STE'86

if so it does beg the question: why do the developers of G2F (which u all seem to quote as tho it was the most awesome software available) use these "ugly" c64 images to demo their software of what the Atari should/could/might be able to display? its a very odd choice on their part if anyone except you thought they were ugly wouldnt u say? (have u actually considered its JUST you?) and on the subject of many shades, it is i'm afraid supremely boring to draw an image with many colours simply because half the fun is whether u can actually pull it off with a limited palette. when u know it can be done because u have 256/truecolour why bother? u may as well use a scan or a photo. Steve

i think it's fairly safe to say that we went against the original spirit of the thread around halfway down the first page though, pulling Rockford up for that now isn't particularly fair considering how far off that topic just about everybody involved has gone...? (And again, to my mind what Rockford is doing is far less like trolling than what Gury did previously.) added to the fact that u really dont need 420 posts to say: Rescue on Fractalus, Koronis Rift and Ballblazer u mean? Steve

Not "golden Age" so it doesnt count is i believe your stock response? ROFL hoist on your own petard is also i believe the customary phrase for that? Steve

yes can definitely include Tomahawk (i had forgotten totally that one even tho i had it myself). and to a lesser degree battlezone, but yes still in there. shadow hawk 1 and starwars however hmmm no. not "real" 3d because u have no control over your own movement. star wars looks like a decent conversion tho. sorry cant do f15 either (even tho it was one of my 1984 favourites) simply because it relies on sprites and characters to much. same as the other MP stuff till gunship really. but it is more "vector" than the rest of them. Gato i cant tell from the screenies. possibly a "no" simply because it probably works like Silent Service? as for Alley Cat and Final Legacy well tbh these look ok for their time but i really want to see stuff thats of "dropzone" "ik" sort of quality This isnt just trolling btw i want to see if there ARE any really good looking games to compare against when doing graphics. post more stuff with screenies if u can saves me having Atarimania open all the time Steve

i am not speculating anything. i speak from experience as being a graphic designer on all major 8bit and both the 16 bits for 10 years. i KNOW the reason we used the lower modes was because of increased colour capability on all machines. its simple logistics lower resolutions gave better colour specs, to do a game u need the best colour capability u can ergo u use the lower modes. and u can spout all u want about the amiga but it too came down to logistics. 2 reasons: 1. nobody is going to pay twice for st/amiga graphics 2. you had to fit the damned thing on 1 or 2 720k disks and max of 1 meg ram. why dont u calculate how much extra space is required to do 32 colour graphics at 640 as opposed to 320? Steve

so again for the hard of hearing apparently.. in late 1984 the "superior" 800xls were being liquidated at £130 and in the middle of '85 the "cheaply made crap old c64" were starting to sell like hot cakes at £175-200. what exactly does that do to your constantly repeated theory of the 64 outselling the a8 simply because it was cheaper. because it obviously wasn't the case.

The fact that you don't know the A8 catalogue of games, doesn't mean that such games do not exist. fire away then. (edit my apologies u have FS2 aswell) anymore? Steve edit: i have looked at crisis mountain. what i want to see are games that "look" good that arent the "glorious 8" there are plenty of rubbish looking games that play really well on all formats (pete and i played "space taxi" for hours on the 64) however i keep getting told that there are great looking games out there so i want to see them.

oh behave. the use of lower resolutions on the 64, ST, and amiga has nothing to do with processing requirements and everything to do with more available colours in the lower modes. the 64 in "hi res" is basically a speccy mode with sprites. and who would have bought and ST game in 4 colour medium res or 2 colour hi res? Steve

Atariksi but you bought an 800 and the prices of c64s then i would assume in the uk to be £350. thats the price i remember them being in '83 when i had a Dragon (coco 1 compatible). that price wasnt cheap. it was WAY above the affordable price over in the UK. and if that statement that rockford posted is accurate (and i have no reason to believe its isnt. have you?), then the price of an 800xl in the UK at the end of '84 would have been £130(ish). well seeing as how the 64 took of big in the UK in '85 when they were somewhere between £175 and £199 and again referring to that document the 800xl would have been £130(ish), then the 800xl would have the advantage of being "cheap ass" and not the c64. carry on

No, another fact twisted with a biased mentality and the myth of C64 being more expensive being propated. I purchased my Atari 800 for $899 and around that time C64 was around $500. Just doing some random searches on the internet is not going to help. You have compare prices at same time from start of marketing of C64 and onwards where the starting is more significant. What the heck is the point of finding some expensive prices if the C64 is already flooded the market (i.e., inferior product has already saturated the market and left no choice to the competitor but to drop prices and take losses). not an internet search actually. that was the price they were when i bought mine in june of '85. actually mine was £170 (without the cassette) and c2ns were almost £30 so i bought a "compatible" any other facts on costs u would like to dispute with me? Steve

and how would u say that $299 = £250 in 1984? i saw no reference for £250 and u would most certainly not get any enchange rate to match that in 84. also as an illuminating note it has to be said that in june of 1985 (thats FIVE) c64s in the uk were £199 with a casette deck and that 1541 were virtually the same price again. so they were hardly the cheap ass option that u fellers would have us all believe were they? another myth busted by rockford.

