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So, 11 pages in and this is just the same like every other thread of its ilk, best summed up with a wiseman quote of "Hell hath no fury like the C64/CPC/Atari fan scorned". And if there's one thing which can unite these folks, it's dumping on ZX Spectrum.
I dunno, it always seemed to me that it'd be much easier (and nicer) to simply admit that every micro had its weak points (yes, even the mighty Commie & 6128) and that in the end they were all awesome nonetheless. But, eh, scrap these hippie notions and let's create yet another bitter-tinged megathread. |
The only thing these threads prove is people ignore the facts and carry on with no change.
No point in x is better than y threads BUT the answer to the question in the thread title is "no". Restrictive monopolistic tactics and impenetrable access to hardware of consoles was the problem. 99% of SNES gams etc are the same old ideas done to death. True innovation only came from open access home computer bedroom coding scene. There are easily more AAA quality games on computers with decent enough hardware design than any comparable console bit wise. Don't really care what people like just don't spout idiotic bullshit like loading BBC/Speccy etc games from a Boots/W H Smiths tape deck £15 is more reliable than from dedicated hardwired fixed level tones tape decks etc. If you prefer the ST to A500 etc then great, enjoy, just don't confuse myths with facts or think any "8 bit" except PC Engine was relevant and not for budget demographic by Jan 1988. Arcade games from 1985 onward (Gradius) needed A1000 levels of oomph anyway. |
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By the time the loading screen for CPC Ikari has loaded the C64 version is ready to play. Even in 84 you had Turbotape 64 Kernal wedge to use yourself, which is twice as fast as ZX/CPC loaders. |
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CPC Ikari Warriors is clearly an unusually slow loading special case, certainly not a typical experience for Amstrad owners, especially if they had disk drives too (and a CPC6128 with monitor cost about the same as a 1541 alone). I certainly know people who had more problems loading tapes on the C64 than the Spectrum, though I'm willing to assume that they simply got a relatively dud C2N.
Likewise the games in that 3D C64 v Spectrum / Amstrad video are a very cherry-picked unrepresentative comparison. Now compare the Freescape games, or Fairlight (which averages pretty well on Lemon64 but is laughable next to the Spectrum version, and monochrome - C64 Head Over Heels is a better attempt at the genre, but still slower than the Spectrum version and not as good looking as the Amstrad one), or even Mercenary (a 65x original, though Atari rather than C64) which is noticeably quicker on the Z80s. Some people are very selective as to their 'facts'. I'm not sure you needed a 16-bit by as early as January 1988. Very few games made use of the potential of those systems, especially in terms of arcade style games, especially in terms of the Amiga's potential. That month's Zzap! had a brilliant Christmas rush of games, they reviewed Cosmic Causeway, Skate or Die, Combat School, Driller, Tetris, Octapolis, Yeager AFT, Alternative World Games, RISK, Spore, Airborne Ranger, Xor (criminally underrated by them at 61% IMHO).... (and mostly on tape as well as disk). Likewise Crash! or Amtix! - there certainly wasn't the same quality being released in a single month for ST by then, let alone Amiga - especially as 16-bit games cost twice as much as 8-bit ones. Plus, it wasn't really clear which 16-bit would be on top by then - the £500 Amiga was clearly more powerful than the £300 ST, but was it clear that enough developers would fully exploit it? I think my attitude at that time would have been, if you had one of what were the 'big three' 8-bits here, to stick with it for 6-12 months and wait and see what games come next for the 16-bits - there were still new games pushing the 8-bits further, with new potential being hit in almost any genre. Even £300 in 1988 was equivalent of nearly £1000 today, not being willing or able to spent all that so early in a machines life wasn't 'budget' thinking. Maybe you wanted to put that money towards a car, or a mortgage, or a holiday instead? For most people who didn't need a specific non-games task, the 16-bits were still in the "nice if you can spare the money" category, not the "sell your granny to have one" category. By Christmas 1988, and certainly Christmas 1989, that had changed, though an 8-bit was still a good starting point for a total newcomer, especially if young and drawn more to action games. |
