F*** the 64..

[sack-c0s]

Sprites are drawn in a long strip using a bitmap editor and then ripped using a tool i didn't even get around to writing a user interface for that builds source code... you get the idea. =-)

 

That sounds terribly like my mastersystem and Amiga tools...

Edited May 1, 2012 by sack-c0s

[high voltage]

I can believe that the WoS is more accurate than GB64. Even so AM lists 'over 8000 different carts for the 2600'. So you'd believe there's 8000 different VCS games? Of course not.

 

Didn't Spectrum have many bedroom coders as well? That's the same ad Mom and Pop companies. 20,000 games/utilities in an 8 year timeframe, there must be one hell of an amount of hobby coders selling via advertised mail order in the back of Crash magazine.

Edited May 1, 2012 by high voltage

[TMR]

I can believe that the WoS is more accurate than GB64. Even so AM lists 'over 8000 different carts for the 2600'. So you'd believe there's 8000 different VCS games? Of course not.

 

In that particular case, you're quoting the site as saying "over 8,000 different carts" but asking if i believe that means "8,000 different games" and they're two very different things; WoS, on the other hand, can clearly be seen to avoid counting different iterations of the same game as individual items.

 

Didn't Spectrum have many bedroom coders as well? That's the same ad Mom and Pop companies.

 

Yes it is, but i mentioned them more as a matter of scale than anything else; anyone producing a tally of Apple 2 releases in 1985 had to deal with there being no centralised way to count those releases and, since they can't get a national picture, either estimate how much Mom and Pop activity there is overall by multiplying up the local activity or ignore that side of things entirely. In both cases that alone makes the accuracy of that 16,000 questionable because we've no idea what reasoning went into that figure. It could be higher, it could be lower but it won't be up to the 99% accuracy you've mentioned for the magazine generally.

 

WoS won't be 99% accurate either, but it does show it's working out.

 

20,000 games/utilities in an 8 year timeframe, there must be one hell of an amount of hobby coders selling via advertised mail order in the back of Crash magazine.

 

It's not just the UK and more like a thirty year timeframe since it includes everything right up to the games released a couple of weeks ago like More Tea, Vicar?.

[www.atarimania.com]

If you count educational titles as games, the Apple probably wins.

 

For the record, Bowker's Software for Schools - 1987-88 has 5,977 entries for the Apple ][ family, 1,722 for the VIC-20 / C64 / PET and 536 for the Atari (commercial programs of course). There are also shitloads more in Elsevier's 1985 edition of The Software Catalog, with about one C64 item listed for ten Apple packages.

 

In the end, the number of 10,000 educational programs for the Apple seems pretty realistic.

 

--

Atari Frog

http://www.atarimania.com

[random7100]

When we were kids myself and my mates had most of these between us. I always preferred my mates C64 to the Spectrum, far better colours and especially music. I had an Atari 65XE which i liked, but wouldve still preferred the C64. Although you could pick up games really cheap for the XE at the time, such as the range by Mastertonic/MAD/Entertainment USA or whatever label it was. an important thing when youre young with little pocket money!

Edited May 1, 2012 by random7100

[potatohead]

Apple's got a TON of software. They entered the market with a capable machine, great marketing, design, and did the work to secure the schools and courted business properly with value added software.

 

At one point, nearly everybody was writing for those things in the US.

 

Don't forget CP/M!

 

Which reminds me, I kind of want a CP/M card...

 

Other computers came in under specific niches. The Apple was never really niched that way. It ended up where it was sweet, and the marketing resonated with that. Subtle, but important difference. Other machines were business, hobby, gaming, etc... The funny thing was the simple, robust design being marketed in sophisticated way. The slots made it the best machine you could pay for, which was kind of crappy on a budget, but awesome if you had $$$. That's why there was so much software. Schools paid huge for educational tools. "Oregon Trail" is the most famous, but my school had all sorts of stuff and was running kids through all of it. Business people paid for serious software, CP/M of course was there too. More affluent people bought things too.

 

All of that is still true today. Why are iPhone and Mac users so highly coveted? They buy stuff.

 

It's not that users of the other machines didn't, but the positioning wasn't as clear, nor the user base, and so software didn't get written in the volumes it did for the Apple.

 

Same dynamics played out on the PC too. DOS? What couldn't you get for a DOS?

