why I hate commodore 64

[Gury]

Let's be clear here... This is not 6128, but 6128 Plus, big difference! This computer got many features previous models were missing. Too shame this computer didn't come little earlier to the market.

 

[zzip]

21 hours ago, Lord Thag said:

This.

I prefer the Atari, but both systems are good. What tends to get lost in these 'which is better' discussions tend to forget that which one is better (in terms of games/usefulness) tends to be which year you are referring to. The Atari line predates the c64 by several years. It was a luxury machine (until the XE line), and it's build quality shows that. It does the old-style arcade games better than anything from that era, with a lot of great original stuff, but struggles with the later 80s stuff that the cheaper (budget priced, hence the reliability issues) c64 was designed to do better. The c64 is a game console first and a computer second,  while the Atari was sort of a jack of all trades, master of none. The Atari, I think, was a better all around computer (probably the best compromise between productivity and gaming of the era), while the c64 is a more capable game machine... unless you're looking for raw speed, which is why the old arcade ports play better on Atari. The fact that the Atari was still competing with the c64, which was basically a next gen computer to it, is a testament to it's solid design. In a lot of ways, it's similar to the differences between the genesis and the super nintendo: decent graphics and blazing speed vs. great graphics and slowdown. Which one is 'better' depends on the style of game. RPGs are better on SNES. Shmups are better on Genesis.

Ultimately, I like both. The Atari is a hell of a lot more reliable, but it also cost 4x more back then. Both play great games. I prefer the Atari for arcade ports of the 'golden age', while the c64 does a lot of cool later gaming stuff, including a lot of RPG/Strategy games the Atari's never got.

I don't see C-64 as being a generational leap.   Very similar CPU (ran faster on Atari),  same memory capacity (64K, but varies by model on Atari).  Sound better on C-64-  Graphics ( more colors on Atari, more color freedom on C64, better sprites on C64)  disk (much faster access on Atari, higher capacity on C64) - They end up looking about even to me, with each having certain strengths and weaknesses

 

As for productivity,  I seem to remember the C64 getting lots of productivity applications that the Atari never got.  

[Lord Thag]

3 hours ago, zzip said:

I don't see C-64 as being a generational leap.   Very similar CPU (ran faster on Atari),  same memory capacity (64K, but varies by model on Atari).  Sound better on C-64-  Graphics ( more colors on Atari, more color freedom on C64, better sprites on C64)  disk (much faster access on Atari, higher capacity on C64) - They end up looking about even to me, with each having certain strengths and weaknesses

 

As for productivity,  I seem to remember the C64 getting lots of productivity applications that the Atari never got.  

There was a three year gap between the Atari and the c64, so maybe generational is the wrong word, but it certainly launched a lot later. And I don't think comparing components really helps either, as all the PCs back then ran off two or three main processors and similar components. The c64 handles sprite graphics much better, which was the wave of the future and what the NES, Genesis, SNES etc all used moving forward, the whole 'player missile graphics' thing being an evolutionary dead end, so the c64 is a very different, next gen machine in terms of graphics design. That doesn't mean it's BETTER, it just means it's design was more modern in terms of graphics.

But I agree, they are very comparable, they do different things well. Like I said, it's like the Genesis vs the SNES. It depends on what kind of game you are talking about. Commodore did big RPGs better (due to larger disk sizes), Atari did Arcade games better.

As to productivity... it depends. If you look at both PCs when both were actively sold and in most stores, the Atari was very much a better machine for productivity (Syncalc was the gold standard for years). However, the XL line stopped being actively supported by most business software companies after '84, '85 or so, while the c64 still had store presence in 1990. If you compare them when they were both supported, the Atari is a better productivity machine by far. If you count all the software that the c64 got because it was actively supported for a half decade more... yeah, it got stuff the Atari didn't get. But that's because people ported stuff to it, not because it's a better machine hardware wise for productivity. It isn't. It just got supported longer. I still think the Atari is the best compromise of any 8-bit PC between games/productivity/business. Apple II was by far the best productivity machine at the time.

