Amstrad CPC 464 - 30 years old this month

[Cpt. Hindsight]

First: I don't like the CPC palette at all. Ouch, my retina still burns,but that's just a personal opinion, so it doesn't really count.

Looking at the games is a different story though. You didn't have to wait till the end of their lifes to recognize that the C64 was a lot better in terms of gaming. Just have a look at C64's blockbusters in '83-'85 (Beach Head 1+2, Epyx games series, Super Cycle, etc.) and compare them to the ports for the Amstrad. ...not even close.

Anyway, enjoy your CPC, but I'll always prefer the C64.

[hansel75]

What would of been interesting to see back then would be a skilled company like Thalamus make a CPC 464 game with the same high standards and coding trickery that they used in there C64 games.

Thalamus produced some of the most technically impressive C64 games like Sanxion, Delta, Armalyte, Hawkeye, Creatures, Summer camp etc, and they were very playable and smooth games as well as looking and sounding stunning!

An example of a Thalamus game that is actually my favourite shooter on the c64 is Delta, the ingame soundtrack is utterly amazing and goes for 11mins.
Also the sprite routines and use of colour are really slick, all this is in a single load and despite looking jerky in this video, it plays at a full 50fps with no slowdowns on a real c64.
Have a skip through this video for a look at a very well made c64 game, Witness the awesome salamander style levels at 7mins into the video-
[ Show youtube player ]

This is pretty slick as well, Mayhem in monsterland, really nice use of c64 colour-
[ Show youtube player ]

And this is a better example of what R-type could of been like on the c64, i thought R-type was actually pretty decent on c64 but Katakis is better again-
[ Show youtube player ]

I think if the cpc's lifespan had of been longer like the c64 had, we would of seen some much more technically impressive games on the cpc that exploited the machine more.
And that would of been really interesting to see as most of the time the cpc was never utilized fully in games!

Also for me, any defects that the c64 had were worth it just for the orchestra that was the almighty sid chip!

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by hansel75

Well for every technically good cpc game that scrolled smoothly etc, there where probably 10x C64 games that were just as good!

i have a C64, and sorry, but if many games have 50 fps scroll and "terrible" sound, most of the time, the graphics are so crap really. As bad as coin-op from early 80's graphics, really awfull. I don't buy that.

I have myself a C64. And when i compare the big productions like operation wolf or thunderbolt, or either chase HQ, just to name a few, and play it on my C64, sorry, but it's inferior to what we have on CPC. What makes a good game is the playability, animation, sound and graphics. The C64 mostly has playability (more or less, some games have crap control really), and the SID sound.

The only aspect i would regard the cpc to be better then the c64 in is it's colour palette, but in saying that the cpc colours can look very garish at times.

You're right about the garish palette. Here is the explanation :

After looking at it, it appears that most graphists fucked them big time on CPC, because they were not smart enough to transpose it without making it buggy from the C64. Just an example of this is stormlord. The graphist failed to use and transpose correctly the palette from the C64. It's not a technical problem, it's not a computer problem, it's clearly a problem between "the chair and the keyboard" as we say here.

And at least 99% of C64 games used full colour, a lot of cpc games where in monochrome like the spectrum versions, yes the cpc could of done colour in those games if the coders tried hard, but they didn't and a lot of the time took the easy way out with monochrome.

Yes let explain it like this : "Oh god, we're dumb, because we spent 4 months more on the C64 version and now we're in late to make a correct version for amstrad CPC....Oh no !!! Blimey !"

I'm kidding when i say that, but in the end this was what happened, you clearly see that it's the case. Coding for CPC is easier than coding for the C64 and all it's trickeries. The CPC is more straight forward. And look : the CPC had to run spectrum emulator, as it is for R-type, and that's why the game is so slow in its original version, not counting that the guy has 2 weeks to code the game !

And for every impressive cpc demo there where probably 20x times more on the C64 that shined as well!

The CPC has more than the guts for demos, if you just look the batman forever demo, sorry but i have not seen something equivalent on C64.
it's as good and equivalent to amiga or ST productions.

