Was the C64 good or bad for the games industry?

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

It's not quite right to say they were already available, but it's not entirely wrong as that article itself states. The project did indeed start out as an arcade board that Commodore planned to sell to others (they didn't really seem to have a plan but what's new!). By the time the chips were ready, Commodore wanted a 64K computer and so the "plan" just pivoted into what they wanted now

Chips were done by Autumn 81 for the arcade motherboard project, Jack decided not to go forward with that project, the VIC40 project used them after that project.

What made C64 unique is was VIC-II/SID/1mhz 6510/64kb base spec RAM. 3/4 cutting edge aspects for the time and 1/4 totally acceptable given the lightning fast 1kb+1kb C64 screen/color memory setup. Even when it comes to 3D games about half are the same speed on C64 (Lucasfilm, Scarabeus, Skyfox, Test Drive 1/Grand Prix Circuit by Accolade, Never Ending Story etc).

The only thing bad for the industry was people running large software houses grabbing licences and then pumping out any old bullshit after publishers farmed out projects to any idiot(s) who offered to do it.

very few games on any computer system got close to [technically] best possible audio/video/machine code. amiga is probably the worst of all in the world due to it's potential vs reality of what booted up.

What's interesting is the ZX/CPC games seemed to progressively improve right up to their commercial end but for some reason last few years of C64 games were colour ram devoid/awesome SID sound devoid projects just shat out on average. Glad I left the 64 scene in 88, right time to move on IMO.

[roondar]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

What's interesting is the ZX/CPC games seemed to progressively improve right up to their commercial end but for some reason last few years of C64 games were colour ram devoid/awesome SID sound devoid projects just shat out on average. Glad I left the 64 scene in 88, right time to move on IMO.

I don't agree (that is, about the C64 having poor games in it's last few years). In my opinion, many of the C64's best games, either from a tech perspective, art/sound perspective or gameplay perspective (or from all three perspectives) were released in 1989 onwards. Now not all were platform originals or exclusives, but still all were amongst the best on the platform.

Just a few examples of great and well known post 1988 games on C64:

• 1989 saw Project Firestart, Myth, X-Out, Retrograde, Turbo Outrun as well as games like Curse of the Azure Bonds, Starflight and War in Middle Earth
• 1990 saw Rainbow Islands, Turrican 1, Creatures 1, Flimbo's Quest, Ninja Spirit, Dragon Breed as well as games like Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, Ultima VI and Champions of Krynn
• 1991 saw Turrican 2, Exile, Turbo Charge, SWIV, Last Ninja 3 as well as games like Overlord/Supremacy, Elvira, Gateway to the Savage Frontier and Hero Quest
• 1992 saw Creatures 2, First Samurai, Nobby the Aardvark, Enforcer and also games like Space Crusade, Elvira 2 and Nick Faldo's Golf

And a special shoutout to Robocop and Golden Axe, not for being great games (though Robocop is OK until you reach the broken level), but for having great SID tunes.

True, by 1993 it started drying up quickly (with only really Mayhem in Monsterland in 1993 and Lemmings in 1994 as standout titles plus some lesser known German titles, some of which were pretty good actually), but that was also the commercial end of the C64 - Commodore may still have had it on sale, but they had stopped producing it and were just trying to get rid of remaining stock at that point.

There's lots more good post 1988 stuff (and many banging SID tunes), but much of it is not widely known and writing pages of text with example games gets tiresome, so stopped here.

[Megalomaniac]

The later 8-bit computer titles were mostly action games aimed at a new generation of younger players. People who'd bought a Spectrum, Amstrad or C64 (the last three that were really commercially viable) in 1984 were moving on to Amiga or ST (or even PC) by 1989 or so, but those machines were being sold second-hand to kids who wanted cartoony action games, mainly arcade conversions and film licenses (speaking as having been one such person myself), and indeed the computers were still in production until 1991 / 1992. The more adventurous, creative, mentally-challenging stuff was mostly being designed around the faster processors and bigger memory of the 16-bits. The C64 also suffered that disk drives weren't usually bought by new players, so a few of the great adventure / strategy games such as Elvira and Buck Rogers weren't available to all new players.

