Why C64 and not Atari XL/XE?

[atarian63]

Others are using similar terms in a derogatory way, it might be best to avoid being lumped in with that in case the moderators decide to make good on their threats at the end of the last big A8 vs C64 thread a few years back. [smiles sweetly and innocently at Al if he's reading =-]

 

 

Consider yourself lucky in that respect, nobody sold the A8 locally (my 800XL came from high street electrical retailer Dixons) and the software support was abysmal, i either had to mail order (and had no source of contact addresses for that) or pick something "blind" from an indie shop's catalogue and hope for the best. Without a disk drive (which i couldn't get locally even if the money was there) i didn't even have piracy as an option!

Kind of the opposite here, little to no sellers of C4 for the 1st couple years, nowhere but mail order to get software, apple was sold a education based stores with little to no games.

[atarian63]

Indeed… I don't know for the Amiga, but I'm rather positive that Atari ST buyers did not buy the Atari ST for games in the first place. I bought my ST in the first place for Cubase, That's Write and Calamus. These programs justified (for me) the purchase of the ST for 100%. Later I discovered other features of the ST, like gaming. I completed Secret of Monkey Island (in black/white) on my ST in the time that there was not internet for everybody without any help (never been more proud haha) and I enjoyed games that I did not have on my XL/XE.

 

But (seriously!) after a day behind the ST, I always enjoyed my XL/XE … I never thought that my XL/XE was an old, outdated computer. In fact: the more I used my ST, the more I appreciated my XL/XE.

 

Even today. My brother-in-law has this XBOX 360 and Wii. Ofcourse… it looks terrific and some games are really cool. I'm not the shoot-and-blood-everywhere type gamer: I am more a Wii than a Xbox kind lover; but every time when I was at his place, and played on those new consoles, I'm MORE THAN HAPPY to fire up my XL/XE and do some gaming on that platform. It has something cute… friendly… simplicity… I don't know, but it is not replaceable by anything else.

We sold ST's primarily for games at my store over 1000 ST units in 1986. We sold almost nothing but games for system and carried nearly 3500+ skus of GAMES, we even went to the length of importing games so customers could have them months early, or ever in some cases. several ST's were setup running games with a dedicated amp on each one ALL day long. Customers would come in around noon when we got our software deliveries and help open the boxes and want to buy mst anything good, never got it priced on the 1st round of new stuff most times, I even had a small group of lawyers who I had to call each day and tell them what we got in, they would tell me what they wanted and stop in on the way home from the office to play and buy!

ST was great for games!

[atarian63]

But not everybody wanted arcade styled games, for them the consoles were a non starter so the Amiga or Atari ST were the best option.

Both were very good at Arcade games(Amiga was supposed to BE a console) and were really great sellers for us, sure RPG's were making an entrance and sold well, however our core gamer was an Arcade gamer.

[pixelmischief]

The longer answer is that there aren't really killer apps in the games market...

 

Oooh. I don't agree with that. I can name a few. Halo for XBox was a a system seller. Resident Evil Remake sold an enormous number of Gamecubes. Super Mario 64 was a must have. Donkey Kong for the Colecovision was flagship. Any of those games was enough reason to get their respective consoles.

[JamesD]

The problem with "killer apps" is that they usually include similar apps rather than a single program and as similar software is introduced, the old software looses it's status.
Visicalc got replaced by Lotus, Word Star was replaced by Word Perfect and Word, etc...

There were similar games on the CoCo and Apple II in '81 and I'm sure C64 clones came out shortly after it's introduction,
Also remember that quantity is probably a bigger factor with games than one lone game.

One thing is for sure, it was pretty much a must have title for the Atari.
The number of Star Raiders carts on ebay rivals the number of Atari BASIC carts.

[potatohead]

Others are using similar terms in a derogatory way, it might be best to avoid being lumped in with that in case the moderators decide to make good on their threats at the end of the last big A8 vs C64 thread a few years back. [smiles sweetly and innocently at Al if he's reading =-]

 

lol That thread was epic! Great entertainment. Costly though. I get it, but it was pretty great at the time.