The 'overall' quality and quantity of the cpc range of games and demos simply cannot be compared to the huge amount of quality C64 releases.

I have looked at many C64 demos, and also quite a lot on CPC.

Mind you, the CPC demomakers were not trying to surpass the C64, they were trying to do things as good as the ones you can find on the amiga.

Sure the cpc might do more when put into the right hands, but these 'technically better then c64 examples' are really only a couple of examples in the overall scheme of things.

They are more numerous than what you think.

There so many games on the cpc that used flick screen, or most had slow jerky scrolling, and the games that scrolled and moved as smoothly as the c64 versions were rare.

there are rare games running at 50 fps on CPC. But it's not what we need.
If i want 50 frames per sec, i pick an amiga, with which i get the colors + the animation speed, not the C64.

[quote]And a lot of cpc games had very basic sound that sucked compared to the c64 versions, sure there are examples where the cpc can do good sound but a lot of games sucked sound wise.[quote]

In a lot of time, and to say things straight, the CPC had to wait long years to get tools that were really pushing their YM chip far. Startrekker soundtracker on CPC appeared in 1992-1993, not before.

The CPC is able to make great soundtracks, once again it's a problem between "the chair and the keyboard". Whitakker, page, Joseph, dave rodgers and others made legendary musics on amstrad CPC. Many others made shit.

Yes the cpc was more capable then what some of the old coders did with it, but it just seemed so much easier to do the same thing on a C64, without having to wait 30yrs for some clever coders to comes along and make an amazing looking cpc product.

The CPC as said by the batman forever demo team has only be used to something like 10%. Which is ridiculous.

This computer in the right hands (understand here with a good knowledge of the Cathodic Ray Tube Controller, something like the copper on the amiga), can do awesome games, almost 16 bits like.

Then there is the fact that some of these cpc examples that have been mentioned require a cpc with 128k ram vs the 64k on the C64.

You're right and get a point here. All the coders had the 464 with its 64kb of ram in mind, and yes, this was a problem. A computer like the CPC required at last 128kb of ram, better 256kb to pass the fence. With this much memory, no other 8 bit machine can come up to it. The video ram problem, hardware double buffer are no more a problem.

And keep in mind when using an example like the R-type remake on the cpc, if comparing it to the c64 version there is a 20+ year difference in release dates, of course the cpc remake is going to look nicer.

Right, but the abilities of the computers are unchanged. always the same.
Rtype enhanced is nicer, because the graphist did his job ! Correctly, and in the right way ! Not porting from C64 or Speccy !

[quote]And to my knowledge the cpc was a more expensive computer then the c64 was as well so in theory "it should of been better".[quote]

That's the full contrary. Sugar killed the C64 in France with the CPC for 2 reasons :

1- The price. a CPC costed 4990 francs with a color monitor. For this same price, you got a C64 with no drive, no TV, and no Datasette.

It's was a game console for rich people. In the other way, french engineers loved the CPC, and in companies, the amstrad was in every mouth. Perfect all purpose computer. The C64 was seen as a toy.

2- A C64 was sold with no monitor, and the parents hated that (fuck, again a console on the family TV, that's a NO!)

3- OMG! Look at this crap color palette ! Ehm, seller, do you have any computer not this expensive with a good color palette ?

4- Hello Mr seller, we would like to buy a family computer, we heard that the amstrad CPC is the top computer of the moment, where are they ?
Ehm.... Well, look i have this incredible C64 computer, with a great palette, a synthesizer sound, smooth scrolling..... Sir, we said we want a computer, not a toy or a console, and leave us alone with the palette.... Wait, you throw up on the screen or is it me ?

This is a caricature, but this was more or less what happened when seller in shops were trying to sell the C64 in France. It was so serious that commodore almost went bankrupt in France due the C64 failure.

This has been discussed before, but it's always a fun topic, i just hope i didn't start a cpc vs 64 war again

It's not a war. My father is an ex-engineer, and just as a test, when i bought my C64, i showed it to him, and i asked him what he thought of it.
Answer : that's a console with a keyboard or a toy !

