Commodore 64 vs Apple II

[newtmonkey]

It also depends on the types of games you played.  If you loved RPGs or strategy games, the much faster disk loading of the Apple II was a clear benefit, whereas the better graphics and sound of the C64 didn't mean as much. 

[carlsson]

15 hours ago, high voltage said:

Apple ][ Gaming library, I've found this from US EG gaming magazine:
[ scan of magazine with the claim of 16,000 software titles ]

 

Commodore 64 website GB64 mentions so far 29,000 games, but 1/3 of the entries are selfmade stuff like Boulder Dash games, lots of PD games, loads of SEUCK and whatever.

AtariMania lists 9000 different VCS games, is that so?

Magazines from way back are more reality than the internet.

I still doubt that figure about 16,000 titles for the Apple ][, even when you include all business and educational software. As I keep repeating over and over, Tanrunomad has collected just over 3,000 game titles for the Apple ][ after several years of looking. That would mean there are more than 10,000 packages of business, productivity and educational software plus forgotten games still to be listed, much less to be archived. That is a very big number for being "lost to time".

 

Yes, it is true that GB64 has a lot of fluff like those BD clones and pirated versions of games. I usually halve the figure to get a rule of thumb for number of unique C64 games, which would put it around 14,000-15,000. GB64 doesn't do business or productivity software, only a handful educational packages. While the C64 never was the same magnitude of a business computer as the Apple ][ was, sure there are at least a couple of hundreds, perhaps up to a thousand titles of those as well to add to the total figure.

 

Regarding the VCS, AtariMania has an advanced search that lets you filter out original versions of games. It brings the number down from 9482 to 645 titles. In the weekly tracker, we've got an additional set of unclear titles which makes it around 800 but no, the VCS is not comparable with most home computers when it comes to total size of libraries.

[high voltage]

EG would never include business packages, it was a gaming magazine. It does include educational, of course.

But still, C64 and A2 are very close together.

[high voltage]

25 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Regarding the VCS, AtariMania has an advanced search that lets you filter out original versions of games. It brings the number down from 9482 to 645 titles. In the weekly tracker, we've got an additional set of unclear titles which makes it around 800 but no, the VCS is not comparable with most home computers when it comes to total size of libraries.

Exactly...

[carlsson]

7 minutes ago, high voltage said:

EG would never include business packages, it was a gaming magazine. It does include educational, of course.

Even worse, that means the Apple ][ community has lost knowledge of up to 80% of all games and educational packages ever made. I would assume the amount of games software fully archived is perhaps 10% of the entire library.

 

Apple ][ games and educational library:

10% games known and archived

10% games known but not archived

80% games known once existed but we don't remember any titles

Edited September 3, 2020 by carlsson

[Keatah]

There's a little over 17,000 made for the Apple II. There are ongoing efforts archiving new titles every day. I myself have several RubberMaid tubs full of disks not preserved yet.

[youxia]

16,000 games overall? This numbers just seems a bit wild (for a computer which sold ~6mil units). Perhaps the extra 0 was a typo. 3000 that carlsson mentions is much more realistic (and in the ballpark of TOSEC and MobyGames). It's also quite impossible for so many titles to be lost, given the modern preservation mania.

[zzip]

8 hours ago, carlsson said:

Regarding the VCS, AtariMania has an advanced search that lets you filter out original versions of games. It brings the number down from 9482 to 645 titles.

645 sounds about right.   And these were released over a period of about a dozen years.    Remember this is the system whose library was supposedly so "oversaturated" it destroyed the entire industry  ?

[carlsson]

7 hours ago, Keatah said:

There's a little over 17,000 made for the Apple II. There are ongoing efforts archiving new titles every day.

Would you care to give a link, even if it just a long listing of titles and nothing else? Big numbers are easy to throw around, but with nothing to back them up, those are nothing but big numbers.

[JamesD]

Just a few observations of the two's BASICs after I recently ported a BASIC program from a TRS-80 to the Apple II, Plus/4, and C64.

