for Gradius and Salamander by hand on Neochrome on my ST when I got home from playing the arcade games in 1986
Ultimately software houses in the UK were mostly too greedy and too devoid of talent combined with rampant piracy this is probably the biggest reason the computers failed. Nobody should have been buying the crappy NES when for a brief period you could get an ST with Commando and Ghosts n Goblins for a bit over 100 quid more than an NES deluxe pack and those two same games...which are nothing like the arcade versions unlike the excellent ST ports. Lotus on ST came a little too late in many ways (Amiga models got cheaper, software houses abandoned the ST or did very slap-dash developments technically) but if Lotus on ST is better than 90% of Amiga racing games technically
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On 3/2/2021 at 8:13 AM, ParanoidLittleMan said:As I know STs were sold around 3 millions. Mostly in period 1985-1988 . Falcon - some 30000 only .
Indeed, most of sales was in Europe, Germany especially (from where many finished in East Eu.) .
Here to add that already in spring 1987 strong competitor arrived on market: Amiga 500. It needed some time to have richer SW choice.
I remember when the Amiga 500 came out Atari was ready with £100 price drop to £299 for the 520STFM so the A500 was ...
a) extremely ugly
b) RRP £499+VAT+£20 for RF modulator or £15 SCART RGB cable for TV at launch. (many dealers discounted the VAT off the price to be fair).
The DRAM prices went up for Atari twice in the mid-late 80s, so twice the £299 price drop had to be raised back to £399 for a while. I think the second time was when the A500 was down to 399 inc VAT sales tax. One time was due to worldwide demand rapidly exceeding supply output so Amstrad dropped their ST/Amiga 500 rival all in one PC and used their stocks of RAM for the business aimed PC1512 8086 DOS/GEM PC, the other time was due to some sort of factory fire in Asia I think.
Exact figures are not easy to find now, the only way to know as much as possible is to keep reading the news section of all magazines probably...like when Commodore announced in 1984 in the UK the C64 and VIC-20 had sold more units combined than the so called 'all conquering until late eighties' ZX Spectrum and ZX81 etc
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Was the Apple Lisa OS on ROM from the start?
I think the price of DRAMs was hugely expensive when they were working on the ST, by the time of the 520STM in Spring 1986 (launched with 1040STF at the Atari Show) the price of RAM had dropped so much and showed no signs of levelling off that JT abandoned the 130ST idea (128k RAM, GEM in ROM 130ST), and they stuck with 512kb base spec and knew the 512k DRAM requiring machines would just get cheaper and cheaper so unbundled the lot and added the modulator for composite and RF output for 399 520STM....perhaps Jack thought the C64's biggest pull in 1982/83 was the 'huge' 64k RAM for the price? I bought a 520STM in spring 1986.
As I understand it the 260ST is just a rebadged 520ST with TOS on disk...a bit like how a 256k Amiga 1000 was actually 256k+192K protected RAM for OS on disk to be loaded into (survives crashes and resets).
There was also the 260STD (changed to STF later lol) and that had the disk drive on the left hand side so it wasn't a 256k 520STFM rebadged as those have disk drive on the right hand side like all STF/STE/Falcon models. No idea about what the RAM/ROM situation was on those.
Something I can find zero info on today, but read about in the weekly magazines of the mid 1980s, was the Atari ST console variant which was meant to have games on cartridge, standard ST spec cartridge port and standard 520ST specs with 128k RAM and no keyboard and to be sold for £199. Atari did have a habit of putting out news items for things they hadn't actually started engineering or designing to gauge public reaction like their Amstrad PCW8256 rival they also said they would be putting out by 1986 (not even a prototype picture!!). Of course if you look at Ghosts n Goblins and Commando on the ST they are good enough for 16bit console games technically.
I have a 260ST in the box somewhere. I did have an original TOS Boot disk but haven't seen that for over a decade (I have a lot of stuff!!) but used to see 1985 520ST models in Laskys all the time with that iconic boot disk request screen.
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I can't find it now but the Microdeal Sampler (I think) that I bought for my old 520STM back in the mid 1980s had a DAC inside it and it could play the samples via the DAC in the sampler plugged into the cartridge slot. I think that was the only cartridge I had for my ST, never got around to buying the excellent FAST ST Basic on cartridge.