 

Hey:

 

I would attribute apple still being around as more due to the uneducated early customer base, next to the PC it really was the weakest of the bunch and so very overpriced. Never could figure it out back then, apple people wouldnt not even buy software on discount or liquidation, so we raised the prices and then they bought.. braindead...

 

TMR indeed!

 

I read this opinion a lot and it's generally incorrect. A bit of crap, if you want to characterize it some, you know, just for fun!

 

Here's some perspective written by somebody who used Apple computers hard, and could not wait to get my Atari machine for the spiffy capabilities!

 

The truth is, the machine was not weak. In terms of multi-media, yeah. Apple computers didn't have the advanced hardware features. Back in the day, where gaming and some kinds of home computing were concerned, the Apple computers lacked.

 

However, the lack of advanced hardware made for some interesting trade-offs. One of these was the lack of interrupts in the system, as well as cycle stealing common to more advanced video hardware. This meant the 1Mhz 6502 ran very well for it's clock speed. It also meant things like the disk drive were possible in software, which made it flexible, fast, reliable, etc...

 

So I got that Atari machine. Loved it. Still do. It's setup next to my //e right now. Just like I had back in the day. For a while, the Atari was the only machine I had, and the Apple computers were at school. I used the Atari to do all sorts of fun stuff! But, as I needed to do some actual productivity computing, I found myself going back to the Apple, and it was for a real 80 column display, lots of graphics applications, fast, big storage.

 

I played hard and learned hard on an Atari. Most of us did. I got a lot of work done and made money on the Apple. (which paid for more Atari stuff, frankly)

 

Couple of other things: The Apple had just enough. 6 colors on a high res screen, not 4, 80 column text, and the later double low and high res options took it just far enough to make a lot of productivity things possible, practical.

 

As for the cost. Here is something that is STILL true. Apple adds a lot of value. Always has. And the difference between Apple and most other companies is they present that value, position it so people understand it, and then they ask for the money and they get it. All of that is why they are so very well capitalized, and were then, and are today.

 

Most Apple users understood a simple thing: The more you spend, the more you get. A stock ][+ isn't anywhere near close to the same machine as a well stuffed //e with Mockingboard, serial, disk, parallel, RAM expansion, CPU acceleration, etc... That basic nature of the stock machine provided for lots of expansion and it got used in a ton of ways. Not cheap, but then again, back then, possible on an Apple where it wasn't always possible on other machines. People paid for that difference.

 

At the time, I struggled with the cost of things, but I sure liked the results. Used to think it was a rip-off due to the Atari and C64 machines offering such nice, fun capabilities. But, when I went back and got a machine and got stuff done, business, work, graphics, done and got paid for it, things clicked.

 

So not braindead at all. Just a different set of values / needs / experiences.

 

Carry on. I just gotta push back on that one.

[potatohead]

Most of the people I knew back then, who bought an Atari computer, bought it with Star Raiders, and BASIC. And several did it for that game alone, thinking if it was that good, who knows what is coming next?

 

KIller app? I don't know. Seriously major attraction for sure.

[Stormtrooper of Death]

When i got my first ATari 8bit (it was a standard 16K Atari 600XL), i only had the Star Raiders cartridge... (not even a casette recorder or 1050 diskdrive !). I was amazed as a 14 year old kid by the 3D graphics of Star Raids. So, i went 100% for Atari...

[TMR]

Kind of the opposite here, little to no sellers of C4 for the 1st couple years, nowhere but mail order to get software, apple was sold a education based stores with little to no games.

i wasn't talking about the start though, this is around 1984 when i got my 800XL - if you were lucky in the UK there was somewhere to for Atari 8-bit but they were few and far between, with the rest having a trickle of software where the other machines got a torrent. That's why i said he should feel lucky, the lack of software or hardware support locally is one of the reasons i wandered off to the C64... well, that and the hardware sprites. =-)

 

Oooh. I don't agree with that. I can name a few. Halo for XBox was a a system seller. Resident Evil Remake sold an enormous number of Gamecubes. Super Mario 64 was a must have. Donkey Kong for the Colecovision was flagship. Any of those games was enough reason to get their respective consoles.

We were talking about the home computing side of games, people wouldn't go out to buy a computer based on a single game like they at least theoretically could a console.

[TMR]

TMR indeed!

