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The BEST 8 Bit Gaming Computer


8 Bit Gamming Computers  

142 members have voted

  1. 1. Pick the best...

    • Commodore 64
      80
    • ZX Spectrum
      18
    • Apple 2
      6
    • Atari 400
      35
    • Amstrad 664
      3

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Spectrum more than Apple ][? In your dreams.

 

The Asimov archive hosts ~2600 Apple 2 game disks, already including tons of duplicates like 5 different cracks of the same game and games that require more than one disk. Since this archive is known to already contain every single Apple 2 game "available in the net", I'd think that something less than 4.000 Apple 2 games would be a much more realistic number for commercial game releases than anything else. Of course it may differ some when also considering type-in listings or other selfmade stuff that was just spread around amongst users. If you feel that the Asimov archives lacks another substantial 10.000 games, just upload all that are missing, the Apple community would certainly welcome it.

 

While you're at it, you may want to have a look here to get an idea about the number of spectrum titles:

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/archive.html

(Please notice that type-ins and lots of other other stuff is counted separately, like some additional 1,643 text-adventures for example.)

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Spectrum releases from 1982 - 1989, Apple ][ from 1977 - 1992. And I also don't believe the C-64 has a higher amount of titles.

 

I already told you guys about WOS (earlier in this thread, please pay attention)

 

(That's why all those WOS guys here registered all the sudden and replied to defend their platform, didn't you realise that? ).

Edited by thomasholzer
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I mentioned it before, but I think the C64 had a bit of an Achilles heel when it came to 3D games due to the slower CPU. When you look at cross-platform ones they almost always ran significantly faster on the Atari, Amstrad and Spectrum.

This is true. Has anyone ever done a study comparing the frame rates between the different versions?

 

I suppose I'm arguing that the C-64 is more well-rounded, or has the best balance to best present the greatest number of 8-bit genres. I was still able to enjoy Tau Ceti, Elite and Mercenary on the C-64. Maybe the frame rate was 20 or 30% slower, I don't know. I know that a 3.5 Mhz Z80 really isn't a whole lot faster than a 1 Mhz 6502.

 

Also, did any particularly good ones originate on the machine? The Atari had Mercenary, the BBC had The Sentinel/Elite, and the Spectrum had Tau Ceti/Starstrike II as obvious examples.

I can't think of any as prominent as those. The C-64 did get to enjoy good ports of all those games though.

 

Also, whilst there might not have been quite so many games for the Atari, Amstrad and Spectrum, I think there are good examples for all of them in the genres you mention. Even though there weren't many people in America developing for the latter two machines, a lot of games made it on to them eventually as there was a veritable industry involved in licensing and converting them. That said, they often took a couple of years to make it over and many were ruined in the process.

I'd be happy to be shown otherwise, but it seems the Spectrum is really lacking in the RPGs that defined the genre (e.g. the Ultimas and Bard's Tales), North American sports (Football/grid iron, ice hockey, basketball, baseball) (I realize this may be obvious, but they really are a huge part of computer/video gaming - and the C-64 does a good job of representing cricket, soccer/football and so forth on the other side) and NES-style platformers.

 

On the other hand, Head Over Heels, Fairlight, Elite etc. may not run quite as fast on the C-64, but they're still decent, playable ports of great games.

 

I guess I'm trying to say that while a C-64 gamer might not have enjoyed the very best version of every game around, they were able to enjoy the widest range of games at an overall very high level of quality.

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He hasn't posted anything further and we've managed to have some pretty good topic related discussion the last page or so. Maybe, we should keep it that way and let that other business go.

-Ray

 

Indeed Ray , and this will be my last word on the subject. However for Informations sake I will at least point out that Mr Kizza did NOT PM any "details" to one of the WOS members. All he did say we are told , is that he would post some screen shots to prove his claims "when he has time". Not really saying much at all I guess.

On a lighter note though , if time is an issue then help is at hand , and some kindly chap at WOS has already done the job for him.

http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/1516/kizzavt9.png :P

 

As for the real topic I guess I owe it to this forum to at least give an opinion.

 

Despite being a major league speccy fan I think its pretty clear that the C64 was the best all round games machine to have at the time. I wanted to punch my C64 owning friend out of pure envy when I saw Uridium and Dropzone running for the 1st time. And I loved the Sid chip and still to this day think it made the AY sound like a pocket calculator. The only area it seemed to lack (as has already been pointed out) was in the 3D department , but even then , with the right programing skills it was more than capable as games like Mercenary, Elite and The Sentinel show.