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The turbo loaders on the C64 are in fact the base loading speed on the CPC 6128, so there's nothing to run screaming about. Elite tape version on CPC use the BBC turbo loader scheme adapted to it, allowing as well to play music during loading (thanks Melvyn Wright). Quote:
Fast turbo loaders are faster on the CPC, than they are on the C64. And the CPC programs are bigger than the C64 counterparts.... Quote:
A game like Shadow Dancer is around 170-180kb on C64, the CPC version is 260kb ! |
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We were used to games protected by Speedlock tape schemes, with variable speed (1600,2000 bauds) and other exotic scheme like the Gremlin Graphics loader 2 with its 2500-3000 bauds speed or the Hexagon tape loader which was also very fast considering the size of the programs to load.... Quote:
Imagine if i did the same comparing the C64 standard tape block loader with the gremlin loader 2 on ZX/CPC, some would scream "it's cheating! / comparing apples with oranges!" Quote:
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anyway... I havent read through all thread but let me just add that C64 was great machine to learn creating games. many people mention sprites, color maps, etc, etc and that's true in my case. it helped me to start creating gfx and coding on c64 - doing my own gamaes (and demoscene dmeos too ;) ) peace! |
this article is summarized but imo pretty good to describe those years :
https://gamesnostalgia.com/story/186...rt-2-1983-1986 ie the crude games released per year pic included : https://t.gamesnostalgia.com/news/1/8/186/30104.jpg |
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And that's pretty awesome artwork too. :) |
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Your Sinclair's final issue, which probably marks the end of life, was September 1993. It's honestly insane that any of the 8-bit platforms were still considered commercially viable at that point and even more staggering that Amstrad Action and Commodore Format made it until as late as 1995 (marking the commercial ends of the CPC and C64 respectively) |
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Im not sure if reviews of the C64 mentioned how slow the drive was? |
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It also meant it was easier to provide disk functionality on the 464, since the entire Z80 pinout is available on the expansion bus |
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https://youtu.be/WPHyRJ0N7ng?si=OoZsRTypKw3X5GIq So using a serial bus instead was just a design philosophy. Atari did the same. The advantage of a communications bus as apposed to a CPU expansion bus is that it doesn't tie you down to a particular architecture. The downsides are that it makes the interface more expensive, and performance may suffer. Commodore originally used the IEEE-488 8 bit parallel bus (GPIB) to connect disk drives (and other things) to the PET. This had a real-world data transfer rate of ~1.2 kB/s. They developed the IEC bus as a cheaper alternative to IEEE-488 for the their low cost VIC-20 computer. It used the same core protocols but with data sent serially instead of in parallel. This made the cable and connectors much cheaper, and they could use the clocked serial port built into the 6522 VIA chip rather than needing a dedicated GPIB chip. IEC should have easily matched the real-world transfer rate of GPIB. Only problem was the 6522 had a serious bug in the serial circuit that made it unreliable, so they had to bit-bang it instead - which was much slower. That decision then cascaded to an even lower transfer rate in the C64 because the CPU didn't always run at full speed - which wouldn't have been a problem using the VIA's hardware serial port. It's quite sad the way that one bad decision (to bit-bang rather than fix the 6522) led to a very sub-optimal implementation down the track. OTOH the VIC-20 was a roaring success for Commodore in 1981. If they had waited until the 6522 was fixed it might not have been. It also shows that a product only needs to work to be successful. History is littered with designs that were technically superior but failed in the marketplace for other reasons (Beta vs VHS is the most famous example). The C64's slow IEC bus does have one other advantage - it can easily be implimented on just about any other computer with a few free I/O pins. So you can connect a 1541 to your Amiga via the printer port and read/write files or entire disks without having to worry about the (very non-standard) disk format. |
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