Of course, most great programmers who debuted on the 8-bits by about 1984 had moved on themselves by maybe 1988, so the later stuff was mostly by new coders too.

The C64's potential for 2D action games was based so much around the custom chips, and their fairly defined and well-documented abilities, that it was that bit harder to find anything new to do with the system that exceeded what programmers already knew, which might mean the C64 peaked earlier. Still, the games roondar lists (and others like Lions of the Universe and Armalyte) show that it hadn't reached its limits by 1988 on the action side.

Spectrum programmers realised pretty early on that 2D action games weren't its natural forte, and so spent its heyday concecntrating on more original and mentally challenging games. A few years on, the system suddenly needed action games which could compete with what the C64 had - hence stunning Spectrum achievements like R-Type, Rainbow Islands and Midnight Resistance, plus games which were monochromatic but played wonderfully, such as Chase HQ.

The Amstrad launched later and was often bogged down by Spectrum ports which didn't make use of its potential (and often exacerbated its disadvantages), but a few programmers were able to do great stuff like Zap't'balls, Super Cauldron, Comando Tracer, the best 8-bit Rainbow Islands - and a few like Myth and Lotus which were great despite Spectrumesque visuals, plus Iron Lord which was never released in English. The Amstrad's homebrew scene is perhaps the best of any 8-bit system too, in terms of how impressive a lot of it is next to make commercial titles.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

What made C64 unique is was VIC-II/SID/1mhz 6510/64kb base spec RAM. 3/4 cutting edge aspects for the time and 1/4 totally acceptable given the lightning fast 1kb+1kb C64 screen/color memory setup. Even when it comes to 3D games about half are the same speed on C64 (Lucasfilm, Scarabeus, Skyfox, Test Drive 1/Grand Prix Circuit by Accolade, Never Ending Story etc).

It does a good enough job with Pseudo-3D titles or "faked" animation style 3D like Scarabeus. Where you can really see the difference is with proper 3D like the Freescape games. Compare Castle Master on C64 and Spectrum and the Spectrum version is clearly faster. And that's not really surprising, it has a smaller screen display than the 64's bitmap mode and it is laid out in a less cumbersome fashion (not entirely sane but less weird) and has a bit more CPU grunt overall

But obviously the C64 design was a lot stronger when it came to 2D. Sprites and a tile map display format were absolutely king for the kinds of games that were most common in the 8-bit era.

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

What's interesting is the ZX/CPC games seemed to progressively improve right up to their commercial end but for some reason last few years of C64 games were colour ram devoid/awesome SID sound devoid projects just shat out on average. Glad I left the 64 scene in 88, right time to move on IMO.

I'm not sure that is entirely fair, there are also some great titles on the C64 from that era. But as much as there were some coders trying to "one up" their last effort, there were also plenty just trying to get something out as quickly as possible. The C64 probably made that easier, just keep the game within certain parameters and you didn't have to try too hard. The Speccy was a tougher beast to get going, so there was probably a lot more re-use of battle hardened code engines that carried a lot more features as a result of successive iterations.

The homebrew scenes on both machines (and to lesser extent the Amstrad) are genuinely impressive though. Things like Sam's Journey on C64 and the multicolour engines for the Speccy are mind-blowing. It never ceases to amaze me how many times people go "... But what if ..." and then try something nobody would've considered back in the day.

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by roondar

I don't agree (that is, about the C64 having poor games in it's last few years). In my opinion, many of the C64's best games, either from a tech perspective, art/sound perspective or gameplay perspective (or from all three perspectives) were released in 1989 onwards. Now not all were platform originals or exclusives, but still all were amongst the best on the platform.

Just a few examples of great and well known post 1988 games on C64:

• 1989 saw Project Firestart, Myth, X-Out, Retrograde, Turbo Outrun as well as games like Curse of the Azure Bonds, Starflight and War in Middle Earth
• 1990 saw Rainbow Islands, Turrican 1, Creatures 1, Flimbo's Quest, Ninja Spirit, Dragon Breed as well as games like Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, Ultima VI and Champions of Krynn
• 1991 saw Turrican 2, Exile, Turbo Charge, SWIV, Last Ninja 3 as well as games like Overlord/Supremacy, Elvira, Gateway to the Savage Frontier and Hero Quest
• 1992 saw Creatures 2, First Samurai, Nobby the Aardvark, Enforcer and also games like Space Crusade, Elvira 2 and Nick Faldo's Golf

And a special shoutout to Robocop and Golden Axe, not for being great games (though Robocop is OK until you reach the broken level), but for having great SID tunes.

