Amstrad CPC, much better than I thought it would be!

[Shatterhand]

Gradius on MSX isnt 5 frames/sec. The scroll is done in a block way, the rest of the game is very smooth.

Honestly, I find kinda hilarious all this flame war to decide what 8 bits computer is the best... even more when you consider the NES basically trumps all of them anyway.

My first post about the MSX being the best and the links was kinda goofy.

But let's keep it going.


Show me a shoot'em up better than Aleste 2 or Space Manbow on the C64 and I'll shut up.

[Retro-Nerd]

even more when you consider the NES basically trumps all of them anyway.

The NES was nearly not existent in Europe. We talk about 8bit computers which dominated the European market, together with the ST and Amiga. Consoles weren't important here until the SNES era started.

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

However, games taking 20 minutes and more on c64 are more often encountered (Commando for instance, is an horror to load on c64!)

Sorry, but this is just BS. According to FRGCB Commando tape loading times are:

C64 TAPE: 4 minutes 38 seconds.
CPC TAPE: 14 min 53 seconds.
SPECTRUM: 5 minutes, sharp.

The comment even says "The only thing I can really clearly recommend by this list, is to stay the hell away from the tape version on Amstrad". Maybe you are remembering the wrong version, that the Amstrad one was hell, not the C64?

I randomly checked a few other pages and most of the ones I picked had the slowest loading times on CPC (Cybernoid, Stunt Car Racer, Bionic Commando, Platoon, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge etc).

I believe Ocean had to alter their loading music to make it shorter because the games were loading too fast - and the last 3 Ocean loaders are all 3:10 or less, so about 3 and a half minutes to load a typical Ocean game from C64 tape would be about right.

[turrican9]

After C64 and Amiga I went straight to PC and now back to C64/Amiga again so I can proudly say I've never owned a console in my life.

[Retro-Nerd]

I guess Denis means cracked tape versions, not original tapes.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

The NES was nearly not existent in Europe. We talk about 8bit computers which dominated the European market, together with the ST and Amiga. Consoles weren't important here until the SNES era started.

When I was ten or twelve, everyone in my class had a NES, apart from one or two Sega owner and some with single mothers. No-one had a C64.

[Retro-Nerd]

That's fine for you but this wasn't the standard.

[roondar]

Before I begin this post, I’d like to say that I’m not trying to get people to change position about which 8 bit computer they want to use or think is the best. I’m only posting this to correct certain falsehoods being spread about the tape & disk loading speeds of the C64.

I shouldn’t really care, but I just don’t like misinformation - such as regular 9 minute load times being a thing for tape users on the C64.

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Roondar, it's not pure software if you need some hardware to store the software.

Oh for….….

If you don't believe a pure software solution can be fast on the C64, you can just take a look at the pure software (no cart here) Mafiosino's Loader (found over at https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/C...f_fast_loaders, bottom of the list). Which is close to 2x as fast as the FCIII cart based loader (19x vs 10x speed). And doesn't need any additional hardware.

Or check some more ‘pure software’ based loaders in the list at the bottom of this page: https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Fast_loader. For example, The Cyber Loader is 16x normal speed, as opposed to the FCIII's 10x speed.

There are more of those available. So, no… You do not need a cart to get a 10x+ speed increase loading from floppy on the C64. Please stop pretending & claiming that this is the case.

The space gained in graphic space in ram can be used on c64 to store music and sound fx. On CPC the whole 64kb ram space is used (i remember the coder saying that he fought for bytes !).

This often happened on the C64 as well, with coders complaining about trying to find free bytes. Nothing new or Amstrad specific there.

You told me the loading happened in 9 seconds in Opwolf with cart.
I answered the loading on CPC is done in 14 seconds.

I can’t find it back now, but I thought you said in an earlier post that the C64 loaded very slowly, with commercial disk games always taking several minutes to load. If you didn’t say that, I’m sorry to have misrepresented you.