The only things that really needed changed were the use of RND (all of them needed that), what graphics characters were printed, and how PRINT@ was replaced.
The PRINT@ change was easy on the Plus/4 & Apple II, you just used commands to position the cursor before printing. 
The Plus/4 used CHAR, while the Apple II used HTAB & VTAB.  Not as small as PRINT@, but at least they created commands specifically to move the cursor.
The C64 requires a POKE POKE SYS sequence before the PRINT, or POKE POKE POKE SYS PRINT depending on which ROM call you make.
It's not difficult once you look it up, but it's not going to be obvious what it does to someone that isn't familiar with it.
None of those approaches are as efficient as PRINT@.
I could totally understand if there isn't much business software for the C64 written in BASIC.  Screen formatting could be a pain.
As far as business software goes, only the Plus/4 has PRINT USING, so you'll have to create some code in BASIC to format numbers being printed on the Apple II and C64.
In spite of that, I'm sure there was plenty of business software for the Apple II written in BASIC, but I'd guess that's largely due to the 80 column cards.
The biggest thing I came away from the experience with is an idea of just how limited the BASIC on the C64 is. 
It doesn't get much simpler than printing text at specific locations on the screen.

Applesoft BASIC is a little faster than the C64's, which is faster than the Plus/4. 
At least that's how it is with that program, but I'd expect that to be pretty typical except for math intensive code. 
I'd guess the speed difference between the Apple II & C64 is due to a couple optimizations Apple made, and differences in the hardware.
If you want to push some sprites around the screen or print custom fonts, then clearly the Apple II is at a huge disadvantage.
The Plus/4 is slow due to how it supports more RAM, but it allows much larger programs, and it can deal with more data than the other machines.
The Plus/4 does better for math intensive code where a lot of time is spent in the ROM, and it doesn't have to bank switch between RAM & ROM so much.

 

I wouldn't say any of these BASICs are speed demons when you start comparing to other machines, but they don't fall into the horribly slow category by any means.
Ultimately, it might take longer to run a program on one of these machines than another, but you could still run the program.
Things like disk interface speed or how much RAM is available to a program are probably bigger factors than general interpreter speed.

[JamesD]

23 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Would you care to give a link, even if it just a long listing of titles and nothing else? Big numbers are easy to throw around, but with nothing to back them up, those are nothing but big numbers.

If numbers are thrown around, some sort of listing of titles should be required.
Magazines threw around numbers of titles, but I doubt anyone actually counted them.

However, if you go beyond commercial software, and you stop to think about it..
if you were to count every BASIC program someone wrote to solve some unique problem they had (and I don't mean just once), the numbers would run into the millions.
I'm just one person, but I wrote several business programs for my parents, and for my school that looked as good as a lot of commercial programs.
And that's just business software.  Who knows how many really good games were written in someone's bedroom for just them or a group of friends.
They won't show up on any list, and the code is probably gone forever.
So a listing of titles is always going to fall far short of the reality for any machine.
 

[high voltage]

World of Spectrum (ZX) has more than 13,000 games listed? Haven't checked for a while.

[carlsson]

Well, some form of publishing even if it is through user groups or only giving away your program to friends would be required. If we count every time someone typed in this program as a unique piece of software, it'd get ridiculous:

 

10 PRINT"HELLO WORLD!"

20 GOTO 10

[carlsson]

After the redesign, WoS no longer publishes any summary numbers but those seem correct including text adventures and educational. Sure, many type-ins and PD but we don't discriminate those - if the Apple II has 5000 type-ins that are not simply HELLO WORLD (see above), those indeed add to the total just like they do on every other system.

[JamesD]

37 minutes ago, carlsson said:

Well, some form of publishing even if it is through user groups or only giving away your program to friends would be required. If we count every time someone typed in this program as a unique piece of software, it'd get ridiculous:

 

10 PRINT"HELLO WORLD!"

20 GOTO 10

That's clearly not what I meant, and it applied to all machines

 

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, carlsson said:

Would you care to give a link, even if it just a long listing of titles and nothing else? Big numbers are easy to throw around, but with nothing to back them up, those are nothing but big numbers.

 

I'm not going to bother looking for one because it will be denounced. IIRC the BlueBook lists some 10,000 or 12,000 by itself. It's as thick as a vintage phonebook. And it was published early on. Since then tons of new stuff has been written. It lists all sorts of science and business applications that have been lost to time. Very niche and specific stuff that pirates never ever ever cared about. And still don't. It also doesn't list user's group material or type-ins.