 

In some ways, I think the Speccy and Apple were similar. Lots of machines out there, basic capabilities... Speccy games have an Apple feel to them too. The dynamics there meant lots of programs, games, tapes, cheap. Played out in similar ways library wise, and I think that has a lot to do with economics in the different regions of the world.

Edited May 1, 2012 by potatohead

[SIO99]

Considering that I also bought a C64 with a datasette some weeks ago, I should really give BASIC a go. The first thing I'd like to code is a separate "1987-2012 System Clash Forum", so these threads don't end up on AtariAge anymore. Maybe people will stop when they have to write their "my system if better than..." bashing posts with DATA statements and check sums again.

 

Mensch, tun Sie das bitte nicht, sonst könnten Sie ein Nervenzusammenbruch erleden!

 

(Please don't do that, otherwise you could have a nervous breakdown!)

 

I thought I should tell you in German, then you might take it more seriously.

Edited May 1, 2012 by SIO99

[high voltage]

I can believe that the WoS is more accurate than GB64. Even so AM lists 'over 8000 different carts for the 2600'. So you'd believe there's 8000 different VCS games? Of course not.

 

In that particular case, you're quoting the site as saying "over 8,000 different carts" but asking if i believe that means "8,000 different games" and they're two very different things; WoS, on the other hand, can clearly be seen to avoid counting different iterations of the same game as individual items.

 

Didn't Spectrum have many bedroom coders as well? That's the same ad Mom and Pop companies.

 

Yes it is, but i mentioned them more as a matter of scale than anything else; anyone producing a tally of Apple 2 releases in 1985 had to deal with there being no centralised way to count those releases and, since they can't get a national picture, either estimate how much Mom and Pop activity there is overall by multiplying up the local activity or ignore that side of things entirely. In both cases that alone makes the accuracy of that 16,000 questionable because we've no idea what reasoning went into that figure. It could be higher, it could be lower but it won't be up to the 99% accuracy you've mentioned for the magazine generally.

 

WoS won't be 99% accurate either, but it does show it's working out.

 

20,000 games/utilities in an 8 year timeframe, there must be one hell of an amount of hobby coders selling via advertised mail order in the back of Crash magazine.

 

It's not just the UK and more like a thirty year timeframe since it includes everything right up to the games released a couple of weeks ago like More Tea, Vicar?.

 

That's considered 'homebrews'. I can't see Elite or Durell releasing a Spectrum title nowadays. (Mind you, First Star releasing a 'new' Atari VCS game this year :-))

[+MrFish]

(Mind you, First Star releasing a 'new' Atari VCS game this year :-))

 

Isn't it more like they're allowing a release?

[TMR]

That's considered 'homebrews'. I can't see Elite or Durell releasing a Spectrum title nowadays.

 

Unless there's something to clarify what was counted for the 16,000 Apple 2 titles elsewhere in the article (got a URL for the rest of it?) the wording of the quote is ambiguous and there's nothing to say they're not made up of a significant number of homebrew, independently published, backroom-coded or public domain programs either.

[high voltage]

I got the rest of the article, if I'm in the mood I might post it.

 

That's what I miss, a good Atarimania, GB64, WoS type website for the Apple ][, I wonder why this was never done. I mean nobody really cares about the Spectrum besides a few Brits, but the Apple ][ was the most important 8-bit computer released. It needs one of those websites. Just like WWII, the forgotten hero.

Edited May 2, 2012 by high voltage

[high voltage]

(Mind you, First Star releasing a 'new' Atari VCS game this year :-))

 

Isn't it more like they're allowing a release?

 

Yes, but the way I say it sounds better.

[+MrFish]

(Mind you, First Star releasing a 'new' Atari VCS game this year :-))

 

Isn't it more like they're allowing a release?

 

Yes, but the way I say it sounds better.

 

Not to my ears. I prefer to credit the programmer, and leave the companies as a side-note.

[Lazarus]

but the Apple ][ was the most important 8-bit computer released.

Only in USA.

[Heaven/TQA]

but the Apple ][ was the most important 8-bit computer released.

Only in USA.

 

yup. Apple 2 and Europe? never heard of...

[Stormtrooper of Death]

In the 90s, when i still had my 130Xe and 2 1050 diskdrives, i collected a lot of software. Before I sold all my Atari 8bit equipment, my total software collection was about 12.000 unique individual titles. So, i had almost every game or software that was ever made for this computer until 1993.