 

And thomasholzer PLZ.... "(That's why all those WOS guys here registered all the sudden and replied to defend their platform )" Yeah right.... whatever you say.... to defend our platform....... Like I just did.... :roll:

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Spectrum releases from 1982 - 1989,

 

Can't you at least do some research before you post nonsense like this? The Spectrum's commercial life extended into 1993 and games kept being released up until then. Indeed, there have been quite a few released recently, through Cronosoft.

 

Where you came up with this 1989 nonsense I don't know.

Edited by Malc74
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And GB64 is no proof, they count 1000s of BDCK, 1000s of PCS, 1000s of SEUCK, loads of Lode Runner home-made screens. They're self-made and don't count.

To further discredit your claims, I actually looked up each of these categories on GB64...

 

Adventure Writer/Quill - 72

SEUCK - 685

Boulder Dash - 970

GAC - 22

Pinball - 275

Lode Runner - maybe 100 - a certain percentage of the "Arcade - Platformer (Single Screen)" category.

 

These numbers are generous, since there *are* some legitimate original releases in among each category.

 

Anyway, they add up to 2,124 in total. Your "thousands of this and thousands of that" is clearly an exageration to try to further your weak argument. This leaves 16,676 titles in GB64 that you still have to try and explain away.

Edited by MacbthPSW
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I'd be happy to be shown otherwise, but it seems the Spectrum is really lacking in the RPGs that defined the genre (e.g. the Ultimas and Bard's Tales),

 

Actually, there was a port of The Bard's Tale to the Spectrum released in '88. It's a pale shadow of the original in terms of graphics and sound, as you might expect, but the gameplay is faithfully recreated. I enjoyed it enough to play it to a finish at any rate.

 

The Spectrum also produced some excellent RPG-style games in its own right such as Heavy On The Magick, Chaos, and Lords of Midnight. They're certainly quite different from the American RPGs, but I'd say they're just as good.

 

North American sports (Football/grid iron, ice hockey, basketball, baseball) (I realize this may be obvious, but they really are a huge part of computer/video gaming - and the C-64 does a good job of representing cricket, soccer/football and so forth on the other side) and NES-style platformers.

 

I don't know about ice hockey, but there were a few American football, basketball and baseball games for the Spectrum and Amstrad; you should be able to find them easily enough with a search on WOS or CPC Zone. I guess the thing is that they're all minority sports over here, so they're never going to be as popular as football, cricket, tennis, golf, etc. which are all very well represented. To be honest, you could sum up the British attitude to sport as "there's football and some other stuff" which should explain a lot.

 

For platformers, I'm probably not the best person to stick up for the Amstrad and Spectrum here as - Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg and Dan Dare aside - it's not my genre, but there always seemed to be plenty of them including a good chunk of arcade and C64 ports that got rave reviews.

 

On the other hand, Head Over Heels, Fairlight, Elite etc. may not run quite as fast on the C-64, but they're still decent, playable ports of great games.

 

I guess I'm trying to say that while a C-64 gamer might not have enjoyed the very best version of every game around, they were able to enjoy the widest range of games at an overall very high level of quality.

 

I can see where you're coming from, but it seems a marginal thing to me and ultimately it's going to be quite subjective. Any system that produces the thick end of a thousand titles is going to have its own set of superior games and all that really matters is whether they are the ones that are most important to you.

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First I want to say a big hello to all the WOS people who have decided to come over to AA and check us out. Your research into the problem at hand has been very enlightening...

 

Now back to the topic of this thread. First I've got to say that I have absolutely no experience with the Amstrad 664 or ZX Spectrum since they did not come out in the US (although I could have sworn there was some sort of US version of the Spectrum, but I don't think it was the ZX), so those are off the list for me.

 

Of the remaining systems, I owned both an Apple IIe and an Atari 400 growing up (and yes I'll actually admit to being born in 1977). The Atari 400 came first for me in 1983, but it quickly got shoved aside when I got my IIe in 1986. The 400 wasn't a bad computer, I loved the Atari arcade ports for it (the Atarisoft Apple games weren't nearly as good), but the Apple II had so much more variety in games. Not being able to run a disk drive really hurt the 400 (well not without a memory mod), and severly limited the software available. Once I got into gaming on my Apple, I never looked back at my old Atari 400 except to play the occasional game of Miner or Donkey Kong. Now if you're including ALL the Atari 8-bit line, then it evens out the playing field a bit. However, I think the Apple II still wins, but that's just MHO.