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How odd, was just reading about the 'new' Atari 600XL this morning with my coffee in an issue of TV Gamer I randomly pulled from the bookshelf.
After reading it (it's the issue with Battlezone VCS style on the cover) and getting nostalgic about those times I thought I should start using one of my most prized Atari 8bit items in my collection and do a sort of unboxing video of my lovely mint in mint box 800XL retail high street packaging....sorry I don't have an Atari 600XL.
What TV/monitor models match the styling of the 600/800XL the best would you say?
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Pencils are from about half way down page 221 onward for a few pages showing different combinations of horizontally and vertically drawn coloured pencils and different ways each machine could draw them (with and without CPU assistance etc).
(seeing as this is linked to from the thread just locked might as well tell people where they actually are in that massive thread topic)
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7 hours ago, emkay said:Might be they laugh, because there is some special development going on on the C64
"Parallaxian"
It's all in 320 resolution.
But , if you have a closer look, you see the hard limits there.
The game is scrolling horizontally and vertically parallax.
It might look good at the 1st view, but then you might recognize that it only uses 1/3rd of a Display Device. (it's about 138(276) x200 . The exact resolution is hard to determine ) .
Particular this combination of horizontal and vertical scrolling is directly programmable on the Atari.
The colorisation is rather flat. Even if you see the depth projection, the color kills it all.
On the Atari you could use different brightnee steps to enhance the depth impression.
It isn't possible to have this colorful screen in hires on the Atari, but you can do even more complex scrolling without a border , depending on the display device.
Modern C64 games are not where anyone should be looking, they are all pretty much shit sorry. Nothing wrong with the parallax on games like Nebulus bonus levels etc or even budget games like Scorpius of the mid-late 1980s. I wouldn't look much past graphics of games like R.I.S.K. on a C64 around 1987 at the latest for good pixel art talent. I think there is some V-scroll new game Zeta Wing or something, that looks well coded too for a modern game but I don't like the graphics that much, they are too 'demo scene' in palette choices.
Also early games like Chop Lifter and Bruce Lee are port jobs with no improvements included despite some being possible (sprite should be hi-res single colour ninja in Bruce Lee ditto with Zorro)
There is a demo of a game similar to Lotus II from ST/Amiga for the Commodore Plus/4...this is a better place to look for good homebrew 8bit Commodore game this century. The best of the C64 is in that past. The skill to write 1987 10/10 quality games is gone now if you ask me.
People have different ideas, look how horrible the palette of level 1 of Druid is on A8 vs C64, you can't blame a machine for lack artistic talent or coding design no matter what machine. (except Spectrum, always looks shit with color clash)
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The problem for the VIC-II chip when making much more complex and varied graphics in later arcade conversion game engines is 'everything for VIC-II 4bit address memory access must fit in 4 specific 16kb memory areas of RAM'. Sure you can have hi-res overlays on sprites, multiplex the sprites etc but these all mean more animation frames stored in the selected 16kb/64kb RAM area which means less of the 16kb VIC-II area used for sprites can accommodate the memory hungry screen bitmap modes. What happens then is they can't use an 8kb RAM multi-color bitmap mode (which has to be in the same 16kb location for tiles and sprites defined) so you end up with the utterly rubbish looking multi-color character based mode which is 1kb BUT the restrictions are horrible...3 colours fixed entire screen, 4th colour can only be Acorn BBC Micro type 6 primary colours + black + white palette option. This is why I don't like arcade conversion fixated releases of late 1980s 8bit games.
Renegade 3 is a perfect example of this as a bad idea. NES quality Sprites...5 colour chunky pixel very odd coloured backgrounds which take up 500% more of the screen visually than the sprites!
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Thanks for all the replies
Was kinda holding off trawling PDFs online etc. My internet is flaky these days (lockdowns!!) and PDFs when loaded finally in browser still need to be downloaded if need be and then the pages extracted to PNG for my video editor. I had to do this in order to get some stuff for the 1992 High Street DOS/Windows rivals at the time which was the Amstrad PC 2286 (286-16mhz, 1mb RAM, 40mb HDD, 1.44mb 3.5" FDD, VGA, Adlib sound, monitor and speakers for 799inc VAT or less off the shelf in person). Fancied trying my hand at a video to see what were the five options but needed some benchmark prices.