I do have to ask this question though, if the cpc is so much superior to the c64, then why did a lot of it's games look jerky and slow compared to the c64 versions.

Because there were fanboys in the coders, and also mismanaged projects, where they spent too much time on a platform, with less time on others, not counting the guys coding with their feet.

Some CPC games have been massacred like some amiga games.

These 2 computers shares this same problem unfortunately

Sure the cpc has a faster cpu which is good for 3d wireframe games, but it lacked the custom chips to offload the workload from the cpu that the c64 has.

It has "custom chips" : the CRTC is one. it allows hardware scrollings.
It also have in ROM ready to use mathematical operation (COS, SIN, TAN), very useful for demos.

Just have a good look at the amount of sprites and stuff that's happening in a game like Armalyte on the C64 all as smooth as butter, i haven't seen anything on the cpc that impressive in a shooter.

Edge Grinder on CPC is a shooter in 16 colors, hardware scrolling and multiple enemies on screen with no slowdowns. Just try

And only one has to look at some of the stages in the Turrican games to see how impressive the c64 really was, the shooting stages in turrican 2 with there multi direction parallax scrolls and impressive sprites all running ultra smooth, plus it's quality colour and tunes, well enough said there.

Turrican is clearly not a good case to bash the CPC, either I or II.

I have turrican I and II on C64, and even if the CPC has no level musics,
i prefer it on CPC (16 colors, hardware tricks, parallax scrolls on both). Turrican series on CPC are legendary games, extremely well coded and ported from the 16 bits machines.

How many games on the cpc used parallax scrolling, no where as many as the c64 had i bet!

quite a number, but not as much as on the C64.

And if i should mention audio quality, i don't think there is much contest there when it comes to the Sid chip in which everything else sucked at the time!

some games on CPC have better musics than the ones on C64. robocop, Batman the movie, and i could continue on others.

The way i see it is the cpc vs the c64 is like comparing the st to the amiga!

Most CPC users were dreaming of the amiga, not the ST, and not the C64 !

The ST was a 16 bits computer that was 8 bits like on some parts, while the CPC has the guts to be raised as almost what was doing a 16 bits machine. Complicated heh ?

And as for the cpc dominating in France this is one small country, the C64 dominated the rest of the world and was alive and kicking well into the 90's.

Smaller than Germany, but France is one of the biggest country of Europe.

Dominating the rest of the world, but a little village was still resisting to the invader ! (if you read Asterix... )

In the 80's and 90's here in Australia i only knew one person who owned a cpc 464, yet i knew dozens of c64 owners over there lifetimes!

Same here, none of the guys i knew had a C64, too expensive, too complicated, not what we wanted. The CPC was in most families, next to the Atari ST and the Amiga.

There is a reason why the C64 was and still is the worlds biggest selling computer!

Yes, but not the ones you're thinking of !

And saying "Just to say that having games with 50 fps scroll and synth music" on the C64 like it was meaningless back in the 80's seems silly.

it's not silly. I don't know any mom and dad that would have paid a huge amount of money to get a console computer with no monitor and just to be able to see a scrolling running at 50FPS. they were akin to buy a full purpose computer, proposing both Excellent utilities and working programs, as well as fun games to play.

Why wouldn't you want a smooth 50fps scroll in most of your games and awesome synth sounds, every game that came out in the 80's on any format could of benefited from these aspects.

Because while it's awesome on a 16 bits computer like the amiga, it's crap on an 8 bits computer to me. I don't need a fast scrolling to kill my eyes on a 16 colors game with a crap palette.

Also gameplay comes into account here to, the smoother the game the more playable it should be.

It's not linked. And a wrong statement. Look by yourself : How many amiga games runs at 50 fps and have a bad or crap playability. Answer : a lot !
On CPC we had some games runs at 25fps having really bad playability (read : badly coded), and some running at the same speed with a good one. Same aroma exist with games running at 15fps.