 

As for the C-64, I only got one recently and I only have cartridge games to look at. I'd have to see a cross section of the titles available for both machines (Apple and C-64), but if the game was on both the C-64 generally wins. However the Apple II had three advantages over the C-64:

 

1. The disk drive was infinitly faster. We didn't require a Fast Load cartridge to get decent load times...

2. The Apple II was highly expandable, the C-64 couldn't come close. 8 slots baby!

3. (and I may be wrong on this one) The Apple II game library was larger. This was most likely due to the longer lifespan of the system.

 

 

 

Tempest

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@Tempest - the North American version of the Speccy was the Timex Sinclair 2068. It was a bit of a commercial disaster, though - being hamstrung not least by the fact that it wasn't properly Spectrum compatible out of the box (you had to buy a seperate cartridge containing the Speccy ROM before it would run most commercial Spectrum programs).

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1. The disk drive was infinitly faster. We didn't require a Fast Load cartridge to get decent load times...

 

Didn't the apple have 4-color graphics? I loved Swashbuckler and Karateka. But if that's the case the 16-color graphics on the c64 would take up space faster than 4-color graphics. So the same game on both systems would obviously load faster on the apple.

 

If you mean the disk drive was actually faster itself, then ignore me....I'm just throwing a bone in... :)

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1. The disk drive was infinitly faster. We didn't require a Fast Load cartridge to get decent load times...

The Apple disk drive was faster, but "infinitly" faster? :) Fair enough about the Fast Load cartridge comment, though for the price difference between the two machines, I could have bought a stack of Fast Load carts. Also, most commercial games after the first couple of years used their own loading protocol to drastically improve the load times. The hardware was capable of far greater speeds than the built-in OS routines allowed.

 

2. The Apple II was highly expandable, the C-64 couldn't come close. 8 slots baby!

The Apple II was highly expandable, but it's a common misconception that the C-64 isn't, just because it didn't have internal slots. All manner of expansions were made for the expansion port (aka the cartridge slot) - it just isn't as neat and tidy. Mine's currently expanded to include a 20 Mhz 65816, 16MB of RAM, a 115kbps UART, and I've got a 3.5" HD disk drive as a drive. All just "plug & play" - no soldering, not even a screwdriver was necessary.

 

3. (and I may be wrong on this one) The Apple II game library was larger. This was most likely due to the longer lifespan of the system.

Go back and read this thread, and see if you still believe this one :) I think there's exactly one person still clinging to this belief...

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The Spectrum also produced some excellent RPG-style games in its own right such as Heavy On The Magick, Chaos, and Lords of Midnight. They're certainly quite different from the American RPGs, but I'd say they're just as good.

 

I don't know about ice hockey, but there were a few American football, basketball and baseball games for the Spectrum and Amstrad; you should be able to find them easily enough with a search on WOS or CPC Zone. I guess the thing is that they're all minority sports over here, so they're never going to be as popular as football, cricket, tennis, golf, etc. which are all very well represented. To be honest, you could sum up the British attitude to sport as "there's football and some other stuff" which should explain a lot.

This kind of empasizes my point - the C64's international success meant that both US and UK-centric styles and trends in gaming were well explored. The differences are more obvious in sports games and RPGs (Lords of Midnight is quite cool, btw) but there are somewhat more subtle differences in many other genres also, and I think the C-64 is richer for the diversity.

 

For platformers, I'm probably not the best person to stick up for the Amstrad and Spectrum here as - Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg and Dan Dare aside - it's not my genre, but there always seemed to be plenty of them including a good chunk of arcade and C64 ports that got rave reviews.

I'm emphasizing NES-style platformers for a reason. NES platformers like the Super Mario Bros. series defined 8-bit gaming for huge numbers of people. The C64 is able to do a very respectable job in this area, while Spectrum attempts look laughable (though I realize that they can be extremely playable).

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1. The disk drive was infinitly faster. We didn't require a Fast Load cartridge to get decent load times...

 

Didn't the apple have 4-color graphics? I loved Swashbuckler and Karateka. But if that's the case the 16-color graphics on the c64 would take up space faster than 4-color graphics. So the same game on both systems would obviously load faster on the apple.

 

If you mean the disk drive was actually faster itself, then ignore me....I'm just throwing a bone in... :)

 

Well I was referring to the disk drive itself, but you do bring up a good point. I think the original Apple II's were only 4 color, but starting with the II+ they added a couple more colors and eventually another few later on. I'm sure some Apple II expert would know what I'm talking about.