I seem to remember a 4mb Mega STE for £599inc VAT in Silica Shop? Silica Shop had branches in the high end London "West End" and central city areas near megastores and Harrods etc. I did actually visit one of their shops I think. Bit hazy now on memories.
I used to live about 2-3 miles from Gasteiner....I do believe I got a SCART RGB cable from them and looked at their branded external hard disk drives in the shop window.
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I did actually have a page scan of that advert I got via google searching half a decade ago but that laptop drive is long dead now sadly. Tried to find it again but I can't find any Mega STE adverts.
The reason I am interested in this is simply because I was doing some research in what families could purchase as a PC option in the High Street electronics/computer store and the sort of thing on sale that families could buy in such places was 800 bucks for a branded 286 16mhz Adlib sound original VGA (386,000 palette not 16 million) and a 40mb hard drive and 1mb RAM and some crappy dime store speakers and the usual 14" monitor to play PC games on in summer 1992.
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Like I said I wasn't sure, I read homebrew news releases now and then and it may have been for something else.
There is a Doom style game engine in the Posh demo by Checkpoint which is quite impressive indeed. I really like the music on that section of the demo. Can't remember if I tried it on STFM or STE.
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I can't remember all the official Atarisoft ST releases but I think Star Raiders was possibly the only one that I had as an original, I remember had others but they may have been from my old school friend who would pop round now and again with some crack disks to try out. Star Raiders is a strong enough game, certainly better than the hideously expensive Deep Space rubbish by Psygnosis I got very early on.
There are loads of arcade games from that early period that don't have even a homebrew ST release, like Popeye. The ST seems perfect for Popeye but STOS probably isn't up to the challenge despite the minimal graphic operations on screen and no scrolling required. I used to play arcade games and then when I got home do some pixel art in Neochrome and shovel them into STOS as simple demos...I even did some weird 5 to 1 frames per second dual layer parallax effect for Salamander in STOS...oh how naïve I was back then lol
Circa 1986 people weren't really that big on nostalgia for those old 8 bit arcade games on a commercial scale I guess.
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What's so odd about that? Who would buy Centipede for the Atari ST by Atarisoft for 20 bucks in 1986?
Only a handful of people worldwide were interested in Centipede by 1986 that's why, don't blame the god of all computer company founders for Centipede being past it's sell by date by end of 1984 even on a VIC-20 on tape for 5 bucks lol
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I know of an old port I saw half a decade ago on youtube that was not STE only as min spec, looking for something written only for the STE (possibly MSTE 16mhz) as min spec....if it exists.
My memory is for shit today playing the Russian Roulette 'trip to the shops to buy bread' bullshit of the pathetic UK government FAIL on Covid
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I think a few months ago I saw something aimed at STE users and considered improved, may have been just a demo though, which I wanted to try on my stock Mega STE 16mhz to compare with what people purchasing 286 16mhz 800 bucks multimedia PCs around that time could expect. Seen a video of Wolf on a 286 with VGA now I want to try the best coded (bespoke coded not Wolf engine simulation?) that I think I saw mentioned somewhere last year. I could be remembering it wrong and perhaps it is an update of the only port in existence, who knows? Not me! But someone here will hopefully
Might as well start using this 'rare' stuff the way things for my generation are going with the virus! Expect a 'did it exist' ST computer model related unboxing soon and I will be unsealing my fav' Atari 800 cartridges to use with my NOS mint packaging 800XL too later this week!
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I did mention Warlock above
Warlock is by Millennium on a Amiga and not great AFAIK and is the worst of the 3 by a long shot on the C64...in fact I wish they never bothered with that 4 color background rubbish for the C64. Doesn't play as good as Druid II (think I tried the Amiga game too but I prefer Druid 1 anyway the best IMHO.
Druid was really nice on A8 and C64, a great game....the sequel was O.K. and the trend didn't reverse with Warlock lol but it seemed odd that Firebird and Rainbird who were so eager to put out ST games when the Amiga 500 was still being manufactured but didn't release the sequel let alone the first. Must be some reason, maybe they couldn't find a developer in time for the ST conversion? It's a bit strange like Terra Cresta never even being started on Amstrad CPC by Ocean and yet they produced everything for the CPC around that time too.