You can say the cpc is technically better then the c64 from a handful of selected examples, but just go back and look at the last 30yrs worth of software in general for both systems and i think the c64 simply outshines the cpc in virtually every way!

Because the coders wanted it this way, and a lot of them were simply unable to handle the CPC, a simpler platform than the C64 ! Shame heh ?

Edit- Sorry for the novel

You wrote it, i published it !

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by hansel75

What would of been interesting to see back then would be a skilled company like Thalamus make a CPC 464 game with the same high standards and coding trickery that they used in there C64 games.

Thalamus produced some of the most technically impressive C64 games like Sanxion, Delta, Armalyte, Hawkeye, Creatures, Summer camp etc, and they were very playable and smooth games as well as looking and sounding stunning!

An example of a Thalamus game that is actually my favourite shooter on the c64 is Delta, the ingame soundtrack is utterly amazing and goes for 11mins.
Also the sprite routines and use of colour are really slick, all this is in a single load and despite looking jerky in this video, it plays at a full 50fps with no slowdowns on a real c64.
Have a skip through this video for a look at a very well made c64 game, Witness the awesome salamander style levels at 7mins into the video-
[ Show youtube player ]

This is pretty slick as well, Mayhem in monsterland, really nice use of c64 colour-
[ Show youtube player ]

And this is a better example of what R-type could of been like on the c64, i thought R-type was actually pretty decent on c64 but Katakis is better again-
[ Show youtube player ]

I think if the cpc's lifespan had of been longer like the c64 had, we would of seen some much more technically impressive games on the cpc that exploited the machine more.
And that would of been really interesting to see as most of the time the cpc was never utilized fully in games!

Also for me, any defects that the c64 had were worth it just for the orchestra that was the almighty sid chip!

just check this one :

[ Show youtube player ]

Features :

- detailed mode-0 16 color graphics,
- ultra-smooth and fast scrolling which runs constantly at 50 FPS
- fast-moving and well animated sprites
- nice in-game music which changes dynamically with the action!

So you see, the CPC is able to, when you have people that can in front of it !

[Neil79]

Now that's cool, will load it up on the HxC

[roy bates]

i think all the 8 bit machines were good in there own way.

[Neil79]

Originally Posted by roy bates

i think all the 8 bit machines were good in there own way.

Agreed

[hansel75]

I'm still only seeing a select few examples of these technically superior games and demos being shown, and the Batman demo has been mentioned a number of times now as a showcase.

Where are the other hundreds of high quality demos on the cpc that the c64 is known to have!

And i am seeing lots and lots of excuses as to why past cpc games were mostly inferior to there c64 versions, and only a handful of examples of where the cpc can apparently beat the c64.

Spectrum ports, lazy coders etc, or maybe it's simply a lot harder to do a smooth cpc game compared to the c64, even though the cpc is supposed to be technically better!

I wonder what a current day remake of a game like R-Type on the c64 would be like in some skilled hands, now that there is 30yrs of knowledge to go by when coding a new remake!

Maybe they should even do these remakes on a C128 to equal the playing field with the 128k cpc remakes!

As for having a computer back then that could do a smooth scroll and throw lots of sprites around the screen easily, well it may not of been the reason why the c64 was bought in the first place.
But once gaming on the it when a kid, i certainly realized it was nice to have those features in most games, and 90% of scrolling games were usually more playable on the c64 due to the smoother scrolling and sprite movement.

And i maybe mistaken, but isn't smoothness in a game considered a good thing compared to a slightly prettier but jerky game?
Smoothness helps playability, this is a fact in every game since day one, the smoother the game the more playable it is!

When i was younger in my circle of friends there were C64's, one cpc 464, an apple 2 and a C=+4, and all my friends envied the c64 the most by far, even the cpc owner!

While my cpc friend was showing off Everyones a Wally, i was playing games like Impossible Mission, Loco etc on the c64 and they blew the cpc away!