 

Even current efforts to re-image all the educational and entertainment titles is woefully lacking. Nothing technical or business oriented has been wozified in, like, since forever. So. Yes. Entire categories or genres have been lost. I alone have piles of stuff yet to be sent to asimov.

 

There are about 30 disks of non-game astronomy stuff, commercial and PD currently posted. Altogether I think there's over 250.

Edited September 3, 2020 by Keatah

[carlsson]

Ok, so the 16,000 games quoted by the magazine Electronic Games would be based on the 12,000 titles listed in the BlueBook, of which a lot were custom made scientific and business software only mentioned by name in that book?

 

You wrote "There are ongoing efforts archiving new titles every day" which to me sounds like stuff is uploaded or at least added to a list somewhere, but there does not exist a link to that somewhere. We just have to take it for granted.

 

Also sure there may be 250 disks and more, but we're counting titles, not kilobytes. I mean not every single data file to which software you list counts on its own.

 

Sorry, but I still doubt those figures because they're so loosely formed. For that matter, besides business and productivity software, GB64 also doesn't cover scene demos which is what CSDb handles. It currently contains a staggering 185,000 (!!) entries. Even after removing all duplicate cracks on that site, there are a lot of software titles to add to the C64 library beyond those 29000 games as well:

 

24000 one-filed demos

4000 full size multi-part demos

2000 full size intros

450 small size intros (256 bytes & 1K)

3400 disk magazines

16000 music demos (of which a good deal of course exist in games and demos too)

9900 tools

etc

 

That is nearly 60,000 entries on top of the 29,000 games and probably 1,000 or more business/productivity softwares. So your Apple ][ figure of 17,000 is looking to be matched to 90,000 on the C64, if we should count everything.

 

If the Apple II and clones sold in 6 million (youxia's figure, I didn't double check it) and the C64/128 sold in somewhere between 12-17 million (figures vary depending which source you look at, and some may have been refurbs sold twice), it means on the Apple side, there was 1 piece of software made per 350 sold computers, compared to 1 piece of software per 190 sold C64s.

 

And all those C64 numbers (possibly except for number of computers sold) are verifiable online, though I agree some are inflated.

[Keatah]

When I think of astronomy stuff (in the above context) I consider 1 single disk titled AstroCalc 101 may be a compilation of 15 or so individual basic programs. This counts as 1 title. They are related. They perform complementary functions. 1 title, AstroCalc 101. Ideally these programs shouldn't be in any other collection. And that's true for (arbitrary guess) about 85% of them. There isn't a lot of duplication.

 

A user's groups set of disks may have 30 tiny 2-liners and 1 or 2 feature programs. This would be 1 title, 1 disk image.

 

A whole compilation/set of user's groups disks should not be given a title. And only a few have. I'd guess under 50.

 

Appleworks office suite spans several disks, it does word processing and spreadsheet activities, it is 1 title. Appleworks add-ons also typically take 1-2 disks. Each add-on = 1 title.

 

Beagle Bros. utility disks, some sporting only 1-4 bigger and "unrelated to each other" feature programs is still a single title. Despite Beagle Bros disks containing hundreds of programs altogether, Beagle Bros. counts as maybe 30-45 titles.

 

If we count by individual saved programs the number shoots way past 17,000. If we count individual files on disks, then we gotta be in the millions.

 

It's also possible and realistic to consider individual type-ins as 1 title.

 

Archive.org and Asimov are probably the best places to find recently preserved titles. Asimov seems to average 1 or 2 disk images every 3-4 days.

Edited September 3, 2020 by Keatah

[Keatah]

When we have this many "items of software" strict definitions have to be applied across the board consistently and reliably. And the each bit of software has to fit into the definitions without ambiguity.

 

And do we count separate versions of programs like 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, and so on? No. Unless something is really very different for each version. Like A2-FS1 vs A2-FS2. Worlds apart in speed, graphics, depth, and usage. But both still flight simulators from the same lineage and company.

 

A2-FS1 had 3 versions, and A2-FS2 has 2 versions. But together they only count as 2 titles.