True, by 1993 it started drying up quickly (with only really Mayhem in Monsterland in 1993 and Lemmings in 1994 as standout titles plus some lesser known German titles, some of which were pretty good actually), but that was also the commercial end of the C64 - Commodore may still have had it on sale, but they had stopped producing it and were just trying to get rid of remaining stock at that point.

There's lots more good post 1988 stuff (and many banging SID tunes), but much of it is not widely known and writing pages of text with example games gets tiresome, so stopped here.

100% right. The best 64 games came out around 1987 and later.

[CCCP alert]

Originally Posted by roondar

I don't agree (that is, about the C64 having poor games in it's last few years). In my opinion, many of the C64's best games, either from a tech perspective, art/sound perspective or gameplay perspective (or from all three perspectives) were released in 1989 onwards. Now not all were platform originals or exclusives, but still all were amongst the best on the platform.

Just a few examples of great and well known post 1988 games on C64:

• 1989 saw Project Firestart, Myth, X-Out, Retrograde, Turbo Outrun as well as games like Curse of the Azure Bonds, Starflight and War in Middle Earth
• 1990 saw Rainbow Islands, Turrican 1, Creatures 1, Flimbo's Quest, Ninja Spirit, Dragon Breed as well as games like Buck Rogers: Countdown to Doomsday, Ultima VI and Champions of Krynn
• 1991 saw Turrican 2, Exile, Turbo Charge, SWIV, Last Ninja 3 as well as games like Overlord/Supremacy, Elvira, Gateway to the Savage Frontier and Hero Quest
• 1992 saw Creatures 2, First Samurai, Nobby the Aardvark, Enforcer and also games like Space Crusade, Elvira 2 and Nick Faldo's Golf

And a special shoutout to Robocop and Golden Axe, not for being great games (though Robocop is OK until you reach the broken level), but for having great SID tunes.

True, by 1993 it started drying up quickly (with only really Mayhem in Monsterland in 1993 and Lemmings in 1994 as standout titles plus some lesser known German titles, some of which were pretty good actually), but that was also the commercial end of the C64 - Commodore may still have had it on sale, but they had stopped producing it and were just trying to get rid of remaining stock at that point.

There's lots more good post 1988 stuff (and many banging SID tunes), but much of it is not widely known and writing pages of text with example games gets tiresome, so stopped here.

Technically poor, piss poor factory production line coding and/or idiotic waste of VIC-II banks for loads of multiplexed sprites with hi-res overlays==drab backgrounds in 4-5 colour 1982 quality wank. Few games are as colourful as Nobby or Katakis. The talent was gone from the 64 scene by 1990. I should know I played them all from 1983 to mid 1990 on C64 and CPC from 84to 1990

[roondar]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Technically poor, piss poor factory production line coding and/or idiotic waste of VIC-II banks for loads of multiplexed sprites with hi-res overlays==drab backgrounds in 4-5 colour 1982 quality wank. Few games are as colourful as Nobby or Katakis. The talent was gone from the 64 scene by 1990. I should know I played them all from 1983 to mid 1990 on C64 and CPC from 84to 1990

I disagree. And I'll leave at that. I have better things to do than write posts where I actually check if I got the dates and games correct only to be met with this kind of nonsensical response.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by roondar

I have better things to do than write posts where I actually check if I got the dates and games correct only to be met with this kind of nonsensical response.

Indeed. CCCP/Immortal's posts are very 'specific' and in general it is a good idea to just leave them be.

[Megalomaniac]

I disagree too. Fancy backgrounds (that all-too-often clash with the foreground gameplay) aren't what make a good game. I'd rather use the spare custom-chip power on improving the sprites, as long as it doesn't mean making them too big. It sometimes feels like C64 owners became a bit superficial in their tastes, after years of audiovisually impressive games with often-interchangable gameplay, and unfortunately this guy seems to back that up. Mayeb that's where my negative stereotype came from?