[Gentlegamer]

I < 3 C=64

[kiwilove]

The 400/800 machines were ahead for it's time - you have to look at 1979 to see this clearly.  I do think 1980 would be when they were readily available to buy - and by that time 8K carts were not the standard, but 16K, but so much more can be done within 32K.  And it's graphic chip changed from CTIA to GTIA.

2-3 years later the C-64 turned up - which looked at the 400/800 to better.  If it weren't for the 400/800 - imagine what a Vic-30? would have looked like?

 

Atari chose to stick with the 400/800 design into it's XL/XE line instead of ditching it altogether?  Maybe they lacked a suitable enough R&D department to find any better alternative?  The 7800 wasn't designed by Atari at all - but by an independent company.  Much like the Amiga is considered more to be of 400/800 roots than a Commodore one.

 

Harvey

[ACML]

My beef with the Commodore 64 is that in the zeal to achieve market share, they forced the industry (home computers) to significantly lower their material standards and it was a race to the bottom.  Don't get me wrong, the C-64 was cheap enough to be affordable to almost anyone.  That in itself was a great achievement.  For the price, the C-64 was an amazing value.  That's why it sold 17 million units.  No one could compete in the "first home computer" market when Commodore was selling a C-64 for $300.  The quest for market share as two edges.  It made it insanely affordable, but cheapened the hardware to a fault.  For the 1980's, the intended lifespan of the C-64 was a few years and they were of sufficient quality to get you to the 90's when you bought a PC clone.

 

Atari on the other hand started out making computer with very high reliability as evidenced by 35+ year old hardware that works like it did in 1981.  I do believe commodore set out to out do the 800.  Atari was crucial to me in that at the right time 1981, only the Atari 400 was affordable to me.  Had there been no 400 in 1981, I would have eventually bought a computer, but much later and I do believe getting an Atari 400 in high school had some significant effect on where I went in my career.  Atari had the opportunity to be the machine that sold 17 million, but Sam Tramiel got there because he knew the market and was ruthless in business.  There was a lot of fun stuff just around the corner (circa 1984) that we were all waiting on (1400XL and 1450XLD).  The C-64 insured these new machines we dreamed of would never happen.  Yes Warner cancelled these new machines before they sold Atari to Trameil, but a different owner have brought them back?

  

Edited November 6, 2019 by ACML

[shoestring]

Bil Herd said that the C64 was designed to be the Atari killer, this is what they set out to do when they drew up plans to build the next machine after the Vic-20.Andy Finkel said that they looked at certain features in the 800 that they liked. In many ways, there’s similarities and similar compromises.
 

Certainly, purchasing MOS really helped make those machines affordable and sell more of them but the war was predominately against TI and Atari just got dragged in to it. Tramiel never forgave TI for what they did to him and as ruthless as he was, he went for the jugular when Commodore’s engineers passed on info  that TI were losing money on their CPU, Jack then slashed the prices of all their peripherals by half, then offered a deal to existing TI owners that they’d receive $100 off their c64 purchase if they traded in their machines, forcing TI out of the 8 bit market. Commodore ended up with a lot of TIs in their warehouses, I wonder what they did with them.

 

By 1984, Atari was losing 2 million dollars a day so I don’t think the 1400 and 1450xld would have been produced in enough quantities to gain significant market share regardless of who would have bought the company, those were expensive machines to manufacture and computer manufacturers only have a finite inventory of components they prefer to use on products they can move faster. If Atari ended up with the Amiga, they would not have had the money by that stage to turn those suitcase sized bread boards into silicon.. hence Jack willingly selling the chips to Commodore. Converting those bread boards really took a monumental effort, money and research with the help of people at the Amiga group and CSG aka MOS.

[www.atarimania.com]

I don't believe anything could've stopped the success of the Commodore 64, not even a money-making Atari 1200XL. In the US, Commodore had a boatload of distributors / dealers / software publishers that were already familiar with the PET or VIC-20 and they had no reason not to jump on the bandwagon of the successor. Plus, we still had the old systems with less RAM and a number of software titles suffered from this because they had to cater for 16K users.