 

2-liners? What about those? Do they stand on their own? Maybe. If they're like uber super duper good or perform a highly desirable patch function. The compilation is 1 title. And there are maybe 100 disks (of 2-liners) in the Apple library total.

 

Something like International Apple Core would make, let's say 75 disks. Each disk is its own title, provided each disk has different subject content. The entire set is not. Some titles may span 2 or 3 disks, like PrintShop Graphics add-ons, 3 disks 1 title..

 

Confusing? Maybe.. Tedious? Definitely.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by Keatah

[carlsson]

Well, if those are two liner games they count towards those 16,000 games.

 

I downloaded site_files.txt from Asimov. It currently contains 35840 lines of text:

7643 are documentation (I don't count these as software)

6415 are utilities (these count to the total)

363 are emulator packages

147 are ROM images (not sure how many are duplicates or how many of these should count)

71 are misc emulator files

139 are unsorted, both docs and software

2210 are software images in other languages than English (all sorts of software)

1262 are Apple /// titles and README files (about 50%-50%)

21 are software images marked for needing attention

72 are software demos

653 are PD collections

116 are CP/M software packages

123 are sound applications

743 are programming applications

1858 are Apple IIgs applications and documentation (mixed)

2296 are productivity applications

18 are Apple 1 applications

9 are Apple Lisa applications (not sure why those are on Asimov?)

1219 are misc collections, erotica and similar

283 are master disks (Apple DOS etc)

916 are disk utilities

357 are magazines (I wouldn't count those as software)

559 are applications associated with custom hardware

6192 are educational software

321 are communication programs

8037 are games and collections of the same (could be docs etc in this figure too)

8 are incoming right now

 

So counting liberally and excluding IIgs and /// stuff, that is 24,400 software entries at Asimov counting everything of which 8000 are games. That is more than I thought, about 2.5 times as many titles as Tanrunomad has collected for a couple of years. It still is 2/3 of the C64 games library after we cut the 29000 titles on GB64 by half.

 

[youxia]

This whole thing has started from the 16k games claim. This is the impossible number.

 

I don't doubt there were plenty of user written utility programs which might have been distributed in various ways but this is not what we count when comparing to other existing collections, otherwise it'd be just mission impossible. Most other micro's games collections don't do duplicates, some count type ins as well, but from official sources, such as mags or books.

 

The 6 million AII's sold number is from Wikipedia, up till 1993.

 

Overall, whatever the real number is, it seems rather surprising that the Apple scene is so blase about preserving their own stuff. Other camps mostly have everything that was "out-there" kinda available already sorted. If something surfaces now it's usually just some miracle finds, like that latest C64 Dungeons Of Death score.

 

By the way, World Of Spectrum's database is 6 years old. Now it's all about ZXDB hosted at https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/ 

 

EDIT: if you count stuff like 2 liners then C64 or ZX libraries would probably be 100k large And that 8037 number can include various cracks, different fromats and duplicates, a la TOSEC

 

EDIT2: @carlssonIs this Tanrunomad collection available anywhere?

 

Edited September 3, 2020 by youxia
because I needed to add something

[carlsson]

Yes, here is the link: http://tanrunomad.com/apple-ii-games/

 

I see he has put his document on Google Docs so in theory it would be possible to add the missing 5000 games to that one.

Edited September 3, 2020 by carlsson

[carlsson]

11 minutes ago, youxia said:

And that 8037 number can include various cracks, different fromats and duplicates, a la TOSEC

Indeed, for instance there are 8 entries on Asimov for Archon I and Archon II: Adept, and 17 entries for Ancient Art of War.

 

13 entries for Ultima I, 20 entries for Ultima II, 27 entries for Ultima III, 18 entries for Ultima IV, 26 entries for Ultima V etc.

Edited September 3, 2020 by carlsson

[Leeroy ST]

18 hours ago, newtmonkey said:

It also depends on the types of games you played.  If you loved RPGs or strategy games, the much faster disk loading of the Apple II was a clear benefit, whereas the better graphics and sound of the C64 didn't mean as much. 

This did wonders when playing games like Ultima.

[Keatah]

That’s right. There are games that are recracked, wozified, nibbled, single-file’d, and just plain ol’ dumped to .dsk.

 

All should be coalesced into 1 title. That drops the 8000 to about 6000.