[roondar]

My final post in this thread is simply this: I too played all those C64 games, as I owned one until 1992 when I got an A500. So, no. I don't need people to tell me that they "know" how the games played/looked/sounded as I played them myself on real hardware.

In fact, I've replayed many of those games multiple times even as of today, as I still have a C64 and semi-regularly power it up (and of course we all also have emulators to use).

[Retro-Nerd]

As is said: What a strange thread. This is perfect trolling and not a serious discussion about anything. Typical internet behavior.

[WayneK]

The short answer is: Good.
Many of the games you played on Amiga were coded by people who got their start coding C64 - indeed there are still a few dinosaurs from that era still making games today!
Anyone who has played "The Finals" by Embark (ex-DICE, many ex-TSL members) will no doubt have seen the ingame spray called "RESET" which has the c64 reset syscall (sys 64738) on it... my guess is only a tiny fraction of players will have any idea what it represents

[Megalomaniac]

I still think the thread title is a worthy question, and it has generated some useful discussion - hopefully my own responses and time spent experimenting with further C64 games alongside their mostly-Z80 counterparts - have added something to it?

There's no dispute that the C64 was the best 8-bit system for 2D action games, however I do wonder how transferrable some of the skills that made the games great actually were. Was any later system really all that similar to coding VIC and SID? If you were used to depending on them to produce great games, what would you do without them, even if you suddenly had a faster processor and higher-resolution graphics. Its poor BASIC might have blunted some people's enthusiasm for programming before they got started in a low-level language, too.

All the same, you've only got to look at the LemonC64 100-votes top 100 to see the superb range of games which were made for the C64, even if a higher proportion of them were converted from elsewhere than the same list for LemonAmiga (or a list of the top 100 Spectrum games, indeed). Still, within platformers you've got Turrican, Impossible Mission and Creatures as C64 originals, and they're all significantly different from each other. Likewise Raid on Bungeling Bay, Paradroid and Wizball as shooters. It doesn't fare quite as well for adventures, sims etc, but it still gave the world Wasteland, Pirates!, Project Firestart and Maniac Mansion, to name but a few (being disk-based on a much greater level than the Spectrum or Amstrad was a big advantage there).

Undoubtedly plenty of great C64 coders did great Amiga (and otherwise) games - Manfred Trenz, Sensible and Andy Braybrook for a start - but if anything the BBC Micro / Acorn Electron (less than 2 million sold worldwide, mostly in schools) produced more great post-8-bit-era coders than the C64 (at least 12.5m sold worldwide) - and the Spectrum (5 million worldwide sales) certainly did. It definitely allowed for great games and often for great ideas to flourish, but whether it truly pulled its weight in terms of its impact on the future is debatable.

[Retro-Nerd]

This is utter nonsense. So, let me be blunt: Are you started this thread just for trolling, or did you ever played the best games for the 64 yourself? Did you ever check beyond some boring "Top 100" games lists? I don't think so. It's well known that the UK was highly action/arcade focused when it comes to games. Check the C64 library deeper and you find tons of good simulations of any kind, action adventures, text adventures, RPGs, puzzle games etc.

So, please stop being somewhat scientific about that. You cleary have no idea what you are talking about.

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

IWas any later system really all that similar to coding VIC and SID?

Sure. The NES,.Master System, SNES,.MegaDrive, TurboGrafx 16 - all essentially tile based systems with sprites. The C64 wasn't particularly unique in that regards as it was a pretty standard way of building arcade type hardware.

The 16-bit home computers like the ST and Amiga were probably easier to pick up if you had a background with machines like the Spectrum or Amstrad, as they were more focused on drawing frames into bitmaps (albeit with some hardware acceleration on the Amiga).

[Megalomaniac]

True that the C64 was good preparation for coding console games. Very few Europeans got the chance to code for the 8-bit consoles, Rare and Software Creations aside, but by the 16-bit era that opportunity did open up.