Proving ? But the CPC is known to have a fast disk drive, and the ability to load lightning fast the games on tapes. And you're comparing apples and oranges, the amiga has to load way way more data ! And it mainly do track read !

I merely meant that the Amstrad’s loading speed seems too low to be equivalent to the Amiga’s loading speed - which you yourself suggested was how fast the Amstrad’s 3” drive loaded stuff.

I have some games using standard c64 schemes, like commando, which take ages to load, i can go out buying some chocolate, piss, wank a bit, and it's still has not loaded

None of my c64 tape games load in 2 to 5 minutes.

They all need between 4 and 9 minutes to load from start to the main menu of the game.

Well, proof is always better than conjecture so here are some examples from my own collection - all of these are single load and all are originals, not cracked copies. All of these also load a picture and most load music. Took a while to do this, but hey - I like tape loading music anyway :P

Timing was done manually using a smartphone stopwatch.

Zaxxon - 2 minutes 30 seconds
Parallax - 4 minutes 50 seconds
Arkanoid - 4 minutes 55 seconds
1943 - 3 minutes 50 seconds
Barbarian - 6 minutes - 10 seconds (this one is strange, the tape has massive 10 second gaps of silence between segments it loads in, if they shortened these it would have loaded in under 5 minutes as well)
Solomon’s Key - 3 minutes 55 seconds
Scorpion - 3 minutes 40 seconds

These games didn’t have loading screens, but are still from tape and single load
Foxx Fights Back - 3 minutes 10 seconds
Revenge of the Mutant Camels - 2 minutes 10 seconds
Lords of Midnight - 3 minutes
Doomdarks Revenge - 3 minutes 10 seconds

Also, I couldn’t resist so I got the Commando .tap file from somewhere because I just had to see how bad it was. And it loaded in 4 minutes, 40 seconds… Seems you are very fast at shopping, going to the toilet, etc

Not a single one of these came even close to 9 minutes and the vast majority of them didn’t even take 4 minutes to load.

None of this means the Amstrad didn’t load faster (which it may or may not do, I can't check that), but your statements about tape loading speeds on the C64 are just not true. Tapes don’t take 9 minutes to load to the main menu. Even your example of uber-slowness (Commando) is done in under 5 minutes!

Altered beast : 12mn30 on side B
Batman the movie : 11 minutes on side A alone.....
Deliverance Stormlord II : 19 minutes (CPC version 3 parts is 11 minutes only !!!)
Golden Axe : 20 min (Side A 7 minutes + 13 minutes on side B)
Shadow Dancer : 16 minutes !!!
Terminator 2 : 19 minutes
Turrican I : 9 minutes on side A alone.... since the game is 2 sides, it's more than 15 minutes of data.

Right, like I said - about 10 minutes per side or about 20 minutes total. Which, obviously, isn’t all loaded at once so you never actually have to wait for that long to start playing!

For example, you load to the main menu of Turrican II in 2 minutes 40 seconds from the original tape. Loading in level 1-1 takes an additional 1 minutes 20 seconds, for a total of 4 minutes to start playing.

You're misleading with the game X-out, (a game i own on c64), which is a punition to load on C64, and indeed, the game data on the band is 20 minutes long (hopefully, the game is great and well polished!).

I’m not misleading anything, I’m reporting what I saw. There is a difference. If he loaded that game incorrectly, I can’t help that!?

Oh and X-Out on the C64 takes 2:25 loading till title, a further 0:55 till ‘reset tape counter’, then 1:05 till shop and lastly 1:00 till level 1. I agree it’s a rather clunky mechanism, but it’s total of 5 minutes 30 seconds to start playing is not that long considering you have an intro as well as a shop in there as well.

This is something where the CPC is also the winner, you can crunch a program on a PC, ensuring you get the maximum size, and then the CPC decrunch the data very fast once the loading has ended.

