Was the C64 good or bad for the games industry?

[Promilus]

Well you hardly could've become game developer on C64 alone... C128 with monitor program allowing you to do assembly and/or machine code? Well, that's a lot more adequate. Commodore Basic 2.0 is awfully slow (not that any other Basic is actually usable for writing actual games... maybe on modern 8bit machines like Agon, Mega65 or X16 which has abundance of firepower). So the first thing to actually do game development was to get assembler and some tools to create graphics (and yes, probably sheets of squared paper, even SNES developers did start with that...)
So was C64 to develop on? No, not really. Was C64 good to develop for? Yeah... sure. VIC II along with 6502 code and SID capabilities was just great all-rounder. Despite the palette which I find (obviously after seeing better machines) as "washed out" and actually much worse when it comes to games than e.g. Amstrad. So C64 wasn't the best in everything but happened to be the best of the lot when summing things up. Let's not forget however...
Color palette was not really ok for gaming
Computer did not come with tape head adjustment program built in
All deficiencies of transfers between datasette and 1541 were alleviated through 3rd parties (so... regular C= f*ck up cleaned by other ppl).
Hardly any development tools made by C= except CBM Basic 2.0 which was kind of way of doing stuff without licensing from MS which obviously shows...
No RS232 compatibility on stock machine.

And despite of that it became great success... with c128 adding slightly to the bumber (and C64GS being absolute disaster). So was successor for that great machine necessary? Hell yeah! Was C128 such successor? Hell no! Would something like C65 several years earlier be a better choice? Damn right!

[Megalomaniac]

Martin Webb probably perfectly sums up the mixed blessings of that era. On the one hand, a teenager and dad working from home could form a career, which the wider world hadn't really caught up with understanding. PCs were too expensive, unfriendly and unsuited to games, at least until 3D took over as the main format for games. Academia was a long way off providing that opportunity, what few computing degrees or programming courses there were at that time offered nothing on scrolling or sprites or level design. As Martin had coding experience on other systems, the C64's weak BASIC wasn't a barrier to entry for him.

On the other hand, the story of OutRun typifies why so many coin-op conversions were so bad - C64 OutRun was by no means the worst of the time (6.41 average on Lemon64), especially as the great C64 racers mostly came later. Publishers gave massive conversions to inexperienced coders with no support, in this case using a codebase not originally intended for that exact game, usually against a short deadline. If anything, the C64 was lucky that, once the 8-bit Ataris had died out, it was the only system using its processor, so its code wasn't ported over like Amiga/ST or Spectrum/Amstrad - with a few exceptions like Afterburner, Karnox and Chase HQ, most of its arcade conversions aren't terrible. C64 OutRun made this socially-awkward kid with otherwise poor prospects £17,000 within a month. He didn't stay in games development for long, but did well for himself, later launching the internet's first virtual car showroom. Well done Martin, well done T/I-99, and I guess well done C64.

[modrobert]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

However, there's no question that the C64's slow processor compared to the Z80 did limit what it could do.

Are you sure? What matters is how many clock cycles it takes to perform the assembly instructions, not just the clock speed in MHz.

[Retro-Nerd]

The Z80A/4MHz cpu had to compensate for all the missing, game-friendly, custom chips in i.e. the Spectrum and CPC. Hardly an advantage over the MOS 6510. Only for isometic or vector based games the z80 was better suited, speed-wise.

[CCCP alert]

C128 with 2mhz or VIC-II was a shit show of a waste of time IMO

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Megalomaniac

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.

If that is all that you think is important about a system I feel a bit sad for you. You could argue the exact same way about the Amiga btw. It still wouldn't make any sense, but you could most certainly use the same point to argue that it was bad for gaming.

[Megalomaniac]

Originally Posted by Retro-Nerd

The Z80A/4MHz cpu had to compensate for all the missing, game-friendly, custom chips in i.e. the Spectrum and CPC. Hardly an advantage over the MOS 6510. Only for isometic or vector based games the z80 was better suited, speed-wise.

If you read the full comment, that isn't far from what I said - though we'll never know how much a hypothetical Z80-based system with C64 style custom chips could have done. I certainly didn't dispute that the C64 was best for 2D action games (especially anything with scrolling).