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Druid, Druid II Enlightenment are not on the ST. Druid didn't get an Amiga conversion but the two sequels were ported. The C64, and possibly Amstrad and Sinclair machines, got all three versions.
Is there a story why Firebird, who pretty much converted all their 16bit projects to the ST only or ST and Amiga, never published this game? Was there some sort of problem with development team being found by Firebird? It's odd because this is around the time when almost all big UK software houses had something for the ST but nothing for the Amiga so it's odd that the roles are reversed
I know there was a Far Eastern themed Gauntlet style game by the guys who did Gauntlet 1 for US Gold that got canned from French magazine scans but it's like the game was never even considered for a port. Really odd!
(Warlock was released by a different publisher but I think that is on the ST)
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underrated c64 jems that arent in the top 100 list worthy to invest time in
in Commodore 8-bit Computers
Posted
Well when you put up compilations with titles like technically stunning or something and the first few gamea include ones that have 16 colours and is not running at 50fps that's how I am going to rate their channel. I did not go from Spectrum or Amstrad or ST to Amiga. I also knew what the tech articles printed in PCW and Byte meant as a coder so I can tell you the Amiga has so few games worth the wear and tear on an A1000 today that it is painfully obvious and crigneworthy to watch clueless videos with low standards.
I can make big budget commercial quality effects on my videos if I want just using Camtasia and some lateral thinking, effort put into a video is like handwriting quality of an answer to an exam question that is pretty so-so.
You know how people felt ripped off in the mid 80s when we got Atari 8bit shoddy ports dished out waaaayyyy too often (and they were right, the artistic and technical talent for UK releases was pretty pathetic compared to the hardware), THAT is what owning an Amiga was like. WHY is Grand Prix Circuit so slow on Amiga with a 7mhz 68000 and plenty of memory for code execution speed improving tricks compared to the really awkward to use C64 screen modes pushed along by the 1mhz 6510? Lack of talent. So when channels tell you to go play them....well if you don't think something is wrong then you have to be one of those people who had no choice but to put up with a home computer without and decent custom hardware like Acorn/Amstrad/Sinclair.
The C64 rot in the quality of games nosediving didn't really start to happen until 1987, and 1983 with titles like Manic Miner and Beach Head was a great starting point to boot, it is my favourite home computer for games simply because the piss poor quality by default the Amiga got 99% of the time took half a decade to ruin the format. My Amiga 1000 is my favourite computer I have ever owned in my life (and always will be due to the clueless designers of Linux/Mac OS/Window forced choice of today) BUT I spent a hell of a lot more time doing creative stuff like 250 frame full screen anim brushes in Dpaint on my 9mb Amiga than playing games. Lotus II is the ONLY 2.5D racing game worthy of being run on an Amiga technically, Turrican III is the only version of Turrican technically worthy of the wear and tear on my Amigas today. Even Monkey Island series is a HORRIBLE DOS port job...the music sounds like some cheesy knock-off of Hans Zimmer with TERRIBLE sample quality used AND the 32 colour graphics which should be EHB are badly converted (I did better in minutes with Dpaint 4 using VGA sources). So yeah, if you don't understand exactly what the Amiga is capable of like me then you shouldn't make videos about 'stunning' games when half of them make me cringe as an engineer and coder.
I had a VCS by 1980, a C64 at the start of 1983, an Amiga by 1986 and I played games in arcades all through those years, so I am REALLY happy Nemesis and Salamander never came out for Amiga because they sure as hell wouldn't have looked as good as the graphics I did back then with Dpaint II let alone look/sound/play as well as tinyius today.
Same goes for any channel doing games, like 1990s born generation clueless people doing retro game reviews complaining about graphic differences between arcade and VCS Space Invaders and then completely ignoring the fact it has all sorts of better than arcade improvements like 2 player co-op, no/moving bases, laser turret size options and all sorts of stuff that actually making it the king of home Space Invaders right up to 2021 never mind the sheer technical expertise that made that game possible on VCS. Most people actually think the ST is to blame for bad Amiga games but fail to then tell you there are only 2 or 3 Amiga 2.5D racing games that even run as slickly as Lotus II on the ST