Was the C64 good or bad for the games industry?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Tigerskunk

I might be wrong here, but weren't these on the Atari 8-Bitters at first?

Wasteland was first on Apple II, then got ported to PC and C64. There wasn't an Atari 8-bit release as far as I know.

Lode Runner was released simultaneously for the C64 and Atari 8-bits (along with other machines).

Bruce Lee and Archon were indeed released first on the Atari 8-bits.

[Samurai_Crow]

Re:bus speed on C64
The C64 was hobbled by the fact that all 4 MHz of the CMOS memory bandwidth was used up by 1MHz 6510 CPU fetches, 1 MHz external ALU (effectively doubling the CPU performance), 1 MHz VIC2 video fetching and 1 MHz character generator shape fetching. The PLA chip that divvied up the bus cycles had to run at the full 4 MHz to keep up with the round-robin bus accesses, causing it to be the first chip to burn up.

My regret about it was that there was no good way to page or burst fetch on it so it couldn't be improved much without 1) breaking compatibility like the C16 and Plus4 or 2) adding expensive additional chips like the 128 did.

[Retro-Nerd]

The C64 has enough own classics.



Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken
Last Ninja 1+2
Armalyte
IO
Paradroid
The Games series from Epyx
Wizball
Project Firestart
Katakis
Airborne Ranger
Space Taxi
Wizard
Microprose Soccer
Henry's House


To name just a few. And don't forget the aftermarket/homebrew games in the last 10-15 years. Amazing stuff like Sam's Journey, Steel Ranger, Eye of the Beholder port, Briley Witch Chronicles, Soul Force, Metal Warrior series, Knight'n Grail etc.

[TCD]

Not to mention Turrican.

[kremiso]

Impossible Mission started on c64 too
Beyond the Forbidden Forest was a cool exclusive

a nice Lemon64 thread about some exclusives :

https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=83568

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

The C64 has enough own classics.



Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken
Last Ninja 1+2
Armalyte
IO
Paradroid
The Games series from Epyx
Wizball
Project Firestart
Katakis
Airborne Ranger
Space Taxi
Wizard
Microprose Soccer
Henry's House


To name just a few. And don't forget the aftermarket/homebrew games in the last 10-15 years. Amazing stuff like Sam's Journey, Steel Ranger, Eye of the Beholder port, Briley Witch Chronicles, Soul Force, Metal Warrior series, Knight'n Grail etc.

The question isn't whether there were (and are) good games created for the C64, or whether it was (and is) a great machine to own. With a worldwide market of at least 12.5m, and a ten-year span of sales, there were bound to be. For what it's good at, it's great hardware - in most cases the closest thing you could get to an arcade machine in your home.

My question is more about the relative narrowness of the styles of those games. In this list the only ones which created new styles are arguably Maniac Mansion, Last Ninja, Project Firestart, Space Taxi and maybe Airborne Ranger. For invention you can add Wizball and MicroProse Soccer because of that zing of imagination and wit that they carry, and maybe Paradroid because of the grappling section. You can't really claim that Armalyte, Katakis and Henry's House were doing anything new or original, great games though they are.

I'm not seeing as much imagination as I'd expect from a system which globally outsold all the other major computers combined. Where was the C64's Elite, or Football Manager, or Turbo Esprit, or Ant Attack, or Dizzy, or Lords of Midnight, or Atic Atac?

[roondar]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

I'm not seeing as much imagination as I'd expect from a system which globally outsold all the other major computers combined. Where was the C64's Elite, or Football Manager, or Turbo Esprit, or Ant Attack, or Dizzy, or Lords of Midnight, or Atic Atac?

We can play the "let's pretend our system(s) of choice is/are more innovative than the C64" game with C64 originals as well as a neat counter. Here's some C64 originals (some have been named before):

Were was the <<insert non-C64 system here>>'s Little Computer People, Maniac Mansion, SimCity, Stunt Car Racer, Ghostbusters, Summer Games, Impossible Mission, Leader Board, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Mail Order monsters, Gribbly's Day Out, Quake Minus One, etc.

Note: this list, like others given before is just a small sampling of games, it is not exhaustive by any stretch. It just shows some of the more innovative games on the system. Also note that I chose most of these games to not be 2D arcade games. Also note: most of these games were ported from the C64 to other systems, but the C64 version was in all cases the first to be created.

To be clear here, I am not actually arguing that the ZX-Spectrum, Amstrad CPC or any other system were not innovative. My argument is that the idea that the C64 was not a place for innovative games or that the games that were innovative for the system were in 'narrow genres' is just, well... Incorrect.

The list provides by Retro-Nerd already establishes this, by the way. It is not narrow in genre in the slightest. You can't get much more different in genre than Maniac Mansion vs Space Taxi, or Summer Games vs Last Ninja.

[Adropac2]

I think also something to remember as a designer is that it's how you limit yourself within the limits. You can come up with something very uniquely abstract in gameplay design regardless of the conditions and that was likely the case for some working on C64 a lot of the time. I think having better conditions to work with in terms of a faster machine in the case of the BBC, this would have encouraged or better allowed ideas that otherwise might not have even been conceptualized were programmers to have owned a C64. Entirely doable concepts still on C64 despite being slower as later ports show but not something David Braben and Ian Bell will have maybe wanted to try. It was of course Ian Bell's 3d work I think that he'd been working on for example I guess thanks to the somewhat relative ease he got that working on BBC that Elite became a thing, so could that though of happened if all machines of the day were all at the speed of a C64? it's hard to say really but it's certainly a possibility

I think the C64 had a vast diversity of game types of that it can't be argued with a lot of those very different games being largely 2d then or utilising clever design within the confines of that. The imagination was certainly there from those best using the relative confines of the C64 in comparison to the far fewer defining games written by effectively only a few people on faster systems. For the few decidedly different games types on the BBC and Spectrum, there were lots of very innovatively designed games written specifically to what C64 allowed and therefore the argument could be turned on it's head perhaps, that the C64 had just as much imagination and in fact more but largely within the C64's strength at 2d. Spectrum and BBC for example could do 2d games but it was the C64 that largely dominated 2d innovation here

The idea being then that the C64 has only iterations of the same thing though because they were often 2d isn't identifying the truth of what these limitations allowed for and that the increase of power in other machines allowed for vastly more innovation is only so true given the amount of games that emerged compared to those of C64 and 2d games

[Korban]

Was the biggest selling computer of all time that was sold and predominately as a games system whose software sold well and launched many huge companies good for the gaming industry?
Is that really the question?