Hey, what did i do now? =-) i'm not sure if you're accidentally associating me with that "braindead" comment, but it was atarian63's thoughts on Apple.

 

However, the lack of advanced hardware made for some interesting trade-offs. One of these was the lack of interrupts in the system, as well as cycle stealing common to more advanced video hardware. This meant the 1Mhz 6502 ran very well for it's clock speed.

Your basic Apple II is very similar in design philosophy to the Sinclair Spectrum, in both cases the makers basically said "here's a CPU stapled to a frame buffer and a beeper, see what fun you can have with it guys" and the answer was, apparently, "lots", at least judging by the games.

[The Usotsuki]

Main diff was the Apple ][ was more readily expandable, and some expansions (like disk drive) were ubiquitous...don't think most Speccy users had disk drives, but I've never known anyone to actually use tapes on the Apple.

[TMR]

Main diff was the Apple ][ was more readily expandable, and some expansions (like disk drive) were ubiquitous...don't think most Speccy users had disk drives, but I've never known anyone to actually use tapes on the Apple.

That's partly because there was never an official Sinclair disk drive, at least not until the Amstrad-built models which arrived with a built in 3" unit; a few people had Discovery interfaces and others went for Microdrives, but if a Spectrum was being used for gaming it didn't make sense to upgrade because the software was all on cassette anyway. We just didn't have the disposable income here in the early 1980s for disk drives to get everywhere, Sinclair knew that and tried to work around it.

[The Usotsuki]

Well, Sinclair computers were designed to be cheap, right? And that they were - though programmers made great use of them despite their limitations.

[TMR]

Well, Sinclair computers were designed to be cheap, right? And that they were - though programmers made great use of them despite their limitations.

There's the "c" word again... but yes, the objective was to build an inexpensive colour home computer for the UK market when all of the options were prohibitively high for a recession-hit economy. And it would be interesting to see a costing for the original 48K spectrum based on 1977 part prices in comparison to the Apple II though, i suspect it wouldn't look quite as vast a difference.

[Bryan]

The Apple was sort of the 6502 version of the PC. Didn't do much out of the box, but was extremely flexible. Of course, you would think it would have the same problem as the Atari with its 400/600XL models. That is, software supports the lowest spec possible; but in reality I seem to recall many Apple programs being configurable at start-up (like PC programs).

 

The lack of any screen or timing interrupts seems like huge problem to me, though. It explains why Apple games speed up and slow down as things happen on the screen.

[Bill Loguidice]

The Apple was sort of the 6502 version of the PC. Didn't do much out of the box, but was extremely flexible. Of course, you would think it would have the same problem as the Atari with its 400/600XL models. That is, software supports the lowest spec possible; but in reality I seem to recall many Apple programs being configurable at start-up (like PC programs).

 

The problem was was that Atari was selling a 16K base spec machine for far longer than they should have. The same scenario didn't really apply to the Apple II because the platform relatively quickly standardized on 48K, then 64K, and even 128K to a degree. Apple users were already used to paying more money and upgrading more (and more willing to do both), so it was easier to target the higher spec user base. I can't think of any other vintage platform with that same luxury. The base spec was typically the primary target, which again, is why it was such a differentiator (among its other attributes) for the C-64 to have 64K out of the gate.

[Muzz73]

Yeah, the Apple ][ reminded me of the PC in the 80's... the users all boasted about their expandability and to a point, they were correct.

 

At the same time, if you wanted your Apple ][/][+ to do what an A8 or C= was capable of doing right out-of-the-box, you lost slot 0 just to get you from 48K-64K, slot 1 to your printer, slot 2 to your MoDem, etc. You would literally have to fill all eight of an Apple ]['s slots to have the same types of ports available as one of those machines and the Apple ][ would still be inferior in many respects (while superior in others). The //e was a bit better, but not by much.

 

The C= and A8 line were great in that they had ports for everything that you could daisy-chain devices off of and didn't cost you thousands of dollars like a loaded PC or Apple machine.

 

Apples and PC's of the day were some of the least capable and expensive machines available (again, out-of-the-box) and people seemed to have no problem shoveling money into them at the drop of a hat.

[Keatah]

Apples and PC's of the day were some of the least capable and expensive machines available (again, out-of-the-box) and people seemed to have no problem shoveling money into them at the drop of a hat.