This is done on the C64 as well. You have PC based crunchers which crunch very well and fast decompressors on the C64 side. So again, nothing new or Amstrad specific here.

[Dunny]

I always thought that the C64 had a custom sound chip in it, but it appears not if the MSX gets disqualified for using SCC...

D.

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I always thought that the C64 had a custom sound chip in it, but it appears not if the MSX gets disqualified for using SCC...

The difference is that the C64 has the SID chip built in. The MSX machines only had a simplistic PSG chip as standard, and certain cartridge games had a much better sound chip - the SCC - built in to the cartridge itself.

[Retro-Nerd]

Uh? The SID chip is built-in by default. SCC only works via extra hardware, a cartridge.

edit: robinsonb5 was faster.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

Sorry, but this is just BS. According to FRGCB Commando tape loading times are:

C64 TAPE: 4 minutes 38 seconds.
CPC TAPE: 14 min 53 seconds.
SPECTRUM: 5 minutes, sharp.

The comment even says "The only thing I can really clearly recommend by this list, is to stay the hell away from the tape version on Amstrad". Maybe you are remembering the wrong version, that the Amstrad one was hell, not the C64?

My bad, my version of commando is not this original version, it was a longer to load version. I remember that closely since i knew that the CPC version was a chore to load.

But if you specifically pick the Elite systems game, it's the same for Bombjack, Scooby Doo, Hoopin' Mad. They have all been saved on tape as standard 1000 bauds blocks. You talk about a feat !

The CPC can load 7x times faster than that......

The speedlock scheme already existed in 1986, and was loading at 120% the speed of the normal standard amstrad CPC blocks.

I prefer to use the compact version loading at 3500 bauds than the original junk mastered on tape by Elite !

I randomly checked a few other pages and most of the ones I picked had the slowest loading times on CPC (Cybernoid, Stunt Car Racer, Bionic Commando, Platoon, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge etc).

Cybernoid use a custom scheme running at 1500 bauds. It needs 5 mn 40 to load.

Stunt car Racer use the ricochet protection scheme, a variant based on the spectrum rom. It takes 6 mn 40 to load.

Bionic Commando use the alkatraz encrypted loader.This one is using a 2000 bauds scheme. It takes 5 mn 20 to load the main code, and 44 seconds to load 1 level.

Platoon use a speedlock 2 for the main code, and the speedlock 1 scheme for the data blocks, this means a speed of 2100 bauds.

Lotus Turbo Challenge is using a spectrum rom loader scheme on CPC.
The speed is not very.... nice.

The only scheme i know of on c64, which is above the others is Paul Owen's Freeload, running at a speed of 3000 bauds.

However, what i don't really understand, is that during the test i made between Robocop c64 (it uses freedload) and Robocop CPC (use a speed of 1700 bauds for the main code, and 2000 bauds for the data blocks, my CPC 464 loaded the main code and finished before the c64 (this one got 20 seconds in advance in order to be fair lol !). However, the CPC finished his loading 44 seconds before the c64 !

The faster commercial game for CPC as i said earlier is using a speed of 3500 bauds.

Mask from Gremlin graphics (CPC) is using a speed of 2950 bauds.

And as i explained way above, the CPC support for tape loading up to 7000 bauds. I used a game (Rick Dangerous), encoded with a custom scheme made by my friend, using a speed of 7000 bauds. Rick dangerous main block is 40 Kb, those are loaded in 45 secondes.

I know absolutely no C64 scheme either disk or tape going higher than 4500 bauds... so 7000.... don't even think about it !

I believe Ocean had to alter their loading music to make it shorter because the games were loading too fast - and the last 3 Ocean loaders are all 3:10 or less, so about 3 and a half minutes to load a typical Ocean game from C64 tape would be about right.

Batman the movie is using Freedload. The C64 needs 5 mn 20 to load the title screen + main code + level 1.

