[dlfrsilver]

Well, for my own part, i owned a CPC 6128 with english keyboard since the 9 january 1986.

What i can say about it is the progression curve of learning and also the computers capacities were in the end much larger than those of the C64 and the ZX spectrum.

When i started on the CPC, we had basic program, a few ASM Z80 commercial games, very simple and rigid for the first ones, and average to very good for the second....
As soon as years passed the games proposed on CPC were better and better (more colors, more effects, bigger sprites, smoother scrollings, etc).

The CPC had a color scheme that was corresponding to the ST and Amiga own color palettes, minoring the greyish/brownish tones. the ST and the Amiga had no "real life" colors (and anyway, who cares ? We used them mostly for gaming, not to paint real life scenes XD).

I then passed on Atari STF in 1991 (a gift), and it had a better resolution+colors than my CPC at the time. Then in november 1992, i got my first Amiga 600.

in 2001, i bought my first A1200, and it was awesome. My next period of time was "did i missed anything from computers i did not had at the time ?".

From there, after reading here and there that the C64 was great (and better than the CPC), i bought 2 models : a C64 breadbin french model, and a german C64C in a huge pack with floppy drive.

The complicated part came afterwards : which games can i buy, and test hoping they would be better than what i have known until now on CPC ? It got complicated. There are far more better games on CPC easy to find than it is on the C64.

On the CPC, we were used to games with rigid playability, but also good ones and bad ones. On the C64, i found the games to have the same problems as seen on the CPC, i found no games with superior playability. Some games played just fine but nothing extraordinary.

In fact, the only games that had something more on the C64, were the games offering med res with 16 colors (ex: Bart Simpsons vs space mutants, that i found better graphically on the C64). The mode 0 on CPC was not really well used on that game.

regarding the tape deck commodore and the floppy drives, those were a disappointement on the C64 : old ways, and oldish technology. the loading speed is way too limited on the C64 to my taste, nevermind the ultra sluggish floppy drives.

I was too used to the faster loaders of the CPC, both on tapes and floppies (the CPC drive runs at 300rpm, the C64 stays way way behind). And all those pretty eproms made for the C64 to make the hardware run faster for loading is incompatible with the original software, as they break the copy protection systems.....

Stormlord on C64 is copy protected, and the original game disk took a shitload of time to end its loading (i could have loaded 4 big games on CPC in the same time!)

Next, i have been very disappointed on the C64 by the mindset consisting to say : "look, you have a 50fps hardware scrolling, and hardware sprites". Ok, but this is an assistance, this is not the warranty for a game to be good. When i bought Batman the Movie on C64, i got so much disappointed (i had the CPC version of the game, which i mastered well), the 50fps scrolling was used to make the main sprite falling down slowly "moonlanding style", and the enemies were incredibly stupid compared to the CPC version.....

The problem exists also on Amiga, some games do use the 50fps hardware scrolling, but they are shitty, because such features are not a warranty of a good game.

So in the end, after trying many games on C64 with the 1541 ultimate II+ board, the only segment that made me say "ah yes that's great", is the demos on the c64.

Few years after, i was in a silly mood, then asked myself "hhmm and what about the Zx Spectrum, why not finding one in UK ?"

I then went to buy one cheap, a +2 made by Amstrad, much better manufacturing quality than the sinclair ones. From here, i made modifications on it, in order to stop the tape sound "bleeding" during loading (that's the source of the many read error you can have on this machine). I bought and tested some games that i own or tested already on CPC and C64, and the playability was good on many titles played. the only thing that kills me on this machine is the monochrome colors.

On the Commercial side, it has to be noted that the C64 sold in such big quantities due to one specific aspect : it was sold as a toy into the toy shops like Toys'R'Us in USA and in other places in the world.

The ZX spectrum was sold as computer, and that's also the case for the Amstrad CPC.