 

I had more as 20 boxes that contained 100+ disks. Most disks where bootloaders with a menu, for multiple games.

 

So, more as 12.000 titles have been made for the ATari 8bit system.

Edited May 2, 2012 by Stormtrooper of Death

[Stormtrooper of Death]

The c64 had a lot of games that i liked. Commando, GI Joe, etc. But my Atari had more colors and 1 extra sound channel (4 vs 3 on the c64). Oh, and this is my first post since 2011 or so. I am back.

 

Greetings from Stormtrooper of Death, former member of the High-Tech Team (Holland)

Edited May 2, 2012 by Stormtrooper of Death

[Lazarus]

If you still have those 100+ disks, you should make ATR dumps of them.

[sack-c0s]

I mean nobody really cares about the Spectrum besides a few Brits.

 

I think the Spectrum was a *bit* bigger than that. It was very big in the UK, Spain, clones in Russia and probably other corners I don't know much about either.

 

And it even got it's own Google doodle for the 30th anniversary of it's unveiling.

Edited May 2, 2012 by sack-c0s

[Stormtrooper of Death]

If you still have those 100+ disks, you should make ATR dumps of them.

 

I had 20 boxes with 100 disks each. So, thats 2000 + disks. Hehe. I sold all in 1994 to buy an Amiga 1200 computer. Got about 150 euros for it and I am still angry at myselve today for selling my Atari 8bit.

 

So, i cant make any ATR dumps of them, as I sold my whole collection. Yep.

[Stormtrooper of Death]

I mean nobody really cares about the Spectrum besides a few Brits.

 

I think the Spectrum was a *bit* bigger than that. It was very big in the UK, Spain, clones in Russia and probably other corners I don't know much about either.

 

And it even got it's own Google doodle for the 30th anniversary of it's unveiling.

 

I found the spectrum keyboard not very good. Rubber... nope. And the graphics are a bit similar to the MSX. Dont the spectrum and MSX have the same graphic chip ? Also, my uncle had a ZX-spectrum 48K, i tried program some things on it, but hated it.

[TMR]

That's what I miss, a good Atarimania, GB64, WoS type website for the Apple ][, I wonder why this was never done. I mean nobody really cares about the Spectrum besides a few Brits

 

And the Spanish, Portugese, Russians, other groups from around Europe or even America... and not all of those groups even use WoS to appear on it's radar, i know of four or five of dedicated Russian- and Spanish-speaking portals writing about new games or demos and there's bound to be more i've not seen... even WoS itself isn't a UK site, it "lives" in the Netherlands.

 

but the Apple ][ was the most important 8-bit computer released. It needs one of those websites. Just like WWII, the forgotten hero.

 

That's very dramatic, but it's not forgotten at all - there's just no large software repository because the right person or couple of people haven't come along in the same way that Gamebase64, WoS, the CSDb or any of the other large 8-bit databases didn't exist and then suddenly did. That person or couple of people need to have the ability to handle the technical side of things, a solid back knowledge of the Apple 2 and it's software and something approaching OCD to get at least some content added to the database for a first roll out. Oh, and some serious dedication to the job at hand and the patience of a saint.

[andym00]

And the graphics are a bit similar to the MSX. Dont the spectrum and MSX have the same graphic chip ? Also, my uncle had a ZX-spectrum 48K, i tried program some things on it, but hated it.

 

Yes, the same graphics chip in both, but the Z80 in the Spectrum was so fast that programmers opted not to use the hardware sprites or character modes since it was quicker to do everything in software

[TMR]

And the graphics are a bit similar to the MSX. Dont the spectrum and MSX have the same graphic chip ?

 

No, the Spectrum is, essentially, a frame buffer strapped to a Z80 and, whilst the MSX has a similar bitmap mode (which means it received Spectrum ports), the Spectrum doesn't offer any character-based screens or hardware sprites.

[sack-c0s]

the MSX is probably closer to the Sega SG1000/colecovision than the Spectrum.

 

The importance of the spectrum wasn't the power - it was the price. The best home computer in the world is completely meaningless if you can't afford one. Luckily for me my dad jumped on the Commodore 16 firesale bandwagon and got me something a little better (albeit with very few games) for little cash and then quickly moved on the the C64.

Edited May 2, 2012 by sack-c0s