I'd have imagined there's a painfully obvious answer to that.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

My question is more about the relative narrowness of the styles of those games.

Yep, Maniac Mansion and Project Firestart are just like any other game on the C64. I really wonder if you actually played any of the games on the C64 before you came here to claim its 'relative narrowness of the styles of those games'. Please also have a look at Vermeer, Kaiser and Hanse while you are at it.

[Retro-Nerd]

Even good RPGs, the genres are endless imo. Very strange topic anyway. Gamebase 64 shows 30.000 game entries. Enough genre variation for everyone.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Korban

Was the biggest selling computer of all time that was sold and predominately as a games system whose software sold well and launched many huge companies good for the gaming industry?
Is that really the question?

I'd have imagined there's a painfully obvious answer to that.

It's not so simple.

Video game crash of 1983

The video game crash of 1983 (known in Japan as the Atari shock) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985, primarily in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality. Waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers also played a role. Home video game revenue peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983, then fell to around $100 million by 1985 (a drop of almost 97 percent)...

In 1982, a price war that began between Commodore and Texas Instruments led to home computers becoming as inexpensive as video-game consoles; after Commodore cut the retail price of the C64 to $300 in June 1983, some stores began selling it for as little as $199...Commodore explicitly targeted video game players... Commodore's ownership of chip fabricator MOS Technology allowed manufacture of integrated circuits in-house, so the VIC-20 and C64 sold for much lower prices than competing home computers. In addition, both Commodore computers were designed to utilize the ubiquitous Atari controllers so they could tap into the existing controller market.

"I've been in retailing 30 years and I have never seen any category of goods get on a self-destruct pattern like this", a Service Merchandise executive told The New York Times in June 1983.

[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.

[d4rk3lf]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

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).

What do you mean by that?
Even OCS Amiga have gigantic palette of 4096 colors, where you could pick just about any color you want, and many shades of the same color.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Adropac2

For the few decidedly different games types on the BBC and Spectrum, there were lots of very innovatively designed games written specifically to what C64 allowed...

the C64 had just as much imagination and in fact more but largely within the C64's strength at 2d. Spectrum and BBC for example could do 2d games but it was the C64 that largely dominated 2d innovation here

Certainly the C64's hardware was more suited to 2d action games. But if the C64 attracted more innovative 2d games because of its more advanced hardware, was that a good thing for the games industry? Porting those games to other platforms with less capable hardware would be tricky, and the results not so good. That would reduce sales on the other platforms. No big deal in the US perhaps, but in the UK most home computers were not C64s - and they would be missing out.

For example, The Last Ninja never appeared on the ZX Spectrum or Amstrad CPC, cutting out 60% of the market. But was this good or bad for the games industry? I think it was good because it left more room for innovative games to be developed on other machines. How sad would it be if most CPC games were just poor ports from the C64!

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

Even good RPGs, the genres are endless imo.

I'm still pretty amazed how well the gold box AD&D games worked on the C64. Of course those weren't the only RPGs that did. It is indeed a weird angle to blame the C64's game library for a lack of variety.

[oscar_ates]

Myth was quite good on C64 also the Creatures

[Retro-Nerd]

And don't forget "Litte Computer People". Decades before "The Sims".

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

For example, The Last Ninja never appeared on the ZX Spectrum or Amstrad CPC, cutting out 60% of the market. But was this good or bad for the games industry? I think it was good because it left more room for innovative games to be developed on other machines. How sad would it be if most CPC games were just poor ports from the C64!

Speccy did get Last Ninja 2 though, and it was faster (though less pretty) than the C64 version

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by stx2199

the Atari 8 bits is the best 8 bits computer from the era, even better than the C64 and the MSX
The atari 8 bits have more vivid colors better resolution and gfx than any other competitor

Yes, but not all at the same time. You must choose between resolution and colours, whereas the C64 (with its locked, limited palette) gives you more colours per resolution step to play with.
Due to the limited number of colours (but not gradients), Atari screens must use sprite overlays to compensate the lack of colours.

This may be observed in demos, where Atari demos are heavy on 3D/maths-heavy effects running in ultra-low resolutions which the C64 does not have, but basically in (tinted) grey-scale. C64 demos cannot match Atari demos when it comes to such effects since there are no resolutions lower than 160x200, but most other effects work better on the VIC.

This is not meant do detract the GTIA; display lists are an amazing tool and one may see their legacy in the Amiga’s Copper, but for most intents and purposes, the C64 will look more colourful than the Atari, despite the Atari’s vast theoretical palette.

and about the sound, you could say that it is tied with the c64

Never. Never never ever. POKEY, even if you add another POKEY for stereo and 16-bit resolution, never comes close to the filters of the SID.

The single POKEY has 8 bits per channel, an those 8 bits are not laid out on any human scale, so notes sound noticeably off. You may combine two channels for 16-bit resolution, but doing so you lose channels and you still do not have the filters and diverse waveforms of the SID.