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

True that the C64 was good preparation for coding console games. Very few Europeans got the chance to code for the 8-bit consoles, Rare and Software Creations aside, but by the 16-bit era that opportunity did open up.

In that sense that was the Amiga that paved the way for euro developpers for the 16 bit console market and after. That's certainly because of their Amiga publication why Sony bought Psygnosis in the first place and Destruction Derby or WipeOut were big hits for the PlayStation.
With the likes of Rockstar North or DICE for the most briliants, I'm always amazed how many big developpers/publishers have deep Amiga roots (and how these Roots are overlooked).

[sokolovic]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

True that the C64 was good preparation for coding console games. Very few Europeans got the chance to code for the 8-bit consoles, Rare and Software Creations aside, but by the 16-bit era that opportunity did open up.

In that sense that was the Amiga that paved the way for euro developpers to the console market. That's certainly for their Amiga publication why Sony bought Psygnosis in the first place and Destruction Derby or WipeOut were big hits for the PlayStation.
With the likes of Rockstar North or DICE for the most briliants, I'm always amazed how many big developpers/publishers have deep Amiga roots (and how these Roots are overlooked). Even Bethesda in the US is an Amiga first company.

[lionagony]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

With the likes of Rockstar North or DICE for the most briliants, I'm always amazed how many big developpers/publishers have deep Amiga roots (and how these Roots are overlooked).

So true.

Even Bethesda in the US is an Amiga first company.

I didn't know that and was looking up their Wikipedia and this part was very interesting:

"While waiting for potential new contracts, the company acquired an Amiga personal computer with which the two began to experiment. Fletcher was a fan of American football and suggested that they develop a football video game for the system, which Weaver supported despite no interest in the sport. Fletcher developed the game, later named Gridiron!, out of Weaver's house in Bethesda, Maryland, in roughly nine months.

Electronic Arts was working on the first John Madden Football, and hired Bethesda to help finish developing it, and acquired distribution rights for future versions of Gridiron!. In June 1988, after no new cross-console version of Gridiron! had been released, Bethesda stopped work on the project and sued Electronic Arts for US$7.3 million, claiming EA halted the release while incorporating many of its elements into Madden. The case was resolved out of court."

So the Amiga was partly responsible for the Madden franchise too, it's fascinating how we helped silently shape the games industry with as you say very little credit. I tried to capture that idea in a thread from last year https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=116113

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

True that the C64 was good preparation for coding console games. Very few Europeans got the chance to code for the 8-bit consoles, Rare and Software Creations aside, but by the 16-bit era that opportunity did open up.

That's where home computers had a big advantage over consoles. Anybody who had one was potentially a game developer.

take Martin Webb for example;

The boy behind the biggest coin-op conversion of the 80s

Although Martin was only 17, he was already a seasoned programmer with more than a dozen games under his belt. The majority of these were original titles for the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A home computer which were mainly sold via mail order. His dad managed the business - and therefore Martin - and also produced the graphics for the games. The company, Intrigue Software, got off to a good start and built up a decent reputation in TI-99 circles.

But the TI-99 market was tiny and it would shrink further as the C64, Spectrum and other systems began to dominate. "We weren't making any money. Dad kept dragging me to the bank telling the bank manager I was a whiz-kid, and the bank manager increased the overdraft...

As the lending increased Martin started to look for a solution. The obvious one was to ditch the TI-99 and start developing games for more popular systems. He chose the C64 and spent around a year learning to code in 6502, then used his newfound skills to create a simple one-on-one fighter called Karate Chop. The next problem was how to sell the game. "The C64 and Spectrum markets had moved on and by now there were a few big players...

They took Karate Chop to Ocean Software, but the Manchester firm was already developing the coin-op conversion of Yie Ar Kung-Fu so turned it down. However another publisher, Melbourne House, snapped it up for £5,000. Enthused, Martin developed Max Torque, a clone of Sega's motorbike racer Hang-On, which they successfully sold to Bubble Bus Software. He then started work on a quick OutRun clone...

On the day the Webbs visited US Gold, they brought along a demo of their C64 OutRun clone, having no idea that the firm had just officially licensed the Sega coin-op.