 

In the UK, Atari didn't have a proper subsidiary to begin with, everything was too expensive and the company just never managed to create a proper environment for software development like the Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum enjoyed. These systems were driven by the market and healthy sales with users and software houses pushing the system naturally. The "others" got numerous titles with innovative gameplay and / or using advanced programming techniques while the Atari seemed to be stuck in the early eighties.

 

[Mclaneinc]

History is history, we can rehash it as many times as we like but it will never change no matter how opinionated we are about it...Lets look forward where we can change stuff...Makes no odd how much we like or dislike a machine from the past, it won't do a thing...

 

The truth is that with all this social media we can constructively shape new machine just by discussing them for the tech world to see, we could not do this to any real level before so lets get new stuff out, shape new machines.

 

As for history, unless you lot know Doc Brown and a certain Delorean its all set in stone...

Edited November 6, 2019 by Mclaneinc

[carlsson]

On 11/5/2019 at 12:40 AM, kiwilove said:

I always thought the Vic-20 was a waste of money - that you really had to wait it out until it's successor arrived (which wasn't that long at all).

I have the exact opposite opinion. If it wasn't for the VIC-20 paving the way with user clubs, magazines etc, the C64 would've had a much bigger struggle to enter the market. I'm not sure it could've been released much earlier as well.

 

Interesting side note: Commodore were looking at a few different designs for the VIC involving some with membrane keyboard like the Atari 400. Jack Tramiel at first wasn't opposed to the idea (to save money, obviously) but he was convinced (or perhaps didn't care much) to use a full size keyboard instead. Obviously with a membrane keyboard, low memory and resolution, the VIC-20 would even more have seem like a toy and probably not been as much as a forerunner to the C64 as I believe it was. As you know, Commodore ventured back to the membrane path with the MAX Machine which only was briefly sold in Japan (delayed by a half year) and also the rubber keyboard on the supposedly ultra cost reduced Commodore 116. Perhaps if the VIC had a membrane keyboard, the C64 would've been available in two variants with rubber keyboard/16K and full size keyboard/64K which even more would have mimiced Atari's lineup at the time.

[rensoup]

something to fuel your hate a little more ?

 

 

 

It looks really good.I don't know much about the C64 but I guess there isn't much room for adding enemies.

Edited November 6, 2019 by rensoup

[Mclaneinc]

Hate is such an ugly word, why can't people stop being fanboys and just get on, there's plenty of great stuff out there, does it really matter what machine its on?

 

I love my Atari, its a wonderful machine but I love games and games come on lots of machines..

[emkay]

35 minutes ago, rensoup said:

something to fuel your hate a little more ?

 

 

 

It looks really good.I don't know much about the C64 but I guess there isn't much room for adding enemies.

The huge black border , and the clean pinkish screen look very great.

 

 

 

 

[tschak909]

Can we dispense with these idiotic threads, please? They are utterly pointless fanboi masturbation.

 

(from somebody who writes code for ALL the vintage micros)

 

-Thom

[emkay]

How can people hate the Commodore 64. Isn't it the C64 that brings all 8 Bits together? Isn't it nice to see that games at least get created for that 8 bit machine? They even convert Atari 2600 games to the C64. Isn't that a good feeling how they support the Atari spirit , and to have that open minded people on that small Forums?

How can you guys be jealous of all that Software that runs on the C64? Shame on you. Get yourself a C64 and be happy.

Alike, if you want to have weird colored games, playable slideshows, huge Borders, nice still images.  

Look how nice those C64 people can even have a communication on an Atari Board. Everyone should be happy.  

 

OK. OK. Seems, I made a mistake back then, never to have wanted a C64. The Atari and the available Software was years longer fun  than when the ST and later the Amiga was affordable.  And then the Amiga brought real breathtaking "Scrolling Games" ...

It seemed to be my mistake to expect software on a machine that simply would have done it better.  

 

 

 

 

 

[rensoup]

Well I'm rooting for the A8 but the fact is: it's flooded with a stream of garbage games/conversions.

