Heaven/TQA Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Unbeatable are A8 speed in say 160x96 gfx mode. As emkay and others pointed out. That seems the A8 native mode. GTIA shades rock, too. But except for RoF intro, Ballblazer intro, Lucasfiln intro, Koronis Rift. Which commercial game used those modes? Later I only remember home brews. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rybags Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Numerous games use the GTIA modes but largely for nondynamic or status areas. e.g. Elektraglide. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Ah of course i forgot Electra glide... another great example. Then I remember a chopper game and some lobster. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mister-VCS Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 For me the C64 was a natural progression, as less software was coming for the Atari and the C64 was riding high I went out and got one, yes loading was slow but I got myself DolphinDos which used a parallel cable and custom roms which made it much quicker than normal but like the happy it wasn't much use with protected software as a loader, it did have a 15 second copier which was great. Gfx wise the C64 always looked washed out compared to the Atari but its sprites made up for that loss. Sound was a mixed bunch, effects noises like explosions all sounded the same and were normally very muted while the music was something I did like but it took a while before the tunes were well thought out and not just using the on board chip filters just for the sake of it. I enjoyed owning both and still play stuff on both as I do for my Amiga and numerous others machines , emulated or real. As regarding the Atari vs the C64, I never really got in to the "mines better than yours" type arguments, I just got the C64 because the games were on it and the Atari was coming to the end of its active sales life, developers here in the UK just were not interested in it, preferring to just bring in US licenses of what were old games to the community. The "washed out look" of the C64 games was the main reason that I loved my Atari VCS more than the Commodore- really! But there was one game I loved "International Soccer". 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Philsan Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 But there was one game I loved "International Soccer".Loved that game too!Did you know International Basketball? Even better, the players cannot overlap, they are more 'real'. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefan Both Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 By the way... This thread enforced me to dig a bit more regarding the latest news in commodore things... https://www.knightsofbytes.games/samsjourney (scroll down for video clip) Not bad at all i must say... Of course, the loading time is horrible. It should be acceptable when using an Easyflash3. Stefan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 too bad they overlaid the whole video with some other soundtrack... I would have liked to hear the game.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+slx Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Oh I know. Raid On Bungeling Bay & Castle Wolfenstein were particularly painful to wait on. Still waiting for Raid on Bungeling Bay. Would be nice to have a conversion but that far exceeds my abilities (and even if I could learn enough Atari I would still not know enough C64 to understand the code there). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Despite the C64's shortcomings (and all the years I hated it for the stuff it got that I didn't), it's got it where it counts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlowingGhoul Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Despite the C64's shortcomings (and all the years I hated it for the stuff it got that I didn't), it's got it where it counts. You're right. I follow both scenes, and the Atari 8-bit developers, especially hardware, are far more active than the C64 developers are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 I'm not sure from your reply if you're following what I meant, but... You're right. I follow both scenes, and the Atari 8-bit developers, especially hardware, are far more active than the C64 developers are. What I meant was that the C64 is a great games machine even though I hate to admit it. I always figured the C64 scene was bigger. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zylon Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 (edited) Well, the sprites beat anything the Atari has. There's eight of them and they're multi-color. The screen has a color attribute per character cell so you can put all 16 colors on the screen without tricks. Those are the main advantages. You can get really colorful stuff on the Atari if you throw the CPU at the screen, but then you lose the freedom of movement the C64 has. To me, the C64 feels like a klunky budget machine in every other way, but the VIC II chip is impressive. SID is impressive too, but I think a lot of the game effects were better on Pokey. I'll agree with that. I started on C64 and still play/use it, but did get into A8 a few years back. C= does have better graphical features, and sound, but Atari had far better actual game play overall. VIC20 over 2600 any day, but Atari 8bit gets the final win over C64 IMHO. Edited February 12, 2018 by zylon 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+wongojack Posted February 12, 2018 Share Posted February 12, 2018 Loved that game too! Did you know International Basketball? Even better, the players cannot overlap, they are more 'real'. I believe they eventually turned International Basketball into "Street Sports Basketball" (and Soccer). The Street Sports series got a lot of playtime in my house. Great Games! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 (edited) The computer in my living room, kid's rooms, and bedroom... Atari's. The ones in the box out in the garage? That's the 64 and 128... Nuff said Edited February 13, 2018 by _The Doctor__ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sugarland Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Read one of the designer's bluntly honest interviews where he talked about how much they cut out of the C64 to minimize costs. IIRC $134 in parts at the initial $600 price. Simple is good in many ways but they took it to a new extreme. IIRC Basic 4.0 was available but they had a bunch of 2.0 in stock so they threw those in. Stuff like that but a lot more of head scratching moments. Can't find the interview now but it's very enlightening. After reading it I was thinking... OMGWTFBBQ. At the time ('84-'86) did not like it for many valid reasons. In retrospect I judged it too early. The C64 hit its prime later, after the Amiga was already out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Read one of the designer's bluntly honest interviews where he talked about how much they cut out of the C64 to minimize costs. IIRC $134 in parts at the initial $600 price. Simple is good in many ways but they took it to a new extreme. IIRC Basic 4.0 was available but they had a bunch of 2.0 in stock so they threw those in. Stuff like that but a lot more of head scratching moments. Can't find the interview now but it's very enlightening. After reading it I was thinking... OMGWTFBBQ. At the time ('84-'86) did not like it for many valid reasons. In retrospect I judged it too early. The C64 hit its prime later, after the Amiga was already out. That's one reason the C64 is kind of a love/hate thing with me. Everything about the 400/800 needed was about quality. The construction was solid, the expansion methods were elegant, it had unmatched graphics and sound capabilities, the OS was robust. Unlike other PCs of the day, this one was being made to be friendly for non-techie types while still costing less than many of the options out there. Commodore recognized that many households were holding off getting a computer because of the cost and that bringing the price down was more important than a premium system. Revamping their budget machine with the new chips and 64K of RAM (which is what really got people's attention before they knew what the chips could do) is what did the trick. There was a wave of enthusiasm for that machine like the industry hadn't seen before. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stefan Both Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 (edited) Because I was an Amiga kid, I was interested in every little story about Jay Miner. I think nobody would disagree if I say he was a real genius. ( well other guys claim, the real genius was Mitchy. So when we talk about the 8-bit Atari and their custom Chips, we talk about Jay Miner, right? That is in my opinion, why the Architecture of the Atari was so far ahead of its time - like the Amiga was. The Commodore however came out in '82 /' 83. Its "custom chips" where made by different persons. Robert Yannes soundchip, and Al Charpentier graphic chip. Both made the best they "could" because the financial leader was... Idek Tramielski. (Mr. "Just DO IT" or also Mr. "Do it cheaper".) Of course, the hardware sprites are an idea probably based on the player missle grafic... why shouldn't a development be influenced by the one before? A point to be discussed also should be the bad influence of Time Warner (regarding the exodus of good atari engineers). I mean, we discuss (dis)advantages of computers made in the early period. They all were heading to a place "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Of course there were mistakes. Stefan Edited February 13, 2018 by Stefan Both 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 My view on what TIME WARNER did like almost everything they touch in one way or another... is to sterilize a thing... they brought in a whole crap ton of people from control data corporation who were used to large time sharing machines and semi intelligent terminals this was NOT going to be good in terms of certain areas of development. The clash between suits and shall we say free attitude people lead to mass exodus of serious talent, people who new the Atari's inside and out were gone, people who had no clue of the nature of Atari architecture and chips were running and heading things with very little idea of the Graphic or sound prowess of the machines. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carlsson Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 IIRC Basic 4.0 was available but they had a bunch of 2.0 in stock so they threw those in. It is a common misconception that BASIC V2 on the VIC-20 and C64 is identical to BASIC V2 on the PET/CBM series. Actually Commodore took BASIC V4 on the CBM 4032/8032, cut away commands for disk access and garbage collection and relabeled it as V2. Yes, it was cost saving - in particular for the VIC-20 - but most of the bug fixes in V4 carried over to the BASIC in the home computers. Also all chips were newly manufactured, so it is not a case of having leftover ROM chips to use, rather that Commodore didn't want to throw in more than 20K ROM (8K BASIC, 8K KERNAL, 4K CHAR) in these computers. Sure they could have added back disk access on the C64, possibly at the cost of having 4K RAM beyond what BASIC can access. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mclaneinc Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Sams Journey on the C64 is very impressive, I purchased the digital download (HINT HINT Pete) and its very classy. Whats nice is that there isn't an Atari version to play the hate game with, stuff done purely on the C64 by people knowing the C64 were for the most part very good but to just sit and compare machines proves nothing much. Most people look at a machine for a bit of time, see if its good and has software they like and then purchase, that's how it was for me with all my consoles and computers, I was never an 'early adopter'. I'll always love my Atari but I go where the games are, as one system dries up I look and see where the next thing I'll like will be, it does not mean I've fell out with the older systems. Sometimes we take all this a little too seriously.. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Loguidice Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 Oh I know. Raid On Bungeling Bay & Castle Wolfenstein were particularly painful to wait on. True, but I wouldn't have wanted to have been without the former. It's one of my favorite games. Although each platform has its pluses and minuses, on the whole, obviously, the C-64 software library is stronger overall than the Atari 8-bit library. And personally, I've also always found Atari 8-bit games - despite having a better color palette to choose from - to be on the darker side. I like the generally brighter colors on the C-64. With that said, along with the C-64, Apple II, and Coco, the Atari 8-bit series was the only other vintage computer I ended up keeping when getting rid of my collection a few months back. Fortunately, today, we don't really have to fight over which is better and can enjoy as many of these great vintage systems - and their respective strengths - as we so choose. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 For me, the 8-bit era is the A8 and the C64. They were machines built from custom silicon no one else had. Spectrum and Amstrad didn't exist here. The Apple II was important but just so limited unless you were using it in a home business. Stuff on the Coco was always so ugly. People forget that a smooth full-screen scrolling game was only possible on a few machines. How many machines could do Blue Max? How many machines could play multi-voice music over a game? Just because a platform has a vast library doesn't mean there's much variety in the style of the games. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlowingGhoul Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 I'm not sure from your reply if you're following what I meant, but... What I meant was that the C64 is a great games machine even though I hate to admit it. I always figured the C64 scene was bigger. The C64 scene in the US is anemic compared to the Atari 8 bit, a reversal of the way things were in the old days, Lemon64 is the main C64 enthusiast site, and the forum is not nearly as lively and filled with projects as this one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 The C64 scene in the US is anemic compared to the Atari 8 bit, a reversal of the way things were in the old days, Lemon64 is the main C64 enthusiast site, and the forum is not nearly as lively and filled with projects as this one. Interesting. I based that on the rather ambitious WIP game projects I see on YouTube. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Loguidice Posted February 13, 2018 Share Posted February 13, 2018 The C64 scene in the US is anemic compared to the Atari 8 bit, a reversal of the way things were in the old days, Lemon64 is the main C64 enthusiast site, and the forum is not nearly as lively and filled with projects as this one. I don't know about that. I kind of think the best stuff for both the C-64 and Atari 8-bit often comes from outside the US these days. In any case, every project imaginable is being made for the C-64 these days, including new systems and tons of ultra high quality games. I'd say the C-64 scene is probably the strongest overall versus any other retro computer. I really don't see it lacking in any area. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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