The 6510 is much more cycle-efficient than the Z80, I've acknowledged that elsewhere in the thread. I've seen it claimed that the Spectrum is only actually 20% better at 3D than the C64 - when you compare games like-for-like between the 2 systems I'd say that's an underestimate, but its true that the gap isn't the Z80 being 3.5x times faster.

True that knowledge of coding the Amiga's custom chips wasn't necessarily that useful on the later systems, though plenty of ex-Amiga developers did shine on later systems - Core, DMA/Rockstar, Bullfrog, Reflections, The Bitmaps, DICE/Digital Illusions and Team 17 all had major hits in the PS1/Windows 9x era. There are exceptions like Sensible, of course, though their demise was more down to overlooking that the market had become more internationalist and more 'safe' (they squandered a lot of money developing Sex, Drugs & Rock N Roll, which was never likely to be a cost-effective commercial success, regardless of quality). I don't know that the C64 produced the same development legacy. This doesn't mean it wasn't (and isn't) a great machine to own, but that's not really what this thread was intending to ponder.

[CCCP alert]

Memotech MTX computers are 4mhz Z80 and have hardware sprites and Coleco style sound and graphics so that's the closest to a Z80 C64 rival. No h/w scrolling tho.

[Aegis]

The C64 was host to the best version of Lucasfilm's Labyrinth - essentially an early glimpse of what was to come with Scumm - also Maniac Mansion and Zak McKraken were developed initially for the C64.

The C64 was also the platform Lucasfilm developed Habitat for - arguably the first MMO.

The C64 may have been better at certain things than others, but it's ubiquity and incredible value meant that it was instrumental in enabling whole new genres of gaming.

[CCCP alert]

What really damaged creativity/diversity was Nintendo's monopolistic anti-competitive bullshit, was so glad when PS1 and Sony put them in there place. All home computers are where true diverse/creative gave host to the majority of innovation. Yes the technically challenging arcade conversions were a bit of a crap-fest but true genius was in games like Law of the West which paved the way for interactive movies etc.

I couldn't care less about 99% of the NES catalogue

This also goes for music, console music is garbage compared to SID/Paula game soundtracks IMO, and some of the most amazing tunes on 64 were free (Dominator C= User covertape unique loader by Matt Gray) or £2-3. Golden Axe SID sounds better than the adlib-o-clock sounding arcade music lol

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by Aegis

it's ubiquity and incredible value meant that it was instrumental in enabling whole new genres of gaming.

There's no doubt that its power was real value for the money that it cost, but it was still waaaaaay too expensive until C= dropped the price to compete with the Spectrum.

I do wonder if C= had marketed it competetively in the UK to begin with whether the rivalry between the zx and c64 would have even existed; the zx might not have gained such a head start in those crucial early couple of years.

[Adropac2]

Really though it mostly comes down to creativity and so any dependance on 2d ideas when moving over to a more powerful or just entirely difference system can be a blessing and a curse potentially. That's how creativity works a lot of the time. Familiarity is both good and bad and more freedom to expand can be very mixed in terms of success. Limits can often be what brings out the strongest of ideas within those confines but then an individual may just be more creative regardless

I think the C64 had some very imaginative minds which produced a level of creativity that may or may not have been similar in terms of success if these minds were applied to 'more capable' machines. Similarly those that did wonders on other machines may not have had the same creativity on C64 because it wont have been the right fit for their creativity hence why some programmers will have gravitated to one or the other given the choice

[CCCP alert]

With things like Acorn/Sinclair/Amstrad you start with a blank sheet, with something like Atari and Commodore you start with the hardware assisted goodies generally speaking.

The 264 at $80 RRP was meant to stop sales of the Spectrum/Timex. Blame Irving the bonus cheque writer Gould for the C16/Plus overpriced jank.

Even so here is a myth busting video

[ Show youtube player ]

and another one about rivals being "better" at 3D games

[ Show youtube player ]

[AestheticDebris]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

.
Even so here is a myth busting video

[ Show youtube player ]

By 1984 the price of the C64 had come down substantially to compete against machines like the Spectrum. And most people I knew back in the day used a tape deck they had lying around the house (which you couldn't do with the C64) and didn't have a joystick. So I'm not sure that's an entirely honest comparison.