 

 

@Tempest - the North American version of the Speccy was the Timex Sinclair 2068. It was a bit of a commercial disaster, though - being hamstrung not least by the fact that it wasn't properly Spectrum compatible out of the box (you had to buy a seperate cartridge containing the Speccy ROM before it would run most commercial Spectrum programs)

 

Ahh yes that was it. I know I looked into one at one point but decided it wasn't worth bothering with because of the compatibility issue.

 

Tempest

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I disagree that you must have owned all of the different machines. I never owned an Atari 8 Bit machine until recently, and between the 800 and the ST, I wasn't really aware that there was the whole XL line... and that is PART of the problem.

 

You could buy a loaded C=64 machine and all the peripherals at Gemco, at Toys R Us. They just dominated the supply chain, and thus, dominated the market. Because of this, everyone else became an also-ran, regardless of the capabilities. The C=64 was the VHS of the 8 bit PC era. You could get software, supplies and peripherals EVERYWHERE. This is probably a significant reason why the Amiga buried the ST in relative terms (both had unfairly short lifespans with the arrival of 386 VGA PC machines). The Amiga 500 leveraged the same sales channels as the Commodore 64 and 128... while the ST was stuck in Federated and specialty botique shops... The perception was... Commodore and Amiga are EVERYWHERE... Atari, you're limited to one store... that went out of business in short order.

 

I have Atari 8 Bit machines now... and they're cool... and Atari definetly leveraged their arcade licenses and properties very well on their PCs... not to mention, they just had such a WEALTH of software spanning such a long period of time. Too bad they didn't use this same tactic on the ST. But, anyhow... in retrospect, I want an Atari now because it was such a cart oriented system and carts are simply less hassle that the disk images of cracked C=64 titles that are available now. I'm basically using them as glorified consoles. The C=64 was such a disc oriented system, that cart based games were just never even a question for that platform. There were titles that were available... but I know at the time, I would have NEVER invested in a cart version if there was a disc based version available. Not to mention... who actually BOUGHT much of their C=64 software library? This isn't really a viable option for most people when most of your titles are cart based.

 

All of these reasons are why the C=64 dominated that era, and because it dominated in this way, it was "best". Now... technically, I think when you take a like game... Archon, for example, the C=64 verison is almost always superior, as well. Generally Atari games were designed for the lowest common denominator... which was one of the 16kb machines... or maybe 48k... with a handful of titles that require a full 64k. With the C=64, they knew what resources they were going to have, and they knew that it wasn't going to limit their market or remove potential customers to use the full potential .

 

With that said, I see no reason to own a C=64 today outside of nostalgia. An Atari 8bit will do just as well, with a lot less hassle.

Edited by Paranoid
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Being a huge american football fan living in England there were quite a few american football games for the Speccy as i bought them all !

 

Best 8 bit computer, well for all of the 80's/early 90's i had a Speccy so i will have slightly biased views as many people do in these sort of discussions. Firstly the Amstrad was a great computer but as it came a bit too late the vast majority had a C64 or Speccy so i always put an Amstrad third.

 

My best friend had a C64, some games i was very jealous about (Rambo, Ghostbusters), other games i thought phew i'm glad i have a Speccy (Bombjack and others).

 

To me the best games are about playability, the Atari VCS has simple graphics but some great playable games, yes the Speccy had monochrome graphics but they were more detailed. The C64 were more colourful, blockier but also on the whole better tunes.

 

At the end of the day it depends on the programming team, Lightforce on the Speccy is a great shoot em up with no colour clash and is colourful as anything. However later in the Speccy years it seemed a case of 'right get that TV license, get a game out ASAP' and despite no colour, poor sound it would sell loads and make a profit. With the right designers/programmers great games could be produced.

 

But as i say its all about playability to me, the best games are the ones you obviously go back to and play, great sound adds to the experience so does colour but the best games are the playable games regardless of sound/colour.

 

Because it was huge in the US Commodore had a ton of great games, was very popular in the UK also and was a great machine. The Speccy was huge in the UK and other parts of Europe, not the US sadly but for me it had so many great games, so many varied games and what i miss which we had on the C64/Speccy was so many original games, dont seem to get so much of that nowadays.

 

With emulators i love trying different versions of games on the Speccy and C64, i love Commando on both machines which are quite different and Rambo as the C64 version is very good.

 

The Apple i cant say anything about really, they werent popular in the 80's in the UK, i didnt realise how big they were in the US i always thought Commodore ruled the roost back then. Someone said 250 games or something though were available ? Doesnt sound the best gaming machine.