You can only judge a machine by it's software, and with up to 10000 utils and games available for the c64, and with a high number of them being quality technical releases that out shined all the other 8bit formats.
For me that's what counts, and only having a small handful of examples of cpc superiority like the Batman demo and half a dozen other examples is not really enough to convince me otherwise.

Seriously if you watch this 100 cpc games video-
[ Show youtube player ]

Then watch the 100 c64 games video straight after the cpc one-
[ Show youtube player ]

Apart from some more colourful looking cpc games, most of them look terribly jerky and blocky compared to the most of the games in the c64 video.

[s2325]

Elvira preview [ Show youtube player ]
Star Driver [ Show youtube player ]

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

just check this one :

[ Show youtube player ]

Features :

- detailed mode-0 16 color graphics,
- ultra-smooth and fast scrolling which runs constantly at 50 FPS
- fast-moving and well animated sprites
- nice in-game music which changes dynamically with the action!

So you see, the CPC is able to, when you have people that can in front of it !

Sorry but the colour is horrendous in that game, Armalyte and dozens of other C64 shooters look better then that and throw more sprites around the screen, and these C64 games are 20+ years old!

I suggest you have a flick through this video of C64 Armalyte to see a better use of colour, plus impressive scrolling and sprite routines, it may lack ingame music+fx but this was a rarity on the C64, one only has to look at a shooter like C64 salamander to see that it was easy to do music+fx on the c64 if they wanted to-
[ Show youtube player ]
[ Show youtube player ]

And pretty much 99% of C64 games ran in 16 colour mode, it was no big deal for the C64 to be able to achieve this!

And 50fps games were quite common on the C64 and not a rarity!

Edit- I will be the first to admit that the cpc could do some 3d games better, mainly wireframe 3d. But since this only accounts for probably 1% of all 8bit games, this didn't worry me on the C64.
I think it's safe to say that scrolling games with lots of sprites became the most popular by far and probably accounted for 3/4 of all 8bit game types, especially once arcade conversions started flooding into the 8bit market.

And i still stand by a game like Mayhem in monsterland on the c64, show me a cpc game that looks better, sounds better and more importantly moves as smoothly as this, and in fullscreen and not some tiny game window like a lot of cpc and spectrum games used-
[ Show youtube player ]

[BarryB]

This is starting to sound like a Betmax/VHS argument

[dlfrsilver]

@BarryB : True lol XD

@Hansel75 : Armalyte on C64 is exactly the same kind of game Super Edge Grinder is on amstrad CPC. The diff is that the CPC use a vivid palette. Armalyte palette is horrible ! Seems to be painted by a half-blind guy lol !

You see, this game could be done even more easily than R-type 2012 on CPC.

About Mayhem in Monsterland, yes it could be done on CPC in hard scroll (not in 50 fps because we don't need that), but i see nothing that the CPC can't do today.

A game like super cauldron is way more advanced than this one, not even speaking about Prehistorik 2. Even the standard CPC version use a hardware scrolling, and the screen is really big with many sprites on screen.

The CPC + is another story, it has a triple playfield, with hardware sprites, hardware scrolling, DMA soundtrack music (meaning that like the amiga, the sound is no burden for the CPU), and an amiga like palette (it needs 128kb for all these feats however).

[lordofchaos]

I really like the old CPC, I even swapped a Sega Mega Drive for one back in school (I got some strange looks for doing that). Still it's undeniable the C64 has shown it's self to be the better machine in the end, just go to pouet and start browsing the 100's of top rated demos..

The reason the C64 enjoys it's legendary status is because it's a very versatile and loved machine, the mountain of scene demos, apps, and games still produced today show that. But as dlfrsilver points there are some aspects that make the cpc stick out when in the right hands. I have to say I prefer the keyboard on the cpc though

In my humble opinion, it's not the hardware specs that measure a machines merits, it's the software produced on that machine.

[Cpt. Hindsight]

Download this and have a look. http://cloud.cbm8bit.com/addictaball..._DEMOS_CSDB.7z

Give me a link with 100 and not just 3 or 4 top demos for the Amstrad and I might rethink my opinion about the Amstrad/Schneider CPC series.