The CPC version loads for the same game the title screen + the main game + 1 level basically in the same amount of time (the CPC ends its loading 10 seconds after the c64).

What i don't understand is that Batman the movie CPC use a speedlock 3, using a speed of only 1700 bauds and it's going almost as fast to load as the c64 version which uses 3000 bauds !

If anybody has an explanation, i would be pleased to hear it

[Shatterhand]

I'm still waiting for that Space Manbow / Aleste 2 beater.

[Retro-Nerd]

And what does it prove, compared with hundreds of good games the C64 and other European computers had (in all genres)? Nobody bought a machine for a few good games. Sure some nice arcade games but the system is flodded with obscure Japanese games or RPG/Strategy games in Japanese language.

[Shatterhand]

And in the meantime , give me your Street Fighter 2

[ Show youtube player ]

Well, Shoot'em ups are my fav genre, and I only got dissapointments on this genre on the C64. Ok, give me one on the C64 that's better than Space Manbow, Aleste, Aleste 2, Zanac EX, Hydefos, Super Laydock, Laydock 2, Rona, Kyokugen, Famicle Parodic 2, Pleasure Hearts......

Also if you feel like, give me puzzle games better than Castle Excellent, Eggerland Mystery 1 & 2, Puyo Puyo , King's Valley 2 , Columns....

And better RPGs than Dragon Slayer 6, Fray, the YS series, the XAK series, SD-Snatcher, Illusion City, Golvellius ....



( I don't even like RPGs that much, I am just showing off )

And then you still have F1-Spirit, Maze of Galious, Vampire Killler ,Crusader, Ashguine, Feedback, Undeadline, The most perfect port of Xevious ever, Firehawk: Thexder 2, Psychic World, Nyancle Racing, Treasure of Usas, King's Valley 1 and King's Valley plus, Knightmare, Herzog, Quinpl, Pippols, Magical Tree, The Greatest Driver, Blade Lords, Akin, and then a shitload of good ports of classic Namco games (I mean, HOLY SHIT, what the fuck is this? [ Show youtube player ] , or even this? [ Show youtube player ] ) , and then you had some great MSX 1 games by the dutch guys like Jet Bomber , Flight Deck , Hype .... do I need to keep going on?

I honestly think the C64 has indeed e lovely library of games... but the MSX has just "a couple of good games", and "a few good games by Konami"? Not close at all.

But it's all for the fun The C64 is pretty cool, the MSX is pretty cool and probably the Amstrad CPC is pretty cool too.

[Retro-Nerd]

Nothing that would have convinced me to buy such a machine. And the most people thought the same if you look at the sales figures here. MSX machines didn't sold well in Europe.

[Shatterhand]

I hear they were pretty popular in Netherlands and in the USSR, and in some of the easter europe too, but really not in UK or Germany...

I am nearly sure you european guys didn't get most of the good releases, nor did have much proper support. It's nearly as the same as saying people didn't want to but X68000 on Europe because the Amiga was better....

Oh yeah.

[ Show youtube player ]

vs

[ Show youtube player ]


FUCK WAY TO GO C64 !

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

But if you specifically pick the Elite systems game, it's the same for Bombjack, Scooby Doo, Hoopin' Mad. They have all been saved on tape as standard 1000 bauds blocks. You talk about a feat !

The CPC can load 7x times faster than that......

The only game of the 3 you mentioned that is on FRGCB is Hoppin' Mad, and the CPC is the slowest to load of all 3 systems. And oh dear, check out those horrendous graphics. What the CPC needed on a game like Hoppin' Mad was the colours it can't produce - realistic browns and greens! It looks an absolute piece of crap!

And all the talk about baud rates means absolutely nothing if the game took bloody ages to load. It appears that the people mastering the C64 games compressed the data heavily first and used decent turbo loaders so they got the best efficiency out of the available bandwidth, while the CPC guys must have used uncompressed data, excess verification bits and god knows what else.