 

As i said i love trying emulators, playing Atari VCS, Atari 800 or Atari ST games on my emulators on my Pocket PC/GP2X I love doing. Really takes me back to that golden age. Sorry to waffle on, just love 8 bit computers and their old games which soooo take me back to my younger years !

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North American sports (Football/grid iron, ice hockey, basketball, baseball) (I realize this may be obvious, but they really are a huge part of computer/video gaming - and the C-64 does a good job of representing cricket, soccer/football and so forth on the other side) and NES-style platformers.

 

In the UK american football was quite huge in 1985 when of course the Bears took the world by storm, several games came out, one called Superbowl which was pretty dire, one called Headcoach which was an american football management style game which i totally loved and played non stop. A few other crappy management games and a few more arcade style games which werent that good.

 

There werent many great ice hockey games, we had a good basketball game and baseball game which both did very well in the Speccy charts when they were released. For soccer games there were a fair few but only a few gems to be honest with you.

Edited by psj3809
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This kind of empasizes my point - the C64's international success meant that both US and UK-centric styles and trends in gaming were well explored. The differences are more obvious in sports games and RPGs (Lords of Midnight is quite cool, btw) but there are somewhat more subtle differences in many other genres also, and I think the C-64 is richer for the diversity.

 

The thing was that we still got a lot of those games through the conversion industry. (Yes, even ice hockey; I had to hunt around a bit to find them but there are versions of Winter Sports and Slap Shot for the Spectrum and Amstrad although having played neither I can't say how good they are in comparison to the C64/Atari versions.) Obviously not all of them, as there are around twice as many C64 titles in circulation as Spectrum ones, but surely enough to get a good flavour of all genres.

 

To be brutally frank though, I thought the UK market was getting rather flooded with conversions of American games in the late 80s, to the extent that better original games from European developers were getting squeezed out of the market. Still, there's no accounting for taste, is there? ;)

 

I'm emphasizing NES-style platformers for a reason. NES platformers like the Super Mario Bros. series defined 8-bit gaming for huge numbers of people. The C64 is able to do a very respectable job in this area, while Spectrum attempts look laughable (though I realize that they can be extremely playable).

 

You could say that, but in the land of the retro gamer, playability is king. :cool: I'm no great fan of them myself, but Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands are a couple that are always up high on the charts of the WOS top 100 so, despite the fact that they're not much to look at, I'm sure they've got something going for them.

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An interesting thread folks. Two great things the Speccy had in its favour was its affordability and ease to develop for. This meant people could take risks and develop unusual titles and if they didn't sell well, then they didn't lose a great deal of money.

 

I think the Speccy has the most diverse range of titles of all the 8-bit computers. Look at games like Skool Daze (effectively a school 'simulator' which also made it to the C64 but the sequel didn't), Chaos (an eight-player massively involving rpg-style arcade game), Lords of Midnight , The Great Escape, Everyone's A Wally (arguably the first arcade game to let you switch between different characters), Tir Na Nog, and many more.

 

It of course had several commercial failures, but some very interesting ones including Fat Worm Blows A Sparky (erm, words do fail me), Deus Ex Machina (weird game that effectively completed itself, came with a soundtrack on cassette) and Juggernaut (an underrated gem from Pete Cooke - a realistic (well...) juggernaut sim - you deliver goods to various places - sounds boring, but the joy was in mastering the controls and the various nice touches).

 

I owned both a Spectrum and C64 (and VCS, MSX, played on a friend's CPC, etc) and did play on the Spectrum a lot more. I think its limitations are part of the charm. Without attribute clash Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy wouldn't have come out like they did (I won't go into why I believe this is so here). Nostalgia is of course playing a part here but it is grounded on knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the Spectrum as a gaming platform, and a wealth of experience of playing Spectrum (and several other formats') games.

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In retro-gaming NOSTALIGIA and playability are both important. I will readily concede that playability is the ultimate factor (as I often find games that I remember fondly that I cannot stomach today)... but, how much draw does a console that you have no previous experience with have today for most retrogamers? Not as much as a conolse that you have tremendous experience with, at the very least.

 

I've got consoles I didn't have back in the day. I have a couple Atari 8 Bit computers, (and I do not, and don't plan, to add a C-64 to my collection unless I come by it in a can't-pass deal). But in general, my Intv, my Vectrex... they don't get as much milage as my 7800 (which I also didn't have back in the day, but I did have a 2600, and that is my primary reason for the 7800) and 5200.