yeah terrible when people exaggerate the quantity and quality of games for a particular machine isnt it? meanwhile i am still waiting for a fanboy to post something good that isnt one of the "glorious 8" how about it Frenchy? go on trawl thru the mags. surely u can find another bit of "golden era" software to make us laugh. Steve

so i cant cant comment coz i am not american? oooohhh dangerously close to nationalism or racism that. jesus anyone would think that the uk never saw an a8 listening to the rubbish that u spout. we did. it just never got anywhere. so amongst all these mounds of glorious software u were tripping over, would u care to post some of the good stuff thats NOT one of the usual 8 to enlighten us poor unfortunates that dont subscribe to the hype? Steve edit oh and as for constructive.. just how much involvement have u had in producing anything constructive for your little community in say the last 5 years? probably not as much as i have had in the last 3 months i bet. and i can honestly say the atari graphics systems are THE most frustrating thing i have ever worked on.

yeah i daresay braben and bell kick themselves every day over those dozen sales they lost and i do believe that u think the a8 has "cray" stamped on its chipset instead of 1.8 mhz. bearing in mind that mercenary was the only real "true" 3d game ever produced on it. or hadnt u actually realised that? Steve

And that little British inch of credibility you had is just gone out the window. you see again with the partial out of context quote. u will insist on making out that i dont like MP games as opposed to disputing your fanboy opinion that the early stuff was "classic" classic? these? no i think not classic? these? oh yes but then i never expect u to agree because MP never got past the basic stage on the a8 did it? so how can u possibly agree. it would mean u played them on a 64 and would lose your fanboy mantle. Steve

ah but u do have to simulate 64 sprites don't u? thats been the problem for 25 years. and the main reason there have been about 4 decent games in that time. Steve

superstars never shout, Elite is a Star Raiders inspired game, (Retro Gamer issue 47, interview with both Bell and Braben) As for Microprose titles being crap, you stick to your Mastertronic titles and be happy. Call yourself a gamer? ah u do like to misquote dont u? i replied that all the "classic" MP titles (your words) u mentioned were crap. i know they are crap, i own virtually the entire MP catalogue from 83 to about 91. their flightsims prior to gunship were in no way cutting edge and were nothing more than "green strip, blue strip and a couple of sprites" AFTER gunship however it was a very different matter. would u like me to post some screenshots of your "classic" MP games to remind u how bad they looked? Rockfords stuff looks cutting edge in comparison Steve edit and i'm still waiting for all these awesome screenshots of classic games on the a8 that AREN'T the usual 8 suspects.

mostly a load of cobblers really seeing as how both the bbc and the spectrum had fantastic full 3d stuff. even filled vector in the spectrums case. so the c64 users were well aware of faster 3d processing. and if all u atari fanboys rated the lucas stuff so highly how come they ceased development? sales must have been crap to do that. Elite never seemed to have those problems, it has been converted to every single major computer format. oh except yours. obviously. Steve

elite based on star raiders? no not really. its a 3d trading and combat game in vectors. not a sprite based 3d shoot em up. and before u shout, i too have played all the 3d "star raiders" shooters from the period including sentinel and starmaster so i know what they are and what they arent. ditto with your "classic" microprose games. i too own all of them and they are basically crap. and they are SPRITE based predominantly. MP didnt do full vector stuff still gunship. thats when they got to be "classic" Steve

ROFL are u serious? Elite was one of the biggest sellers of the early to mid 80's so i would hardly call 3D games "underrated" Also microprose in the mid to late 80s wowed the whole market with Gunship and Stealth fighter and pretty much cornered the whole genre. u just seem to ignore these things because they werent produced on the a8. 3D games didnt cease to exist when Lucas pulled the plug on A8 development, however much u would like it to be true. also i would just like to point out that the "Just like the A8 was underrated because no one had known the machine, when it was shippped outside the US" statement is flawed too isnt it? being as tho about 50% of your "usual suspect" top atari games were done in the uk? Steve

ok fair enuf apart from the following usual suspects: ROF, Koronis rift, ballblazer, eidolon, dropzone, ik, star raiders 2 what are the other pieces of mindblowing software that was available? why dont u show the rest of us what we have obviously blinked and missed? go on... give us some hard evidence to look at, instead of this "could have, should have and golden age" rubbish Steve ps I still wasnt referring to the St i was referring to the a8 in the previous post. i was obviously just being too nice and subtle.

Made no difference as we sold Atari ST 4-1 over Amiga until about 1990. Amiga then sold hot for maybe a year,then it was over for both mostly. was i even talking about the ST? Steve

ROFL "golden age" indeed 2 years worth of vcs port jobs that ended abruptly when Access software wrote Beachhead and changed it all. halcyon days of rose coloured glasses i think. Steve

The context of discussion is implementation of overscan on C64 (whatever form it takes-- imitation, simulation, etc.). So it's problematic compared to machines where it's built in like on Amiga and Atari 800. I don't think that analogy matches either. imititation, simulation...problematic compared to machines where its built in... using your criteria, it seems a pretty close analogy to me Steve

c64 "problem" with overscan? there is no "problem". this implies its supposed to have it and it doesnt work. It doesnt have overscan so there is no "problem" just like there is no "problem" with the ataris sprite capability or sound chip. Steve