 

Absolutely no problem especially when you could get superior performance from those peripherals. And they just worked. I'd take the DISK II parallel 8-lane superhighway speeds over the 1541's suckit-thru-a-straw single serial line every day of the week.

 

And the printer buffer boxes (or internal cards) allowed one to play Star Blazer while printing out a 48K BBS program listing, or one of those 20 meter long PrintShop banners. They just worked!

[+slx]

While it's quite possible that Star Raiders was responsible for part of the 10% boost in market share from the end of 1979 to the end of 1980 (it's best year for marketshare) for the Atari 400/800, it's incredibly difficult to quantify something as a true killer app. It certainly was popular, well reviewed, often pointed to as a standout title, fondly remembered today, etc., but I genuinely question if it caused people to purchase Atari 8-bit computers over other platforms at the time. Whatever the answer, bottom line, it certainly did hurt.

For me Star Raiders was THE reason to want an 800 rather than a Colour Genie, a Spectrum, C64, etc. and vigorously defend that wish vis-a-vis my dad (who probably teased me when extolling the other machines' virtues).

[potatohead]

'm not sure if you're accidentally associating me with that "braindead" comment

 

 

Not at all. Agreeing with you on the overall sentiment being expressed, and was just a bit too brief about it.

[high voltage]

While it's quite possible that Star Raiders was responsible for part of the 10% boost in market share from the end of 1979 to the end of 1980 (it's best year for marketshare) for the Atari 400/800, it's incredibly difficult to quantify something as a true killer app. It certainly was popular, well reviewed, often pointed to as a standout title, fondly remembered today, etc., but I genuinely question if it caused people to purchase Atari 8-bit computers over other platforms at the time. Whatever the answer, bottom line, it certainly did hurt.

Star Raiders was still very popular in 1982, as many readers letters in EG will tell you.

Edited May 22, 2014 by high voltage

[high voltage]

Here's some more info from CGW, A8 was very popular in 83/84

 

Edited May 22, 2014 by high voltage

[Bill Loguidice]

Star Raiders was still very popular in 1982, as many readers letters in EG will tell you.

 

My point was, after its peak at the end of 1980, the Atari 8-bit was in significant decline in terms of market share. The end of 1981 marked its last good year in terms of percentage of marketshare. In other words, if there was an impact from Star Raiders (in terms of being a killer app), it was negligible in terms of helping the Atari 8-bit line sell after 1980.

[Muzz73]

Oh, I agree on the Apple ][ thing for sure... my friend had a pimped-out //e that my C=64 was certainly inferior to, in many respects. His dad had over $2,000 into it, while my C=64 system was nowhere near that, but there was no arguing against the performance of the peripherals!

 

I ended up getting an Apple //e a couple of years later. I hadn't dumped the C=64 and converted, but my eyes had been opened!

[Keatah]

Oh, I agree on the Apple ][ thing for sure... my friend had a pimped-out //e that my C=64 was certainly inferior to, in many respects. His dad had over $2,000 into it, while my C=64 system was nowhere near that, but there was no arguing against the performance of the peripherals!

 

I ended up getting an Apple //e a couple of years later. I hadn't dumped the C=64 and converted, but my eyes had been opened!

 

Nicely put. I tend to believe that the Apple II's peripherals' firmware and other low-level system code were very efficiently written, making use of limited resources to the fullest.

 

When typing in a command, say "CATALOG", to get a listing of files - the Apple II hardware snapped seemingly instantaneously into action. There was no delay like on other 8-bit systems. The code being so close to the hardware seemed to make all the difference. There weren't multiple layers to dig through, there weren't other programs that had to wait or get interrupted, there were no bits of hardware to "sync-up". Cycles weren't consumed doing ambiguous and frivolous things. DOS and BASIC and the MONITOR weren't busy babysitting custom chips or bit-mapped text screens.

 

In a strange sort of way, the Apple II almost feels mechanical like the old-school integrating machines used to compute ballistics. A computer with springs, seals, pipes, pumps, pushrods, shafts, cams, gears, differentials, levers, pulleys, motors, and electromagnetic things.

Edited May 22, 2014 by Keatah