 

I mean, at the very least, a poll like this, one can only choose what one is familar with. By that measure alone, the C=64 is likely to dominate, even on an Atari oriented board and despite the VERY long run of Atari 8 Bit PCs. Because, in the most simple terms, the C=64 was the most successful and familiar 8 bit PC of all time.

 

And the same advantages that applied during its production lifecycle apply during retro collecting. The massive numbers of machines sold, the massive accessibility of software, peripherals, support... the things beyond the simple power of the machine, all translates into a more accessible platform to collect for today. Beta may still be technically BETTER than VHS... but you still can't DO as much with Beta as you can with VHS, even if both standards are obsolete today.

 

It isn't a perfect analogy. Homebrew titles don't happen on old video formats, for example. But it is close enough.

 

Not that I disagree with your opinions. I have NO experience with the Spectrum, and so it may be a very fine machine that you recall fondly, that eclipses the Commodore 64 in your experience.

 

But that opinion will *never* win the poll, arcoss a large enough, geographically distributed sample. :)

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It is worth noting that the poll isn't worded very well to represent the 8 Bit era. I think Atari would have more votes if it had said, "The Atari 8 bit home PC line"... or something to that effect. Putting the 400 as the only choice for Atari is like putting the Vic-20 as the only choice for Commodore. I'm not tearing on the original poster, as he has already admitted he didn't know about a lot of the other choices available. So the poll shows a BIAS toward the C=64... well... doesn't that kind of go along with my point?

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He hasn't posted anything further and we've managed to have some pretty good topic related discussion the last page or so. Maybe, we should keep it that way and let that other business go.

-Ray

 

Indeed Ray , and this will be my last word on the subject. However for Informations sake I will at least point out that Mr Kizza did NOT PM any "details" to one of the WOS members. All he did say we are told , is that he would post some screen shots to prove his claims "when he has time". Not really saying much at all I guess.

On a lighter note though , if time is an issue then help is at hand , and some kindly chap at WOS has already done the job for him.

http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/1516/kizzavt9.png :P

 

As for the real topic I guess I owe it to this forum to at least give an opinion.

 

Despite being a major league speccy fan I think its pretty clear that the C64 was the best all round games machine to have at the time. I wanted to punch my C64 owning friend out of pure envy when I saw Uridium and Dropzone running for the 1st time. And I loved the Sid chip and still to this day think it made the AY sound like a pocket calculator. The only area it seemed to lack (as has already been pointed out) was in the 3D department , but even then , with the right programing skills it was more than capable as games like Mercenary, Elite and The Sentinel show.

 

And thomasholzer PLZ.... "(That's why all those WOS guys here registered all the sudden and replied to defend their platform )" Yeah right.... whatever you say.... to defend our platform....... Like I just did.... :roll:

 

Well, whatever the reason it is nice to have some new blood on the forums and my respect for the Spectrum certainly includes its fans and bearers of the torch. It is an INCREDIBLY underated machine and I am thrilled to have knowledgable people here to discuss it with.

 

-Ray

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An interesting thread folks. Two great things the Speccy had in its favour was its affordability and ease to develop for. This meant people could take risks and develop unusual titles and if they didn't sell well, then they didn't lose a great deal of money.

 

I think the Speccy has the most diverse range of titles of all the 8-bit computers. Look at games like Skool Daze (effectively a school 'simulator' which also made it to the C64 but the sequel didn't), Chaos (an eight-player massively involving rpg-style arcade game), Lords of Midnight , The Great Escape, Everyone's A Wally (arguably the first arcade game to let you switch between different characters), Tir Na Nog, and many more.

 

It of course had several commercial failures, but some very interesting ones including Fat Worm Blows A Sparky (erm, words do fail me), Deus Ex Machina (weird game that effectively completed itself, came with a soundtrack on cassette) and Juggernaut (an underrated gem from Pete Cooke - a realistic (well...) juggernaut sim - you deliver goods to various places - sounds boring, but the joy was in mastering the controls and the various nice touches).

 

I owned both a Spectrum and C64 (and VCS, MSX, played on a friend's CPC, etc) and did play on the Spectrum a lot more. I think its limitations are part of the charm. Without attribute clash Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy wouldn't have come out like they did (I won't go into why I believe this is so here). Nostalgia is of course playing a part here but it is grounded on knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the Spectrum as a gaming platform, and a wealth of experience of playing Spectrum (and several other formats') games.

 

Actually I would very much like to hear your theory on attribute crash as associated with the Speccy's most famous title character.

 

-Ray

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