It's amazing how many people have such fond memories of waiting 3 minutes for a C64 game to load while a picture was displayed a character at a time and with a kick-arse Galway/Clarke/Dunn soundtrack to boot! Even the old [ Show youtube player ] stuff was pretty cool for the time. And don't forget [ Show youtube player ] which allowed you to alter the music as it loaded, and all the other "play games as it loads" stuff such as [ Show youtube player ] common on the C64! There's even [ Show youtube player ]...

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

The only game of the 3 you mentioned that is on FRGCB is Hoppin' Mad, and the CPC is the slowest to load of all 3 systems. And oh dear, check out those horrendous graphics. What the CPC needed on a game like Hoppin' Mad was the colours it can't produce - realistic browns and greens! It looks an absolute piece of crap!

Oh it's once again a rubbish c64 port ; Even in mode 1, the choice of colors is nothing less than an idiocy !

PS : FRGCB is reknown to be a c64-ass-sucker, totally partial.

I read quite a lot of his comparison test, and it's quite often bullshit.

And all the talk about baud rates means absolutely nothing if the game took bloody ages to load.

A game using a 3000 bauds rate is loading at very high speed.

A game taking bloody ages to load is a game recorded at 1000 bauds.

This is the case for Hoppin mad as well as Commando.

It appears that the people mastering the C64 games compressed the data heavily first and used decent turbo loaders so they got the best efficiency out of the available bandwidth, while the CPC guys must have used uncompressed data, excess verification bits and god knows what else.

This is not the reality. The fact is that specifically, the Elite management didn't used on those games custom commercial schemes, and instead used the crappy 1000 baud method preconised for users in the user manual.

The speedlock turbo loading protection scheme was available at this time, and they never used it (they only used it for the disk versions, with weak sectors !).

Speedlock encoded games are crunched and are used encryption, added to this complex loading scheme. And those are using higher speed than the standard ones.

And that's not the only one, we even had tape games loading MFM encoded blocks, as well as Bitstreams (two things i never saw on c64, since this one never used complex encoding schemes, at least not as complex as the one used on CPC).

It's amazing how many people have such fond memories of waiting 3 minutes for a C64 game to load while a picture was displayed a character at a time and with a kick-arse Galway/Clarke/Dunn soundtrack to boot! Even the old [ Show youtube player ] stuff was pretty cool for the time. And don't forget [ Show youtube player ] which allowed you to alter the music as it loaded, and all the other "play games as it loads" stuff such as [ Show youtube player ] common on the C64! There's even [ Show youtube player ]...

We have also fond memories of the different kinds and sorts of color stripes during the loading of our games.

The amstrad is also able to play music during the loading on tape and there are many firebird games which testify for that

Quite a feat considering the CPC is not loading under interruption at the start.

[Retro-Nerd]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I hear they were pretty popular in Netherlands and in the USSR, and in some of the easter europe too, but really not in UK or Germany...

I am nearly sure you european guys didn't get most of the good releases, nor did have much proper support. It's nearly as the same as saying people didn't want to but X68000 on Europe because the Amiga was better....

Oh yeah.

[ Show youtube player ]

vs

[ Show youtube player ]


FUCK WAY TO GO C64 !

Now you are being ridiculous. Most of the good Konami or Compile games are from 1988-90. Many people had an Amiga at that time (me too). Some were Japanese only (and got fan translations later), like Snatcher or Metal Gear 2. I'm a great FM-Towns/Sharp X68000 fan. This machines had indeed 1:1 Arcade ports, way better than on MSX2. Also the C64 had great Multiplayer games like the Epyx Games series, tons of great adventures, simulations, strategy games etc. Nothing the MSX had in this quantity of quality.

Though i got a PC-Engine from an import dealer 1989. The real 8bit (despite the modern 16bit graphic chips) arcade champ and affordable compared with highend machines like the Sharp X68000.