Around five games and five demos nearly reaching the quality of hundreds of C64 releases doesn't impress me very much. I guess I could easily find the same amount of games/demos for the Spectrum, TI-99, Atari 800, etc on the same level.

[Neil79]

Super Cauldron was pretty impressive on the CPC
[ Show youtube player ]

Pang on the CPC+
[ Show youtube player ]

Bubble Bobble Remake CPC
[ Show youtube player ]

[hansel75]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

@Hansel75 : Armalyte on C64 is exactly the same kind of game Super Edge Grinder is on amstrad CPC. The diff is that the CPC use a vivid palette. Armalyte palette is horrible ! Seems to be painted by a half-blind guy lol !

You see, this game could be done even more easily than R-type 2012 on CPC.

About Mayhem in Monsterland, yes it could be done on CPC in hard scroll (not in 50 fps because we don't need that), but i see nothing that the CPC can't do today.

A game like super cauldron is way more advanced than this one, not even speaking about Prehistorik 2. Even the standard CPC version use a hardware scrolling, and the screen is really big with many sprites on screen.

The CPC + is another story, it has a triple playfield, with hardware sprites, hardware scrolling, DMA soundtrack music (meaning that like the amiga, the sound is no burden for the CPU), and an amiga like palette (it needs 128kb for all these feats however).

A scrolling game running at a full 50hz refresh simply can't be overlooked, that was an achievement in itself back then and made the game better in every way with it's silky smooth movement!

I know a lot of C64 games didn't run at 50fps, there were quite a lot that probably ran at 25fps or even lower.

But in general there were a lot more c64 games that did the full 50fps compared to the cpc.

I have seen many old scrolling cpc games that look like there running at under 10fps and the sprite movement was horrendously bad.

Do you think a game like Super mario world on the snes would be as good if it only ran at 10-25fps instead of 50fps(or 60fps for ntsc)?

I guess back then they could of reduced the smoothness of c64 games to make them graphically better like some cpc games did, but the less smooth the less playable in my opinion.

And when i think about the 8bit wars in the 80's, i really think that only the c64, cpc 464 and zx spectrum should be used in the comparison as that is what 99% of people had!

If using an upgraded cpc model and then compare it to a stock c64, i don't see how this is fair.

One could always use the stats from a c128 with it's extra ram, or even the unreleased c65 if we wanted to see which 8bit machine was technically the best!
And should we also take the super cpu accelerators that are available for the c64 into consideration, in which i think gives you a 20mhz cpu!

I think a fairer comparison is a stock cpc 464 vs a stock c64.

As for Mayhem in Monsterland on the c64 which is a good example of a well made c64 game, nothing comes even close to it on the cpc 464, even super cauldron which doesn't look very smooth to play, mayhem on c64 feels like as smooth as an nes mario game!

And if it hasn't been done in the last 30yrs, it's unlikely you will ever see a cpc mayhem beater!

I also think when the cpc 464 uses it's high colour mode that the low res that comes with it makes the graphics look like chunky lego.

For every cpc batman demo there are dozens of c64 demos that look as good, for every Super Edge Grinder there are dozens of high quality c64 shooters that easily compare.
Same goes for Super cauldron, one example of a good looking and smooth cpc platformer, yet i could easily put up a huge list of c64 games that were as good if not better.

Anyway it was a nice debate but as always with fanboys like us, we will never agree, lol

Edit- The game Green beret is a good example of what most of your typical c64 games looked and played like compared to the cpc versions-
[ Show youtube player ]
[ Show youtube player ]

[Neil79]

Meh you all suck, ZX Spectrum was the best

[roy bates]

[ Show youtube player ]

[tomcat666]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

just check this one :

[ Show youtube player ]

Features :

- detailed mode-0 16 color graphics,
- ultra-smooth and fast scrolling which runs constantly at 50 FPS

It is actually running at 25 FPS ...

[roy bates]

you dont need 50fps anyway,24 is enough.