Not because the hardware was older but because of a bunch of greedy suits fragmenting the market with a 16KB machine in 1983 and trying to prevent everybody from self publishing by restricting access to hardware docs and threatening to sue.

 

That's irritating.

The C64 enjoyed a bigger success back then and we can still see it nowadays with its much more active community.

Competition drives quality and there's very little on the A8 so it's interesting to compare with the C64 because -most of the time- if you can do it on a C64, you can do it on an A8.

 

Even though I respect the opponent, I will still slap them in the face with some quality code if I can ? (I expect to be slapped back from time to time of course)

 

[+slx]

On 11/4/2019 at 9:10 PM, Mclaneinc said:

That's the spirit, just pick what's good on all machines, ...

See honey, the guys all say I need all those machines...

 

I am not particularly fond of SMB myself but found it remarkable that 2000s kids still find it interesting, last saw a clone being played on a PC at my son‘s daycare facility.

 

Atari failed to assign Miner/Decuir et.al. to design the next machine when the 400/800 were finished, although even that would only have saved them a more upscale market as all those C64 buyers would not have afforded 1600XLs or Atari Amigas and the C64 gave them what they needed (great games in a package that could be pitched to parents as an indispensable educational resource) at a very decent price. 

 

Really need to fire up my C128...

 

 

[Heaven/TQA]

Being writing stuff on a lot different 6502/6510/65816 machines and next z80... (and have done some 68k ST and Amiga first steps And even 6809) I have to say... it was never being easier to enjoy the wild Wild West and golden age of 80s micro computers... that’s the real fun... I don’t think in “fights” anymore but more in diversity is fun.

[emkay]

34 minutes ago, Heaven/TQA said:

Being writing stuff on a lot different 6502/6510/65816 machines and next z80... (and have done some 68k ST and Amiga first steps And even 6809) I have to say... it was never being easier to enjoy the wild Wild West and golden age of 80s micro computers... that’s the real fun... I don’t think in “fights” anymore but more in diversity is fun.

Reminds me of people travelling "the world". They have been in every country (!!!). In a predefined range for holidays.  Several Stars Hotels, controlled Beaches. And the Food is always the same. Fat, Sugar, Salt, Pepper, and some slight variations to do some "wild experience" some slight local spices are allowed

Edited November 7, 2019 by emkay

[Gury]

Most of the time C64 people are arrogant in the context of claiming superiority of their machine compared to other 8-bit computer systems. Fortunatelly there are exceptions, some C64 people even make Atari 8-bit stuff, too.

The problem araises when a new Atari game appears and clearly shows platform quality. Such a game was Yoomp, which was converted to C64 later, but didn't come close to what Atari version is. But of course, C64 people say their version is better ?

And it is really nice to see new conversion for Atari like Flimbo's Quest, Total Eclipse, Stunt Car Racer and all I didn't mention here.

It is possible to make games such as R-Type, Turrican II, Last Ninja 2 for our platform, of course, with limitations in mind. Other consideration is developing time and count of people willing to do that.

Me, for example, would put more time to Atari development, but unfortunatelly there is no much for all the projects. Life first!

 

[shoestring]

1 hour ago, Gury said:

Most of the time C64 people are arrogant in the context of claiming superiority of their machine compared to other 8-bit computer systems.

 

 

[Mclaneinc]

I also ask for an end to the thread, its just going over and over the same points and the same counter arguments about pointless stuff.

 

Why can't people just enjoy all the machines...

[R0ger]

48 minutes ago, Mclaneinc said:

I also ask for an end to the thread, its just going over and over the same points and the same counter arguments about pointless stuff.

 

Why can't people just enjoy all the machines...

But bickering about how yours is better is part of enjoying the machine

 

[Mclaneinc]

I prefer just to enjoy the machine

[zzip]

32 minutes ago, R0ger said:

But bickering about how yours is better is part of enjoying the machine

 

It's funny, because even though I hated C64 BITD (mostly for getting tons of games I wished I could get),  today that leaves me with a certain fondness and curiosity about the machine that I don't have for machines I never encountered back then (such as ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro that weren't common in US).   And now I can explore its library to see what I've missed