[Megalomaniac]

Aesthetic is right that the pricing comparison isn't fully accurate, for the Spectrum you probably already had a suitable tape deck could add the joystick later (you could even make do with a black & white TV for a time, at a push), as well as later Spectrums being 128+ and having the tape deck (or disk drive) and joystick / printer ports built in (plus improved sound hardware, though the C64 still won there), whereas the C64's features and performance didn't change in a decade. Almost all C64 games were joystick only, even those which didn't need fast action inputs.

The 2.5D/3D performance once certainly isn't. You seem to have cherry-picked games which are well regarded on the C64 but not the Spectrum/Amstrad - why not have Afterburner or Turbo Esprit instead? Now do a video comparing Spectrum and C64 versions of Elite, Head Over Heels (or just about any isometric game) and any Freescape game - all generally well-regarded by C64 fans. Even Mercenary is noticeably quicker on the Z80.

Habitat was hugely original, even if it didn't achieve everything it set out to do it certainly set the template. It could have probably happened on any of the 8-bits, but it was designed in a country where the C64 was biggest at that time, so it started there. Maniac Mansion could not have happened on the Spectrum though, due to colour-clash and the lack of disk drives for most users (it probably could have happened on the Amstrad though)

[CCCP alert]

I would like to add though that console VCS creativity in game dev wasn't an issue while Nolan Bushnell's revolutionary management style was still in place. You were given a dev kit, a space to work and 6 months to do whatever you wanted.

Problem was the dev kit business, loads of awesome coders used nothing more than a micro and hand assembled code. bedroom coding and analogue synth music creation was a massive injection of creativity in the early days.

a stand alone cheap tape deck, which few had to spare for a kid's bedroom computer full time in reality, is far less reliable for loading than a dedicate fixed spec datasette etc. A Sony tape deck cost £30 more than a Boots/Smiths branded el cheapo rubbish too. The Atari XC and C= C2Ns loaded everything I bought, not once did I get a single load error from 200+ tapes. Atari and C= machines had cart slots and C= carts like Int Soccer were £9.99. Only other machine with cart slot was MSX. Boots did a C64 tape deck, it was £29,99 IIRC.

Worst of all if you got a green screen CPC bundle you couldn't hook it up to your TV and the TV modulator was very rare in shops.

If the BBC Micro had £100 lower RRP, sound not out of a case speaker and 8 more colours in palette would have been a great machine. It's the most well designed video RAM and CPU bus of the lot IMO. 2mhz well designed 6502 motherboard is fast

[TCD]

If you'd told me in the mid to late 80s that the C64 was considered an expensive machine I don't know how I would have reacted. It might have been different in 1982/83, but in 1984 the C64 was very common here. Even the disk drive was something that almost everybody who owned a C64 had (can't remember if I knew somebody who didn't honestly). For me personally it is quite interesting (and in a way a bit shocking) to read that people didn't have the money to buy one.

[Samurai_Crow]

Here in the states, the 1541 disk drive cost as much as the C64 itself. It took me quite a long time to save up for the 1541C disk drive and it wore out faster than the breadbox C64 I plugged it into (considering we bought the 64 in 1983).

[TCD]

Yep, the disk drive was even more expensive than the C64. This is from 1985:

Guess most of us were just super rich... Not that I noticed mind you

Edit: Just used one of the 'adjust for inflation' calculators and 1,150 DM in 1985 would be around 1,250 € today. My last PC was ~1,600 €.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by CCCP alert

Memotech MTX computers are 4mhz Z80 and have hardware sprites and Coleco style sound and graphics so that's the closest to a Z80 C64 rival. No h/w scrolling tho.

What with MSX (and MSX2. MSX2+) ? - all of them based on Z80 and offering sprites, scrolling etc.

Originally Posted by TCD

Yep, the disk drive was even more expensive than the C64. This is from 1985:

Guess most of us were just super rich... Not that I noticed mind you

Edit: Just used one of the 'adjust for inflation' calculators and 1,150 DM in 1985 would be around 1,250 € today. My last PC was ~1,600 €.

Isn't this marketing decision ? - accordingly to Wikipedia 1541 was actually cheaper - 400$ and C64 500$
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commod...r#Introduction
I can imagine different marketing strategies for Europe and for USA.